T1 take first in Group A, advance to Worlds quarterfinals along with EDG

NEW YORK -- First place in Group A at the League of Legends World Championship was decided by a banger match on Thursday between reigning world champions EDward Gaming and three-time world champions T1. After a close game early on, T1 blew the game wide open in the latter half to win in dominant fashion and take first in the group.

Sign up for the next Nerd Street tournament!

The teams were even in kills (3-3) and turrets (1-1) and nearly even in gold at 16 minutes, but over the course of the next 12 minutes, T1 took over, ending the game with a 24/8 advantage in kills and a 14K gold difference. Despite being the victim of a first blood by EDG’s mid laner Lee "Scout" Ye-chan, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok finished the game with a kill/death/assist line of 6/3/15. Top laner Choi "Zeus" Woo-je had a team-best K/D/A of 10/2/3 and Ryu "Keria" Min-seok showed why he’s one of the best supports in the world with 19 assists.

Earlier in the day, EDward Gaming secured a place for themselves and T1 in the quarterfinals of the tournament by beating Fnatic. Before losing to T1, the Chinese team had dominated European team Fnatic and North American team Cloud9 to give them four wins and a chance to win Group A.

Read more: Faker hopes to find glory once again on North American soil

Photo credit: Riot Games

EDG players died only three times combined against Fnatic and C9 -- once to C9 and twice to Fnatic. Bot laner Park "Viper" Do-hyeon led the team against C9 with a K/D/A of 8/0/5 on Aphelios, while jungler Zhao "Jiejie" Li-Jie carried the team against Fnatic with a scoreline of 7/0/10 on Sejuani.

Like EDG, T1 won their first two games to set up the first place-deciding match between the two teams to end the day.

Requiem for Cloud9 and Fnatic

Cloud9 regained some honor for themselves and North America when they opened the day with a win over Fnatic. It was both their first win and the first for NA as the region’s teams had gone a combined 0-9 during Week 1 of the group stage. Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen carried the team on Orianna with a K/D/A of 8/2/7.

Read more: Trymbi hopes Rogue’s success at Worlds will translate to more fan support

Although they lost to EDG to get eliminated from the tournament, C9 put on a show in a loss to T1. It started in the draft where Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen pulled out the rare Heimerdinger as his champion. Jensen continued his good play from earlier in the day with a first blood on Faker and three kills over the Unkillable Demon King. Jensen was the only C9 player to finish the game with a positive scoreline of 5/2/0.

Photo credit: Riot Games

C9 went toe-to-toe with T1 in kills through 20 minutes and also took the first two drakes, the second of which they stole from T1. Ultimately though, T1 kept taking down turrets and amassed a big gold lead to win the game relatively quickly in just over 23 minutes.

It was a sad day for Fnatic who went 0-3 on Thursday after starting off the group stage 2-1 in Week 1 with wins over C9 and T1. Both of those teams got revenge on the European squad in the second game of the double round robin.

Fnatic looked overmatched in all three of their games on Thursday. The only bright spot was some early kills on Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok. Faker got killed three times in the early game as the two teams stood 5-5 in kills. However, T1 started to pull away after that, and Faker didn’t die the rest of the game.

Lead photo credit: Riot Games