LOL: Can’t I play other games professionally?

Chapter 387 Why is the God of Go fighting the League of Legends? (One more chapter coming later)
Two days passed in a blink of an eye.

As the LPL playoffs are about to begin, the name "Lin Ruo" has undoubtedly been the center of attention across all sectors in the past two days.

The buzz surrounding the conclusion of the Mengbaihe Cup qualifiers continues to grow, with discussions emerging and persisting online.

Especially in the Go world, the game between Lin Ruo and Park Young-hoon 9-dan has been analyzed by countless people, and the more players study it, the more shocked they become.

How did he manage to dominate a professional 9-dan player so effectively without making any mistakes?

The onlookers were stunned and bewildered, and it seemed that there was only one explanation: he was a true genius.

In particular, through comparison with AI, Lin Ruo's steps were often not the AI's first choice, but they were able to achieve the best results without any unexpected events.

In other words, he is not following the same foolproof approach as AI, but rather a strategy that involves both gains and risks, in which the gains will definitely outweigh the risks.

As for the exact amount of risk, Lin Ruo didn't suffer too much from the risks in the four preliminary rounds. Each time, he maximized his benefits while minimizing or even avoiding the risks.

Was the opponent too weak? No, how could someone with the strength of a seventh, eighth, or even ninth dan be weak?

Moreover, Lin Ruo is only a beginner, a professional beginner who became a professional in just six months through self-study...

The Go world has once again been challenged, with almost everyone focusing on the main tournament in June, wondering if this person could actually win.

Although the aging Park Young-hoon is not among the top 9-dan players, he is undoubtedly still in the upper-middle level.

This means that Lin Ruo is absolutely capable of clashing with more ninth-level powerhouses.

This should also include Ke Jie, who is not yet 21 years old, currently the strongest new generation in Chinese chess, and a rising five-time world champion.

And Park Jung-hwan, the South Korean national player currently ranked number one in the world in Go.

Everyone is looking forward to what even more shocking news will emerge from the main tournament in June.

However, before that, we should still laugh. Those Korean bastards who confidently believed that Park Young-hoon would not lose to a professional first-dan player have once again become the biggest victims.

They would never have imagined that their national champion, who was once a dominant force in the country, would be utterly defeated by a first-dan player, becoming the first ninth-dan player to be eliminated in the preliminaries.

It's impossible not to break down now.

Especially with a large number of Chinese netizens using VPNs to mock them on foreign websites, the sky has truly fallen for the Pakistani netizens.

Although Go shouldn't have generated such a lot of buzz, the Chosun Ilbo's article propelled the preliminary rounds to unprecedented levels of attention in South Korea.

This loss naturally caused everyone to lose face.

Therefore, the self-deceiving netizens could only come up with another topic to save face.

That's Lin Ruo opening.

The Chinese organizers deliberately helped the player cheat in order to save face, which resulted in the player being able to defeat Park Young-hoon 9-dan.

Otherwise, how could a first-dan player defeat a ninth-dan player? Is that even possible on this planet?
Different people have different opinions.

Such a viewpoint is unlikely to gain much support; Chinese netizens will not agree with it, nor will foreign netizens.

Western audiences, primarily from the League of Legends community, simply call him "Lin God," proclaiming that their "Son of God" has inadvertently created an unprecedented achievement in another gaming field.

After all, Overwatch, PUBG, and Dota 2 all started in the same way.

Western audiences are even more convinced of this than many Chinese netizens.

There's nothing they can do; they just admire the strong. As long as Lin Ruo isn't defeated, they'll continue to praise him forever.

Whether it's for fun or genuine admiration, Lin Ruo is undoubtedly a top-tier traffic creator in the eyes of European and American audiences; his presence always generates buzz.

Amidst the continued high level of discussion, the first round of the LPL Spring Split playoffs unfolded between JDG, the fourth-ranked team in the East, and BLG, the third-ranked team in the West.

The rebranded Banlangen still adheres to the principle of remaining stuck in the playoff zone, aiming for a mere first-round exit as a success.

JDG, with its roster of promising new talents, has made it all the way to the playoffs with high morale. Among them, the domestic rookie mid laner Yagao is the most representative, showing impressive laning skills and fierce team attacks during the regular season.

However, there is a serious problem that is why JDG only managed to get fourth place in the group: the team often tends to "get lost" in the mid-to-late game.

Hmm, I wonder if Yagao is starting to feel sleepy too.

However, there's nothing that can be done. Even if JDG gets lost in the late game, it's still not as good as BLG, who clearly intended to concede.

Because of their high ranking and a 1-0 start, Banlangen (a Chinese medicine brand) quickly staged a classic scenario: in the first game, after a 40-minute stalemate, their base was destroyed in a team fight; in the second game, they had a huge advantage but ruined their chances by taking the Baron; and in the third game, they lost all fighting spirit and were swept.

JDG thus advanced to the next round with a score of 3:1.

The match between RW, the third-ranked team in the East, and WE, the fourth-ranked team in the West, which started the following day, was equally exciting.

Having finally made it into the playoffs, the entire WE team was eager to advance to the next round, but unfortunately, the team was full of players who made terrible mistakes, with jungler Magic dragging his teammates down from the very beginning.

If it weren't for xiye, WE would probably have been far from making the playoffs long ago. After all, many people have forgotten how many times xiye single-handedly secured points for the team this season.

However, faced with the powerful RW team, xiye, unwilling to be humiliated, ultimately chose to go with the flow. In the second game, he was crushed by Doinb's godlike Ryze in the mid lane.

Because RW had a 1-0 lead, WE, who had rotated their jungler and support players throughout the season, were powerless to resist and lost 0-3 at their home stadium in Xi'an.

With this, the first round of the playoffs has ended, and the third and fourth-ranked teams in the West have all been eliminated without winning a single game.

Ranked second in the West, Snake is about to face RW's challenge and the whole team is trembling with fear. Zhu Kai, the team's emotional mediator and king of ordering takeout, has been giving the team a pep talk for two consecutive days.

The effect was quite remarkable; at least the Vietnamese bandits listened. What? So the match the day after tomorrow isn't the Demacia Cup?

So in the first game of the top six, Snake, led by SoFM, swept RW. The Vietnamese player's masterful Troll Invasion almost turned Cuzz into autistic.

Just when everyone thought Snake was going to avenge the other teams in the West and advance to the Spring Split semifinals, the Snake team suddenly started playing "snake" in the last three games.

SoFM, who seemed to have divine assistance in the previous game, got lost in RW's F6 camp right from the start. SoFM got lost, then GuoGuo got lost, then Flandre got lost.

As for Crystal in the bottom lane, he has always been a mystery.

The classic strategy is to dig a hole in the first round, then lure all the viewers in for the kill in the next three rounds.

RW ultimately pulled off a dramatic comeback, winning three straight games to secure a spot in the playoff semifinals.

Snake only lasted one game before packing up and disbanding, becoming the third team to be eliminated in the playoffs, and also the third team in the Western Conference.

In less than five days, EDG became the last hope for the Western Conference, and this hope was ridiculously high.

#One Superpower and Multiple Heroes in the West#
The related topics quickly rose to the top of Weibo and Tieba's trending searches after the match. As the name suggests, "super" refers to EDG's dominance in the group and even the entire region.

The term "Xiong" is even simpler; it refers to the other three teams, all of which are "Super Xiong" teams. They seem to have a lot of temper, but in reality, they have no brains at all.

After all, he only won one game out of three BO5 matches. If he doesn't become the best, then no one will be.

[I was going to say the Western Conference was a bunch of weak teams fighting each other, but damn it, then there's EDG too, it just doesn't sound right.]

[From now on, let's change it to "One Super Bear and Many Bears." That way, the meaning is clearer. Otherwise, I'll really think they're very masculine, when in fact they're super masculine.]

[You guys are really putting Snake down like this. After all, they won one game. I suggest adding the prefix "Little Super Hero" to Snake, and "Big Super Hero" to the other two.]

[Don't mess around, I've already made the meme, the one with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where EDG one person pulls up four super-strong little babies.]

[There's a problem. There are only three Super Hero teams; there's one too many.]

【Then let's bring in VG, the fifth-ranked team in the West. Look, they can't even beat the Super Hero team, so wouldn't they be even more Super Heroic?】

[That makes a lot of sense. VG got a free spot in the playoffs, joining the rest of the team.]

[Is it possible that VG doesn't want this bargain?] While the discussion on Tieba was in full swing, Lin Ruo's live stream was also flooded with comments at the same time.

[Lin, you guys in the West are really bad. You can't even beat an Eastern Conference team.]

[Stop the baseless criticism. EDG isn't from the West; they're from the North. So tell me, aren't they at the very top?]

[So you're doing cutting, huh? Typical State Grid, quick with the image stuff.]

[No way, why are you talking about League of Legends competitions with a streamer who doesn't even play League of Legends? Seriously, he plays Go, he plays Dota, he plays PUBG.]

Seeing the chaotic comments, Lin Ruo silently changed the title of her live stream: "It is our duty to rebuild the glory of the West!"

Just kidding, what does Western cuisine have to do with EDG? No, wait, it really does have to do with them.

The weaker the other teams in the West are, the stronger EDG is. Otherwise, there would only be one team from the West in the top four, so the quality of their achievement is self-evident.

Since we're all from the West, it's not unreasonable to uphold the dignity of the other brothers and be Glory Brother for a few days.

Anyway, we're going to beat up the three Eastern Conference giants along the way, so it's not a big deal.

Well, Lin Ruo also has to thank a few western teams. If they weren't so weak, EDG wouldn't have been able to win all their matches and secure first place in the group stage five rounds early, which is historic.

In that case, he would have no chance to participate in the Mengbaihe Cup qualifiers.

Lin Ruo thought about it more and more and felt that if the Western teams won the Mengbaihe Cup in the future, they would deserve at least one-third of the credit.

Snake deserves the most credit, after all, who else could be as unstoppable as them with a seven-game winning streak in the early stages, followed by a six-game losing streak to prove it?

If Snake had lost one less game, Lin Ruo wouldn't have been able to take a break and start playing so early.

Then I must avenge them even more! RW, right? Lin Ruo decided to return the favor with a 3-0 victory to avenge the beating of her former neighbor.

However, it seems that RW is not in their half of the bracket. During her spare time, Lin Ruo checked the bracket and found that the winner of tomorrow's RNG vs. JDG match will be in their half of the bracket.

According to the playoff rules, the fourth and second groups in each group must swap halves of the bracket.

That means there's a high probability that I'll face RNG again in the semifinals. It would be awesome to play RNG in my first match back.

Lin Ruo didn't disbelieve that JDG couldn't make it to the semifinals; she simply didn't believe it. After all, in her previous life, although RNG in 18 was frustrated by the team rotation in the first half of the Spring Split, their subsequent victories in the Spring Split and MSI championships demonstrated just how good their form was.

Even Zz1tai managed to make Rookie cry, an epic feat that shows just how strong RNG was after their adjustments. They were definitely not a team that the emerging JDG could challenge.

Sure enough, on the second day, in the final round of the six-to-four competition, which was full of hype, RNG, with unstoppable momentum, easily won 3:1 and advanced to the semifinals.

JDG, who are known for their late-game struggles, have perfectly avoided this problem. As long as they don't struggle in the late game, they're unlikely to get confused.

JDG's bot lane is their biggest weakness, a classic example of being easily broken. Loekn, the ADC, is as stable as a wall, to put it kind of, and to put it another way, only the word "stable" can describe him.

Thus, the four finalists were determined.

In the upper bracket, IG will face RW, and in the lower bracket, EDG will face RNG. The first match will be the highly anticipated "Pig vs. Dog" showdown, which is sure to generate a huge amount of viewership.

...

4 month 20 day.

In the afternoon, the highly anticipated semi-final match kicked off at Shanghai Zhengda Plaza.

Lin Ruo, who arrived at the locker room early with the team, immediately started cramming to learn about the relevant updates for the playoff version 8.6.

Having not played in a long time, and having lost the memory of two versions, he really needs to take a look, otherwise he shouldn't have picked Camille when she was nerfed to a pulp.

Mingkai, who was used to this, could only watch as Lin Ruo learned about the version and discussed the current draft and ban issues with him.

Lin Ruo's ability to absorb information is quite fast. After all, she had a general understanding of it before, and she only needed to familiarize herself with the specific details of the changes.

Patch 8.6 brought significant changes to the jungle, such as buffing Kayn's W and R abilities. Ning from the other side should be overjoyed to see this.

Furthermore, the buff to Nightmare's ultimate ability makes his ganking ability at level 6 even stronger, something that mlxg from the neighboring country would obviously be overjoyed to see.

Lee Sin, who almost retired on the spot due to the removal of the Sightstone jungle item, has risen again in this version. Not only has his Q skill's casting range increased by 100 yards, but the damage of his R skill will also be higher in the late game.

Mingkai was overjoyed, after all, he was a master at playing Lee Sin, it was just a pity that he had retired. No problem, he can still play Lee Sin well when he goes back to ranked games.

Finally, Graves' attack damage and magic resistance growth have been increased, and his W casting and vision reduction effects will take effect faster. Needless to say, Peanut, the king of jungle carries, will be overjoyed.

After learning all this, Lin Ruo felt that Riot Games was targeting him. Why didn't they buff his signature champion?

Lin Ruo thought for a moment and realized that she was an all-around jungler who could pick any hero, so there shouldn't be any problem.

Next, regarding rune skill adjustments, the new Precision Keystone rune Conqueror will be added, reducing the duration of Bone Plating. However, this will not affect the current obsession of top laners with Bone Plating.

Regarding Summoner Spells, Ignite damage has been increased, and Heal cooldown has been increased.

Riot Games intends to strengthen the role of the bot lane and give it more screen time.

This spring season saw the emergence of Kai'Sa, and for a period of time, the mage teleporting to the bottom lane became popular. In fact, there were quite a few shots of the bottom lane.

Moreover, Kai'Sa's attack range has increased, her passive and Q ability power scaling has increased, her E casting range has decreased while her movement speed has increased, and her R casting radius has increased, making her undoubtedly the only top-tier AD carry.

In addition, the damage scaling of Rakan's Q and R has been increased, and his basic attacks with Xayah no longer trigger each other's [Deadly Cloak] effect. With the weakening of synergy damage, the two couples can finally announce their separation.

Even without Xayah, Rakan can become a key pick in both the draft and the competitive scene.

However, the focus of attention on the top lane has gradually shifted back to mutual exploitation this year, lacking a diverse range of gameplay.

After watching, Lin Ruo concluded: "I'm in luck, Kai. I'm an amazing Lee Sin player."

Mingkai felt that Lin Ruo, that little brat, was hinting at something to him again, but seeing that she didn't say anything out of line afterward, he figured she was just reacting to being teased too much.

...

At this moment, the commentary team of Guan Ji would already be in place on the LPL main stage.

With the familiar opening remarks and advertising slogans, Lin Ruo finally felt the atmosphere of returning to the competition field. Yes, this was the authentic feeling.

After the morning session, the group, who had made all the necessary preparations, arrived at the backstage entrance to prepare for their performance. Xiao Yu was in charge of hosting the event today.

Perhaps because IG won first place in the regular season and Rookie won the regular season MVP, Xiaoyu was in high spirits today, no longer the girl with the fake smile she used to have.

"Hey, isn't this the Go prodigy? What's he doing playing League of Legends?"

When the RNG members arrived and saw Lin Ruo, Xiao Ming, who is best at making jokes and gossiping, immediately started teasing him.

The most popular meme in the League of Legends community these days, besides the "Four Super Heroes of the West," is "Why are you, a Go player, playing League of Legends?" which is clearly aimed at Lin Ruo.

"Playing Go every day is boring, isn't it? Why don't you come and beat up some professional players from the league to have some fun?" Lin Ruo asked back, putting his arm around her neck.

Watching the group chatting and laughing, Uzi, maintaining his aloof demeanor, remained silent. He only wanted to defeat Lin Ruo in the upcoming match and wash away the humiliation of the past year.

With the release of his signature champion Kai'Sa today, Uzi, who plays her with great ease, is thriving, and finally no one dares to say he doesn't practice meta champions anymore.

S6 said I didn't practice Jhin? S7 said I didn't practice Xayah? But what will they say when I pick Kai'Sa in S8!
In just one month, he has created several memorable moments with Kai'Sa on the field. Mad Dog feels full of power. As long as EDG doesn't stop him with Kai'Sa... Hmph.

"Go, idol! I won't gank you in the bottom lane." Noticing Uzi's serious expression, Lin Ruo stepped forward to explain.

Actually, the idol just needs to focus on developing his character. He won't care about the bot lane; he'll only go to the top lane to provide Letme with the full package of services. This is the treatment Letme deserves.

Upon hearing this, Letme, who was standing next to him, sensed the danger spreading and his hands began to tremble involuntarily. He hadn't recovered from being completely overwhelmed by Lin Ruo during the last regular season game.

(End of this chapter)