With both teams on the bubble, TL will go up against GAM Esports in the third round of Worlds 2023 Swiss Stage.

Image Credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games

Worlds 2023 Swiss Stage – TL vs GAM – October 23, 08:00 CET

After the first two rounds of the new Swiss stage, 4 teams have ended up at the bottom of the standings and will be facing an elimination match consisting of a Bo3. LCS team Team Liquid (TL) will go up against the Vietnamese representative GAM Esports in what could be the last showdown for one of the two.

TL come from a rough game against NRG, who dominated them in the series. It was a really weird series from the LCS #3 seed, especially considering they were able to almost upset T1 on Day 1. Not only did the team look disjointed but the draft was also quite questionable. TL picked themselves a team comp that forced them to get a lead, and even then it would’ve been a tough game considering the scaling on NRG’s side. While it was comfort picks across the board, it didn’t really work out as intended.

GAM, instead, were dominated both on Day 1 and Day 2, proving that there’s still a gap to the best teams in the world. Gen.G crushed them in 22 minutes, and Fnatic only took two more minutes the following day. The team has a decent early game but once they get to the mid-game, everything becomes quite messy.

Read more: LoL Worlds 2023 Power Rankings

Pyosik and Levi will dictate the flow of the game

Based on what we saw so far, both teams need their jungler to be proactive and punish mistakes to generate leads. Pyosik did that against T1 and Levi did the same in the play-in stage: the jungle matchup will be a key to the entire series. Champions like Lee Sin and Jarvan IV are probably going to be high priority so expect them to be pick-or-ban. Maokai and Sejuani are going to be strong picks too.

Jungle proactivity will also be influenced by the two supports. Roaming champions like Alistar and Rakan are going to be preferred, and it will be down to Palette and CoreJJ to dictate the early game objectives.

These two are going to be the keys of the match and considering the performance so far, it’s probably going to end in TL’s victory. As long as they don’t suddenly troll drafts like on Day 2, they should do fine and survive this elimination match. It’s probably a 65-35 split currently, but it can go higher in GAM’s favor with an advantageous team composition.

Prediction: TL 2 – 0 GAM

Read more: LoL Worlds 2023 Swiss Stage – DK vs BDS Match Preview