This is going to be one of the most exciting matches in the first round of the 2022 Summer Split regular season as these teams went all the way to the 5th game in the spring playoffs, where Gen.G came out on top. Now heading into the 2nd week of the summer split, both teams are currently sitting at the top of the standings with a clean 2-0 record, though they have faced only some of the weakest teams in the league.
The outcome of this match will determine which team has the highest chances of taking down T1, and in DK’s case, they’ll be facing the spring champions on Saturday. It’s important to remember Gen.G didn’t make a single roster change in the off-season, but on the other hand, DWG KIA brought back one of its strongest members we’ve seen play for the organization, and that is Jang “Nuguri” Ha-gwon. Now they might have just what it takes to beat Gen.G in a best-of-3 series.
Chovy Had a Perfect Week
Jeong “Chovy” Ji-hoon finished Week 1 of the regular season with a 14/0/25 score, making him the only player with 4 games that didn’t die a single time. The thing is that when it comes to league of legends betting one of the main factors we have to take into account is what kind of opponents a player has. In this case, Gen.G had to play against Hanwha Life Esports and KT Rolster, two teams that haven’t looked that great in the first couple of weeks.
Another important thing to take note is that the 21-year-old Korean mid laner only played 2 different champions, Azir and Corki. We still have to give credit where it’s due as pulling-off the kind of stunt he did is not easy even against the bottom teams in a league. Now Chovy will square up against Heo “ShowMaker” Su, one of the mid laners that gave him a lot of troubles last split as both of their playstyles are not similar at all.
While Chovy excels at having a stable early game and outcsing their opponents by a high amount, he is not the mid laner that will win you games from the get-go, which is quite the opposite of Showmaker. For this match, I believe that Gen.G will focus entirely on shutting down DK’s side lanes as that’s the only way that they’ll be able to transition steadily into the mid and late game.
Nuguri is Back Home
Last split we saw former Yoon “Hoya” Yong-ho and laner Noh “Burdol” Tae-yoon constantly struggle against the very best top laners in the league. It was very obvious that if this team wanted to lift the summer split trophy then they would have to make a big change. Now with Nuguri back in the top lane, it’s safe to say that DK is more than capable of beating every single team in the league, though we still have to see how convincingly they’ll be able to do it.
Throughout the first week of the split, Nuguri racked a 16.25 KDA, which might not be that impressive considering that he squared up against Morgan and Dove. What I liked the most about Nuguri in week 1 was that he felt comfortable playing a different champion in every single game.
In our 2022 LCK Summer Split power rankings we talked about how Nuguri is the final piece that DK needed. Now we’ll see him face Choi “Doran” Hyeon-joon, arguably the weakest link in the Gen.G lineup. This is going to be Nuguri’s golden opportunity to demonstrate that he can still be the king of the top lane in the Korean region. While the rest of the matchups might seem very close, everything indicates that there is going to be a huge gap in the top lane in favor of Nuguri.
Gen.G vs DWG KIA Game Information
- Date: Wednesday, June 22
- Time: 6:00am ET
- Live Stream: LCK – Twitch
Gen.G vs DWG KIA Predictions
If you want to bet on esports then you should know that when DWG KIA had Nuguri in their lineup, they won the 2020 World Championship in a very dominant manner. Now that he is back on the roster, there is no reason to believe that this team isn’t going to take the competition by storm.
Let’s remember that DK was just 1 game away from beating Gen.G in the spring semifinals, and it isn’t crazy to think that they would’ve been able to put up a better fight against T1 in the grand finals than Gen.G did.
The lol odds indicate that even if Gen.G was the winner of this encounter in a best-of-5, DK is looking so much better now that they are the favorite team for this match. While Chovy is performing well, Gen.G as a whole looks weaker than DK and the top lane gap is going to be big enough of a reason for Nuguri to get an early lead.
So far from what we’ve seen in the first week, going for Total Kills Under 23.5 is also a very safe option as the average kills per game sits at 22. And that number might look a bit too high considering that most of the games have been very one-sided, which indicates that this match will have an even lower amount of kills.
