Analyzing the possible ties and tiebreakers for the final day of EU LCS

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

With EU Spring Split regular season coming to a close, with only one day left in the competition, there are of course tie breakers still left for key positions. Here are the standings right now:

As we can see, SK has clinched first place and SHC and MIL have clinched relegation - but the second place spot (which includes a bye to the second round) is still up for grabs, and the battle for 7th or 8th place is still real.

Battle for Second Place - Possible 3 way tie. FNC, ROC, and ALL

Right now the three contenders for 2nd place are Fnatic, Roccat and Alliance, and this can lead to a 3 way tie between these teams. If Alliance wins both games (one vs GMB, one vs CW), and Roccat wins against Fnatic, this will put a 3 way tie for second place as they will all have the record of 16-12. And since there is no clear head to head winner, it will end up with a round-robin play off according to LCS rules! This is pretty plausible, as Alliance is favored according to my previous statistical predictions in their last two matches, and Roccat has a strong red side (69% win rate) compared to Fnatic's blue side (61.5% win rate).

3rd place tie - Possible 3 way tie. ROC, ALL, and GMB

The second big tie is a possible 3 way tie for third place. What would need to happen here is if Alliance loses to Gambit, and Roccat loses to Fnatic, which would create a 3 way tie between ROC, ALL and GMB with records of 15-13. Since no team has a clear head to head favorite, this would again be a 3 way play-off round robin.

Battle at the Bottom - Possible 2 way tie. MIL and SHC, MIL has tiebreaker

The third possible tie would be when Millenium keeps up their good week and beats SK, while SHC loses to CW, this will put them both at the record of 10-18. However, despite this tie there wouldn't be a play-off, instead MIL would take the 7th seed due to their head to head record, which MIL has won 3 out of the 4 games against SHC. This spot is a very important battle due to ability to choose your opponent when it comes to relegation.

Tie for first - Possible 2 way tie. SK and FNC, but SK has tiebreaker

The last tie to discuss is that if SK loses their game against MIL, and FNC wins their game against ROC, they will both be tied at 17-11 for first place. However, since SK has beat FNC 3 out of 4 games this season, they have the tiebreaker and that is why they are currently labeled as clinching first place.

Overall, there is likely to be a tiebreaker given how close the standings are between each team (there are a few possible 2-way ties for non-consequential spots like 3-4 or so that I didn't list). The only scenario where there wouldn't be at least one tie is if Alliance wins both their games, while Fnatic wins over Roccat. This would leave everyone at least one game apart and tiebreaker-free. Given this crazy scenario I wanted to take a look at each team throughout the season to see how this split has developed. To do this we took spark lines for each team's win loss so you can see the large streaky-ness in the EU scene:

Data collected with help by the onGamers Stats team: Derek 'Kathix' Adams, Steven 'whedgehead' Falgout, Kent 'Traepoint' Frasure, Jake Morales, and James 'PelkaSupaFresh' Pelkey. Design by Ben 'Sarcasmappreciated' Li.