The main event hasn’t even started yet and we’ve got a banger of a game in the Worlds 2025 Play-In. The lights go up on October 14th, and it’s do-or-die time. T1 versus Invictus Gaming – best-of-five, with only one ticket to the Worlds 2025 Swiss Stage. No second chances, no fallback routes. Whoever blinks first probably books a flight home.

T1 step in wearing the weight of back-to-back world titles and all the expectations that come with it. They’re the fourth LCK seed this year, sure, but that tag doesn’t really mean much when your lineup reads Faker. They’re chasing history now – three Worlds in a row would be unprecedented – but the road here wasn’t pretty. They stumbled, got pushed, and had to grind through tougher domestic fights than they’d like. Still, this team has been through everything; pressure is basically part of their brand at this point.

Then there’s Invictus Gaming. Honestly, you couldn’t script it better – a reunion of TheShy and Rookie, the same duo that carried IG to Worlds trophy back in 2018. That’s six years ago, but seeing them together again just hits different. Add GALA, Meiko, and Wei into the mix, and suddenly you’ve got one of those rosters that could either destroy everyone in sight or implode spectacularly. Their LPL run was all over the place: massive highs, brutal lows, and a lot of “what on earth was that?” moments.

Now, the interesting twist this year is Fearless Draft. It’s the first time we’ll see it at LoL Worlds 2025, and it changes the way a best-of-five flows. Once a team picks a champion in one map, they can’t use it again for the rest of the series. So forget about comfort picks carrying through. That rule forces depth, and it might actually play in IG’s favor – their players are all about variety and mechanical freedom. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying T1 are not mechanically gifted (duh), but facing iG, they might have to lean on experience and structure to adapt across multiple drafts.

And then we get the big one: Faker vs Rookie. Two absolute legends, both older, both wiser, and both playing the game like chess grandmasters now instead of lane bullies. Faker doesn’t need to hard-carry – he controls space, tempo, pressure. Rookie’s the same. Watching them play around vision and rotations is like watching a decade-long rivalry in slow motion.

If you look at the numbers, IG have technically beaten T1 more in one-off games – 3-1 in previous best-of-ones. But that stat’s a little misleading. T1 haven’t lost a single best-of-five to an LPL team in their last ten international series. They just know how to stretch a match, bleed momentum, and win ugly if they have to.

So yeah, IG will probably take a game or two. Maybe they even start strong. But across five games, it’s hard to see T1 cracking. They just don’t tilt the way IG can. My gut says T1 3-1, and the defending champs live to fight another day in the Swiss Stage.