Why Don’t We Attend More Esports Tournaments?

Evan Carmichael and— oh, Nina Cutie Pie. There's a bee, there's a bee, there's a bee! It is early, just past 6. I am super tired. I lost my voice from salsa dancing. And teaching last night. And we're off to go to the League of Legends tournament. First step, I need some coffee. How you doing? I'm really tired. Yeah, there's something that feels wrong about waking up at 6 AM on a Saturday morning when it's still dark to go watch a video game. But there's something so right about it too. No, that's crazy. Hey, I asked this morning. I woke up and my throat's sore, Nina was crashing out, and I said, "Do you want to cancel today?" And Nina said, Well, we paid for it. We're paying. I paid— how much did we pay? We paid $60 to go watch a video game and wake up an insane— you want to walk through the door? An insane early time after a Halloween party. But you got to do stuff that's crazy, right? Otherwise life is boring. Let's go get some coffee. Alright, we're here. Nina's gotta pull up the tickets. Pull up the tickets. Read it out loud. Evan Carmichael and— Oh, Nina Cutie Pie. Hahaha. Nina Cutie Pie Carmichael. I put that on the ticket. Alright, here we go. This is the lineup to get in. Some people came in costume. Where's your costume, Nina? You're going as a Chinese girl? Oh, you have a great costume. Okay, so as quick context, every year League of Legends has an annual tournament where the best teams from around the world compete against each other. The Koreans are always the best. I always cheer for North America. I want us to make a strong representation, but we never quite make it. This year I think we did a little better than most. Uh, top 2 teams are Korean. One is SKT, has the legendary Faker on their team, and, uh, you know, he's considered the Michael Jordan of esports and basically all the best players. They haven't lost a single game this entire tournament. They're going up against the KOO Tigers and we are all here to watch them play a best-of-5 series to see who can take home the world championship. SKT has won it before. No team has ever won it twice, so we'll see if they can repeat. I'm cheering for them. We'll see what happens. Okay, we got some loot bags. We got loot bags.

We got—

there's a Poro. Hold up, Poro. Oh, it's a Poro stress ball. These are little characters. Nina gets stressed out a lot, so that's really helpful. Oh, and a whole bunch of candy. Oh, I could eat that. I want that coffee pot, man. You want the coffee crisp? Okay, you have the coffee crisp, I'll have the Smarties. Next time. Go. Game 1.

Marn into the fight now. Kuro and Pray are the targets, and that's going to be Kuro going down. SKT seemingly pulling this one back in their favor. Faker's in average range. Faker over the wall. Are they going to be able to take down Kuro? The Wild Growth is down. The first one is Gorilla. They have Pray in the perfect spot and they take down Pray. They take down Gorilla and it's just chaos for Qoo. They cannot find the right positioning. SKT is walking down the lane. Hojin can't even help on the outside right now. Somehow Qoo gets out only losing Pray. No, there goes Hojin. SKT is 2 wins away from the Summoner's Cup.

SKT won game 1. Nina kind of fell asleep.

Did you fall asleep?

LCS! LCS!

In Berlin at the World Championship Finals.

Oh, Eggy!

Level 1 turret dive from Eggy! Definitely messed that up! Nice and low! Wait quickly! He's holding up for the kill though! He makes it! Brand challenges down, so this is all about Smeb's abilities. Gorilla goes in the middle of fight with a nice Flash. There's an Echo! Gorilla goes down. Here comes Kuroh, throws down the Chaos Storm. It's all over Wolf though. Faker just completely turned this game. That's the in from Wolf, stops up 3 members. Slicing Maelstrom goes down. But it's not really hitting anybody or stunning the targets it needs. That's a double kill for Bangy. They're not stopping. Bang jumps over the wall for another kill, and it looks like it's going to be an ace in the base. SK Telecom T1 are one win away from being your two-time world champion.

And we have Nina as herself, the Chinese princess. Cutie pie Chinese princess.

It's working out perfectly, distributing the kills nice. Bang trying to come in now. A huge I think I can situation from SKT to pick up. The spell shield is on, he does not get crowd controlled. That's the Grand Challenge on Bangy. Thrust, Thrust, Parry, and he gets the kill. Bangy wants to go a little too deep, gets hit by the turret. Oh, Faker over the wall! A shutdown, that's huge gold for Faker coming in from Hojin. This is going to be Marin going down as well as he's too far from home. Over the wall, Bang's going to go down now. We're going to a Game 4.

Too hot and in a t-shirt. Nina's too cold and is now wearing my jacket. Alright guys, so obviously you gotta find a spot, you know, just get— everybody just get down. You don't have to, you know, stress yourself. Just lay down, take a break. Try not to fall asleep because I know you've been up for about 36 hours or whatever. SKT squad, let's get comfortable. Let's get on the floor there. That was the hypest push-up contest I've ever even seen. They're well on track to become the most dominant Worlds performing team, and the scary thing about it is how easy they have made it look.

Can we bring to fall the giants? They have a chance to be the first real League of Legends dynasty. And they take down Pray, they take down Gorilla, and it's just chaos. SKT is 2 wins away from the Summoner's Cup. Bang jumps over the wall for another kill, and it looks like it's going to be an ace in the base. SK Telecom T1 are one win away from being your two-time world champions. That's a Grand Challenge on Bangy. Thrust, thrust, parry, and he gets the kill. For the first time, SKT is wounded. We are the light to ignite the darkened skies. SKT isn't bringing their A-game. Have they even opened up Pandora's box Faker and Curl went hard, so there's no flash for this. Hojin in a real bad situation. He goes down, a full 3-man Gnar ultimate. That's gonna be smackdown now. SKT will be your first ever 2-time world champions!

Alright, game is over. You have fun? Hahaha, yes. Did you fall asleep? No. Didn't fall asleep. So a little context, a little extra context. Again, I said at the top that SKT was the favorites and they, again, they went undefeated. They're the titans in the industry. They spend the most money, had the biggest staff. They're the New York Yankees, Manchester United, New England Patriots all rolled into one. 3-1, the heavy favorites, and the Koo Tigers that they went up against were just kind of thrown together, don't have as big a coaching staff, massive underdogs. Nobody really knew about them. They had this touching moment where they said, "All we want is for people to cheer our names because everybody back home always cheers SKT, SKT." Like, "We just want once for people to cheer our names." And they ended up losing 3 games to 1, but in that one game Everybody was cheering them on, and I'm sure it was a big highlight for all of them, and we were cheering them on, and it was fun. [KOREAN] This is what the Blue Tigers wanted.

Trying to stop SKT.

But still some respect from the crowd for the Blue Tigers. And from SKT as well. Great sportsmen there showing love for our runners-up. I mean, what an incredible run.

Run they had as well. That can't be forgotten. You gotta love them. Look at their faces.

About the attitude— the attitude that brought them to the finals will carry them out of the finals.

They may have lost, but they still had such an incredible year. But they won our hearts. They won our hearts by far and away.

So that's it. We're really tired even though it's only noon. We're gonna get some lunch, maybe sleep, party. I don't know, we'll see. No, that's it. Party last night. Party last night, okay. Okay, well have an amazing weekend. Thank you for joining us for ours. Continue to believe and we'll see you soon. Okay, I know I said goodbye and faked you all out, but two things. One, you can't have a league tournament game final without then enjoying some nice poutine after. We're here at Smoke's Poutinerie on Adelaide Street West here in Toronto to chow down. Second thing, if you want to play with me, if you're a League player, you want to join, my handle on the North American server is BelieveTeam. Look me up, add me as a friend, happy to get a game in. I hover between Silver 3 and Silver 4, so just set your expectations, alright? This is awesome, poutine time.

This is Evan with the poutine.

I got their two most popular ones, pulled pork and Philly cheesesteak. Nina said she wanted something different, so this is it. Mmm, that's good. I like it. Now it's goodbye for real. We're gonna enjoy this. Have a great weekend, guys.

Bye-bye.

We'll see you soon.