One of the biggest benefits of the MSI being held in Korea this year is that the players will be able to grind one of the most competitive solo queue ladders in the world. During past international events that occurred in Korea, we’ve seen a lot of players from NA and EU reach the Challenger rank with ease, while others never managed to get out of the Diamond tier.

While getting Diamond might sound very exciting for the majority of us, this is actually quite shameful for professional players. All professional players are expected to hit Challenger in the solo queue ladder. Although it’s important to note that Korea has one of the hardest solo queue ladders in the world.

Now talking about this year’s MSI, professional players already had almost a couple of weeks to grind the ladder and we’ve seen very mixed results. Let’s remember that the event hasn’t begun yet and the teams will be in Korea for a few more weeks, at least until their run in the event comes to an end.

If we look at the ladder, the player with the highest rank is also the one with the highest amount of games played. Muhammed Hasan “Kaori “Şentürk is the substitute ADC player brought in by North America’s representative Evil Geniuses. Kaori already reached challenger in less than 200 games played. He is currently sitting on 189 games played with a 59.8 WR% (113-76). 

You might think that taking Kaori into account is unfair for the rest of the players as he doesn’t have the responsibility of playing multiple scrim games as the other players coming into the tournament. But he doesn’t even have that many games over some of the starter players in the tournament.

Nathan “Puma” Puma is ORDER’s ADC and he is the starter player with the closest number of games played compared to Kaori. He’s played 149 games so far, meaning that he is 40 games behind EG’s substitute player. Puma is sitting in the Master tier with 107 LP, which is considerably lower than Kaori’s rank.

Now, looking at the player with the highest WR% with over 50 games played is another Evil Geniuses player. We are talking about the starter ADC for the North American representative, Kyle “Danny” Sakamaki. He is 81 games in with a whopping 74% WR, he is sitting at Grandmaster with 600 lp, just 91 behind his substitute, but remember Danny has played less than half of the games Kaori has.

Let’s go over the top 10 players in the bootcamp soloqueue ladder, and don’t be surprised by the fact that the huge majority are western players. Let’s remember that players from China, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam already had their main accounts on the Korean server. This means that they won’t be showing on the bootcamp list.

1. Evil Geniuses – Kaori – Challenger 691 LP – 59.8% 
2. Evil Geniuses – Danny – Grandmaster 600 LP – 74.1% 
3. Evil Geniuses – Inspired – Grandmaster 415 LP – 65.3% 
4. G2 Esports – Caps – Grandmaster 376 LP – 60.9%
5. Evil Geniuses – Jojopyun – Master 301 LP – 57.1% 
6. ORDER – BioPanther – Master 276 LP – 58.1%
7. Istanbul WC – Serin – Master 241 LP – 58.1%
8. G2 Esports – Flakked – Master 227 LP – 57.9%
9. Saigon Buffalo – Taki – Master 226 LP – 60.4%
10. RED Canids – Jojo – Master 187 LP – 60.7%

It’s quite impressive to see Evil Geniuses cover 4 of the top 10 spots in the bootcamp soloqueue list. On the other hand, it’s a bit worrying to see a lot of G2 players missing from the list. We’ll have to see how the players progress through this challenge as the event goes on.