Day 3 was almost unreal in how many teams failed to live up to expectations, so it seems fitting to compare them to Darius' loss rate across the past three days. Fans everywhere will look at today with squinted eyes and feelings of disbelief.

SKT vs EDG

In the long awaited rematch between SKT and EDG both midlaners attempted to orchestrate a 3-4 man gank on the other midlaner to get a headstart. While SKT failed to execute theirs at level 1, EDG succeeded in killing Faker almost ten minutes later only to lose a close dragon fight where MaRin on Renekton decimated EDG’s forces, allowing Faker to help clean up and secure the dragon.

The Darius pick was once again abused as MaRin’s famous Renekton (he was originally scouted from solo queue as a Renekton main) took him to the cleaners. Using that overwhelming advantage with amazing vision control from the whole of SKT, they sneaked a baron at 23 minutes and crushed an underperforming EDG. Despite any criticisms fans have of AmazingJ, the performance from every member of EDG was poor by their standards, leading to their inevitable loss.

H2K vs BKT

For the first time all tournament, the patron saint of metal made it into game despite being banned in every game prior, H2K’s Hjarnan put it into play and secured first blood over the wildcard team sending Moss’s Thresh down deep into the underworld. Even though Bankok Titans put up a decent fight at the beginning, they failed to take any meaningful objective in the game against H2K and eventually Hjarnan’s Mordekaiser took over the entire game with a whopping 13 kills over the wildcard team.

It was as about as excited and high level as you’d imagine from the weaker European Team at worlds against a Wildcard team.

LGD vs KT

Almost nothing is more frustrating than hearing copout analysis like “any team can win”. The only thing more frustrating is when that becomes truth not because the teams are close in skill but rather because they are so inconsistent that that the level of play is a wobbly pendulum and fans have to shake the magic 8 ball. LGD played completely different than yesterday against Origen, and their draft suffered this game. Imp overextended several times, TBQ performed as expected (getting caught is his specialty as the original Loulex) and they just crumbled from beginning to end.

This game did not deliver the high level play as expected. It’s honestly a surprise that TBQ wasn’t the reason they lost. KT however still deserves credit for their dominant victory over China's #1 Seed.

TSM vs OG

OG versus TSM went about as well as you'd expect, at least from TSM’s side. They made almost no active attempts to secure gold for Dyrus although he didn’t fall far behind in the early game. Bjergsen did well in lane but as the shotcaller did nothing for the team. Lustboy continues to not ward as well as he did in the spring split, Wildturtle gets almost no auto attacks before getting caught by crowd control effects and dies… It’s no real surprise for anyone paying attention through the summer split.

The real surprise came from Frogge-- I mean xPeke’s blind pick Anivia which proved key in limiting Bjergsen’s impact on the game and catching out members of TSM with both the wall and the hard CC. Niels again on Kalista raises the question of why teams aren’t banning it from him, but from start to finish this was an easy game for Europe’s third seeded team, especially after their win against LGD yesterday.

iG vs C9

On day one, iG failed to deliver on any of the hype they went into the tournament with, but those who watched Chinese LPL were not surprised when Kakao farmed the jungle the entire game and let the team lose. In this game, Kakao delivered and began ganking, much to the relief of iG fans across the globe. Zzt1ai punished Balls’s Darius repeatedly and Rookie outplayed Incarnation in lane but wasn’t able to secure a cs advantage over the young European midlaner.

Sneaky and Incarnation continued to perform incredibly as they consistently win teamfights until iG rolls over and croaks.

Again we think of the pendulum and wonder how C9 was able to improve this much during the bootcamp, but also take note that they've has been nothing short of “impressively better than expectations”, so they take TSM’s place as America’s new hope alongside CLG.

AHQ vs FNC

Before Worlds started, Fnatic was the only team other than CLG to walk into this tournament with the full force of the western fanbase behind them. And then C9 beat AHQ, Origen beat LGD, and C9 beat iG earlier in the day. The west looked so poised for dominance.

And Fnatic lost to ahq. Never before has Fnatic looked so exposed (outside of the series against Origen in the LCS Summer playoffs), and never before has Huni looked so out of place as with his abysmal performance against a team that lost to a C9 that struggled all season. In no way can anyone take away ahq’s well-earned victory but Fnatic and their fans have to ask themselves an important question regarding their performance. Is this just a hiccup? Or have they been truly exposed?

ahq picked Tahm Kench, which played a crucial role in their victory against Fnatic, and Ziv played phenomenally outside of one or two Gnar ults that had half the impact they could have. Regardless of your position on Fnatic’s hypetrain, or conversely the train of thought that believe they are overhyped out of proportion, no one ever thought they’d see the day where Fnatic were behind C9 in points at this group stage at worlds.

All Photos Courtesy of Riot Games lolesports stream