Don't understand the LCS brackets? Read this guide

Playing League of Legends at the professional level requires a lot of split-second calculations, spatial awareness and precision. Sometimes, being a fan and making sense of the brackets requires those same skills. So as the World Championship nears, here’s a breakdown of the key information about how Riot Games runs the tournament.

We broke down how qualified teams made it there, the paths that remain for hopefuls and then what all of them will face when the fight for the crown begins.

Who’s already through?

A few of the best in the world have already secured a path to Worlds. The paths they took varied based on region and how well they did over the summer split. The EU LCS, LCK (LoL Champions Korea), LPL (China’s LoL Pro League) and the NA LCS are each sending three teams.
The winner of the 2016 summer split is automatically the 1st seed for that region. That means G2, Rox Tigers, Edward Gaming and Team SoloMid are all sitting pretty right now. Next, the team with the most championship points accrued by the end of Playoffs is the No. 2 seed. H2K, SK Telecom, Royal Never Give Up, and Counter Logic Gaming each fall into that group.

The LMS (League of Legends Master Series), which covers teams from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, only sends two teams to Worlds. The summer playoffs winner gets the top seed and the winner of the regional qualifier is the second seed. Flash Wolves won the split and will join the other top teams as a 1st seed.

Regional qualifiers

The structure for determining almost all of the remaining Worlds competitors is the same across regions. The EU LCS, LCK, LMS, LPL and NA LCS will all play best of five matches to move through the Regional Qualifiers.
The seeding is based on how many championship points each of the remaining teams in the region collected over the course of the spring and summer splits. The team with the fourth and fifth most points will face off first. The winner then squares off against the team with the third most points. The victorious team then is pitted against the team with the second most points. Whoever emerges on top of that single-elimination, king-of-the-hill battle will win the last Worlds spot from the region.
The LPL has completed its Regional Qualifier already, sending I MAY through as the victor after a third-place finish in the Summer Playoffs. The other regions will be determining their 3rd seed teams this weekend.

1 MAY of the LPL

Image: 1 May

The last two spots at Worlds are given to the winners of the International Wildcard Qualifier. Eight teams from around the globe played a round robin series earlier this week to narrow the field down to four. The squads making it through that gauntlet are facing off this weekend, where the 1st place team will play the 4th place one and the 2nd place team will face off against the 3rd. Each winner will get a berth at Worlds.

The brackets for Worlds

Once all the teams land in San Francisco at the end of the month, the group stages will kick off. And the bracket picture starts to look very, very complicated.
The brackets and seeding begins by splitting the 16 teams into three pools. Pool 1 includes the top seeds from the four best regions. This year, in a change from past policy, the results from the Mid-Season Invitational in May will impact the pool seeding. The four regions with teams that made the knock-out stage of MSI 2016 will be the ones whose top seeds are placed in Pool 1.
 Due to the shaky performance from G2 and the solid work of the Flash Wolves, those top regions will be the LCK, LMS, LPL and NA LCS. Pool 2 will include eight squads. The exact picks now vary, again based on regions’ MSI performance. It’ll be a mix of the #2 and #3 seeds from the top regions and the #1 and #2 teams from the remaining regions. The remaining four teams go into Pool 3. The exact pool composition will be set in time for the Live Draw Show on Sept. 10, when those three pools are split into the groups.

The four groups of the Worlds group stages include one team from Pool 1, two from Pool 2, and one from Pool 3. The rationale is that this means the four teams likely to be the strongest won’t have to face each other until the later stages of the tournament. Once the group compositions have been randomly selected, we’ll see some amazing League of Legends get played.

Each group will play a double round robin; in other words, each team will play the other three in the group twice. These round robin matches will each be a best of one, so it’s all on the line in a single game. The two teams in each group with the best results will move on to the knock-out stage, where the mode switches to a single elimination best of 5.
The quarterfinals will see bouts between the No. 1 and No. 2 finishers in each group. Note that teams emerging out of the same group will not be paired up; the winners of Group A will play the second place team from Group B, Group C or Group D. The match-ups will be randomized after the group stage is finished.
The four winners move on to the semifinals, and from here on out, things are straightforward on the bracket front. Another best of 5 on each side and only two teams will be left. Those squads will compete in a last best of 5 for the final, and the winner is named best in the world.