The League of Legends World Championship Play-In Stage has kicked off with a rude awakening for Infinity Esports. The LLA champions took to the stage in Reykjavik, Iceland twice, taking on RED Canids and Hanwha Life Esports. At the end of both games, Infinity saw their Nexus explode.
Despite his team going down 0-2 on the first day of Worlds, cody is confident his team can turn the tables. (Image courtesy of Riot Games)
With PEACE and LNG Esports as next opponents, Infinity mid laner Cristian Sebastián “cody” Quispe Yampara realizes his team has a big task ahead of itself. He joined at the end of the first day of the Play-In Stage for a brief chat. cody talked about his first two games at Worlds, what his team needs to improve on, and what it was like to play against one of the most-respected mid laners in the world: Chovy.
Hotspawn: Welcome, cody. Unfortunately, you lost the first two games—what are your thoughts on the games?
cody: We knew that, against Hanwha Life, it was gonna be a harder game because they’re a better team. But against RED Canids we committed a lot of unforced errors that we usually wouldn’t make. I feel good about how the team is performing, but I’m obviously sad about the losses today.
Hotspawn: Was there any particular reason that made you slip up against RED Canids?
cody: It was our first stage game, so we did make a few positioning errors. They could punish us because their composition was based on picking us off from our team.
Hotspawn: Talking about your performance: You played against Chovy today, who is one of the best mid laners in the world, and you had a few great moments against him. Does that give you a confidence boost?
cody: It definitely wasn’t all that Chovy has to show. It is a best-of-one and he wasn’t at his best level in this particular game. But that doesn’t mean that he’s not a great player. For me, it’s a dream come true to play against Chovy. I used to watch him when I was in school. Back then he was already playing against ShowMaker and Faker. And both had already said that Chovy is even better than them, so obviously it’s a dream to play against such a player.
Hotspawn: You make it to Worlds after also having competed at the Mid-Season Invitational. Does this tournament feel any different?
cody: It’s not too different in itself. But it is different in the sense that this is Worlds. It’s obviously a more important tournament, and this is what the region has been longing for, you know? We want to get to the Group Stage. We’re gonna do our best to achieve it.
Hotspawn: Did you prepare for Worlds differently than for MSI, given the international experience you had acquired at MSI?
cody: We did do different things, especially considering that our playstyle has changed a lot since MSI. Our playstyle was heavily reliant on the bot lane first. Now, we can play through all three lanes without any problem.
Hotspawn: How is the team’s practice going now that you’re in Reykjavik? We’ve seen a vast amount of champions played at the tournament, so I imagine you’re also trying a lot in scrims.
cody: We’re doing super well in scrims against teams from the other group. Obviously, it was just not our day today. We’ll try to reassess and focus on tomorrow’s game.
Hotspawn: It’s still early, but you also only have a few games to prove yourself. Where do you think your team needs to step up in order to climb back?
cody: We need to play more like we’re playing in scrims. Being able to transition what we’re doing in practice to the stage, and we have to work on our positioning. I got picked off several times in the games, and that allowed the other team to get big objectives.
Hotspawn: To round up, is there anything you’d like to say to the fans of Infinity Esports?
cody: They should keep believing in us. We’re really upset about the RED Canids game. It was a game that was already over and we lost because of stupid mistakes that we made. But keep believing; we’re gonna get back into it tomorrow.
Infinity Esports play their next game against PEACE on Wednesday, October 6th, at 3 PM CEST. You can watch the game live on the official LoL Esport site.
