NA Champions Queue: EG Jojopyun Finishes First in Opening Split

Evil Geniuses (EG) rookie mid-laner Joseph “jojopyun” Joon-pyun won the opening split of the Champions Queue by securing first place. The 17-year-old League of Legends pro, over the split, amassed 885 LP and took home the lion's share of the reward: $12K USD prize. According to Oracle’s Elixir and championsq.com, jojopyun was one of four players on the super server to play more than 200 games.

At the time of writing, jojopyun has played a total of 203 games and has an impressive win rate of 63% in the super server. He is sitting on 885 LP, 85 LP more than the runner-up of this split. He has also earned 50 season points after the end of the first split.

Interestingly, three EG players made it into the top five positions for this split.

Prize pool share for the first split

According to the official Champions Queue website, the $40K USD prize pool gets distributed to the top ten players on the server. Some of the notable pros that made the top ten are Golden Guardians’ Kim “Olleh” Joo-sung, Cloud9’s Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen, and FlyQuest’s Colin “Kumo” Zhao.

The standings of this split are as follows

What is Champions Queue and how does it work?

The Champions Queue server is filled with pros and high elo amateur players and the competition is intense. It is run on Los Angeles ping and only has specific hours of operation to allow for pros to practice both scrims and Solo Queue. It also has a prize pool that gets distributed at the end of each split and it runs for one month. The players who fall below a certain LP are removed from the system. Many have been pointing out that Champions Queue could help North America overcome its Solo Queue disadvantage and help perform better internationally. At the moment, matchmaking is non-existent and the LPs that get distributed are pre-set. Winning a game gives players +10 LP and losing a game means -5 LP.

Champions Queue will have two seasons during the year just like the official leagues: Spring and Summer. The Spring season is from 7th Feb to 23rd May, with three splits, each lasting about a month. Meanwhile, the Summer season will run from 30th May to 26th September and will also have three splits. Every split will have a cash reward of $40K USD that gets distributed to the top ten on the server.

Subscribe to AFK Gaming's Newsletter

Get a weekly recap of all the latest developments in the global esports industry with our esports business insights newsletter: AFK Weekly

Subscribe for free to receive insights, analysis and opinions on the biggest developments in esports business, provided by our team of experienced journalists in collaboration with thought leaders across the industry.