Before the start of the League Championship Series 2022 season, the 10 LCS teams will compete in a pre-season tournament as a warm-up before the real competition commences. The LCS 2022 Lock In tournament will give teams and fans a chance to see how all the North American teams rank ahead of the regular-season start. The tournament kicks off on January 14 and ends on January 30.
Format
The 10 LCS teams are split into two groups of five and will play a single round-robin against the other four teams in their own group. All matches are the best-of-one in the group stage and the top four teams in each group will advance to the knockout stage.
In the knockout stage, the eight teams that advanced from the group stage will be seeded based on their performance in the group stage. The knockout stage will be a single-elimination eight-team tournament. The quarterfinals will consist of best-of-three matches. The winners will advance to the semi-finals where they will play a best of five to determine the two teams in the finals which will have the two finalists play another best of five to determine the winner of the LCS 2022 lock-in tournament.
Groups
To decide the groups, the 10 teams participated in a unique draft. Teams took turns picking another team to place into the other group. For example, 100 Thieves chose Evil Geniuses to be placed into Group B. Evil Geniuses then chose TSM to be in Group A and so forth. Here are the official groups for the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament.
In Group A is 100 Thieves, Cloud9, FlyQuest, Golden Guardians and TSM.
In Group B is Counter Logic Gaming, Dignitas, Evil Geniuses, Immortals and Team Liquid.
Where to watch
The event will broadcast over the course of three weekends starting on the weekend of January 14. The first weekend will have games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Each day will showcase a total of five games. The start times each day are different. Games start at 5:30 pm EST on January 14. But on January 15 games start at 4:30 pm EST. The group stage will conclude with Day 4 which will be on the following Friday on January 21.
After the group stage concludes on Friday, Saturday will immediately start the quarterfinals. Two quarterfinals matches will take place on Saturday, January 22 and the other two will happen on Sunday, January 23. The semifinals will take place on the final weekend of January starting on Friday, January 28th. The first semifinal will take place at 5:30pm EST on January 28 and the other will take place at 5:30 pm EST on January 29.
The lock-in tournament will conclude on Sunday, January 30 at 3:30 pm EST with the finals. Spectators can catch all the action live on the LCS channel on Twitch.
