LCK Cup 2025 explained: Understanding tournament format and winning your bets

The battle is heating up in Summoner’s Rift on the South Korean server, and now’s your chance to get in on the action by placing your bets in the League of Legends Champions Korea 2025 (LCK Cup 2025). This year promises intense competition with exciting new features.

 Key takeaways

• The LCK Cup 2025 follows a revamped format introduced by Riot Games, bringing fresh excitement to the tournament. 
• Top teams like T1, Hanwha Life Esports, and Gen.G Esports are leading as this year’s favourites.
• The Hard Fearless Draft has been introduced for all matches. 

LCK Cup 2025 tournament format explained

The LCK Cup features 10 South Korean teams, all partnered with Riot Games. They are split into 2 groups of 5 where every team plays against all members from the opposite group once each. This series of games runs from the 15th of January to the 2nd of February. The side with the most wins becomes the ‘winner group’ and the other is the ‘loser group’.

The top three teams of the winner group advance to the playoffs, and the bottom team of the loser group is eliminated. The rest are seeded in the Play-ins, where they compete for a spot in the Playoffs between February 7th and 9th. In this stage, competing teams are seeded based on their number of wins. The top two start in round 2, while the rest play in round 1.

Rounds 1 and 2 have best-of-3 (Bo3) LCK Cup matches and round 3 is Bo5. The competition is a single-bracket series where the winner advances to the next round but no one is eliminated. After round 3, the top 3 teams with the most number of wins in the Play-in advance to the playoffs. 

The playoffs is a double-elimination bracket series happening from the 12th to the 23rd of February. The top 2 teams from the Group Stage are seeded in the winners’ bracket of Round 2 in the Playoffs. The group stage top 3 team starts in Round 1 seeded against the top 3 of the Play-ins. Meanwhile, play-ins top 1 and 2 teams play against each other in round 1, too. 

Winning teams advance to the winners’ bracket while losing teams move to the losers’ bracket. Winners in the losers bracket advance to the next round of the same bracket but the losers are eliminated. The final is between the winners of the winners’ bracket and losers' bracket from Round 3. All matches in the Playoffs are Bo5, including the finals. 

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What changed between the LCK Cup 2024 and 2025?

The LCK Cup 2025 introduces some major changes. It comes with Riot Games’ new restructuring of the League of Legends esports scene as a whole. Here are the key updates in the LCK Cup 2025 and how they work in this edition: 

Fearless Draft Mode

All matches in the LCK Cup 2025 follow the ‘hard’ Fearless Draft mode, a format that debuted this year. In this mode, champions are automatically banned for the rest of the match after they are played. Here’s a rundown of how it will work in a standard Bo3 matchup:

• Game 1: Both sides choose 10 champions to ban and 10 to play. 
• Game 2: The standard bans from the last game are playable but the 10 champions played last time are banned. This time, both sides choose 10 standard bans and 10 to play, giving the players a total of 20 banned champions.
• Game 3: The 10 played champions from game 1 are still banned and the game 2 choices are added. So, the players will choose 10 more champions for standard bans, resulting in a total of 30 banned champions for this game. 

It’s a simple format but the strategic implications will be much more complex. Many pro players will be forced to choose their favourite champions as soon as possible and widen their expertise across more characters. LCK Cup betting will become more dynamic as you consider pro players’ adaptability if they cannot secure a 2-0 win in the match. 

Three Split Structure

League of Legends has always followed a 2-split structure for international events. It only consists of the Mid-season Invitational (MSI) and the LoL World Championship (Worlds). Riot Games has now introduced the First Stand Tournament, the first of the three-split cross-regional events in League of Legends esports following the regional first splits. 

First Stand Tournament

The First Stand Tournament is a new annual international esports event organised by Riot Games. It will be inaugurated in 2025 and its first edition will be in March between the 1st and 2nd splits of the 3-split structure of the league. 

Teams qualify for this tournament by winning their respective first split regional qualifiers, like the LCK Cup 2025. Seoul will be the first host of the First Stand Tournament at LoL Park. 

It consists of 5 teams, one from each region including South Korea, China, the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific. The First Stand Tournament structure has two stages namely the group stage single-round robin and the knockout stage with a single-elimination bracket. The winner of the First Stand wins a second direct spot in the MSI 2025 bracket stage, play-ins. 

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Top teams to watch in LCK Cup 2025

Fans worldwide always anticipate seeing the reigning champions defend their title, and T1 is the top team to watch. Known for their intense skirmishes and flashy takedowns, T1’s matches never fail to excite. The defending champions have mostly kept their roster consistent since 2020 but Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je left in November 2024. Choi ‘Doran’ Hyeon-joon stepped up as T1’s new top laner. 

Hanwha Life Esports (HLE) were amazing in 2024 having won the LCK 2024 Summer playoffs and placing consistently high placements in other tournaments. It is the new home for Zeus as the latest edition for the team with 3 other World champion title winners. These include Kim ‘Zeka’ Geon-woo, Park ‘Viper’ Do-hyeon, and Yoo ‘Delight’ Hwan-joong. Fans anticipate strong viewership for when HLE and T1 face off in the LCK. 

T1 has many considerable rivals in the LCK but Gen.G Esports (Gen.G) is among the best title contenders. The brand is always strong and the organisation behind them are great decision-makers, but the LCK predictions for the team are shaky because they have a new team this season. 

The fan favourite is Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk as a strong ADC replacing Son ‘Peyz’ Si-woo. Most of the team is a superstar but Joo ‘Duro’ Min-kyu has doubters among the spectators. He has the LCK Cup 2025 to prove that he deserves his spot in the limelight. 

How to bet on LCK Cup 2025 at Gamdom

Betting on the LCK Cup 2025 at Gamdom is a simple process if you follow these steps: 

• Sign up for an account on Gamdom.
• Top up your wallet using any of the supported cryptocurrencies or payment methods. 
• Go to the ‘Sports betting’ section.
• Narrow your fixture selections by clicking ‘League of Legends’ from the top.
• Find ‘LCK Cup 2025’ and click on it.

This will take you to the list of fixtures in the LCK Cup 2025. You can tell which one is which by the LCK Cup teams competing head-to-head which you can click to expand its list of betting markets. Choose any outcome to create an entry in the betslip where you can decide how much to stake before placing a bet. 

Understanding betting odds

The expected returns in esports betting depend on the odds of your chosen outcome. Gamdom calculates it and shows the result in the betslip so you can review your wager before finalising a ticket. Here’s a quick breakdown of how LCK Cup odds formats work in Gamdom:

• American: These odds can be either positive or negative. Positive American odds show how much you can win in Tether (USDT) if you bet 100 USDT. Negative American odds show how much you should wager in USDT to win 100 USDT. The same estimates apply to all supported crypto. 
• Decimal: These odds show how much your overall payout will be if you win the bet. To get the result, multiply the decimal odds by the size of your stake. The outcome shows the sum of your bet returned and the profit from the wager. 
• Hong Kong: This odds format only shows your expected profit. Calculate it by multiplying the Hong Kong odds by your bet. You’re still getting your stake back on a winning wager but the result only shows your profit. 

Betting markets for LCK Cup 2025

Explore various betting markets to maximise your chances of winning. Here are the key outcomes you can bet on during the LCK Cup 2025:

• Match win: Predict which of the two competing teams will win the match. The winner of the match is whichever side wins the majority of maps in a Bo3 or Bo5 series. 
• Map win: Place your bet on the team you think will win the current game. The map winner is whoever successfully destroys the opponent’s Nexus. 
• Win at least one map: This is a simple yes/no bet. If the team you bet on wins at least one map in the series, you win. 
• Correct score: There’s a variety of combinations of wins for Bo3 and Bo5 matches. Guess which of those will be the outcome of the match. 
• Map handicap winner bet: Bet on which team will win the match if they have a hypothetical map score advantage/disadvantage. Bets on -1.5 wins only if they end the match with a 2-0 score but stakes on +1.5 win as soon as they win at least one map. 
• Total kills over/under: The game keeps track of every player’s kill count. Guess if a player’s result will be over or under a certain number by the end of the map or match. 

Predict the outcome and win crypto at Gamdom

Gamdom is the leading crypto betting site for all exciting esports competitions like the LCK Cup. Join the action of heated live games and place in-play bets in a bookmaker with one of the best odds online. Bet using popular crypto like Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT) for a chance to win huge prizes. 

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