Image: LoL Esports
Bilibili Gaming defeated Cloud9 in a brutal series of matches on the penultimate day of MSI 2023’s Bracket Stage this week.
The penultimate match of this week’s MSI 2023 Bracket Stage saw 
Cloud9 go up against 
Bilibili Gaming. Bilibili Gaming rose out on top of this matchup, securing a win against Cloud9 after a clean series of matches. This was something of a repeat outcome for anyone who followed MAD Lions’ brutal loss against T1 yesterday.
BiliBili Gaming (BLG) took two kills to start this match off strong, though Cloud9 (C9) snapped up a kill in a fairly uneven trade. C9 was acting fairly bloodthirsty in this early game, and while it may have cost them in First Blood, they did manage to pick up two more kills and level the playing field. By the 15-minute mark, C9 was leading the match with 7-3 kills but 800 less gold, making this anyone’s game still.
The odds leaned in BLG’s favour by the 22-minute mark, with a 5k gold lead, two more kills and overall better map control. C9 was struggling to contest dragons and objectives, which allowed BLG to pick them up one after the other. BLG had too much of a lead for C9 to come back from and a whopping 35 minutes in, BLG took the win.
BLG picked up the first kill of Round 2 once again, but C9’s Berserker turned the tables on BLG’s Elk to return the favour. It’s clear that C9 had learned their lesson from the previous match however, playing things safe and only jumping into skirmishes when they presented themselves. Despite playing the midgame well, C9 just couldn’t match up to BLG in skirmishes and ultimately got outplayed.
We’ve seen a few matches get off to a slow start in MSI 2023, but this third match was not one of them. Three minutes in, C9 already had two kills to BLG’s one, though both teams knew that this wouldn’t mean anything so early on. It was only in the midgame that we saw BLG truly build up a lead over its opposition with four more objectives downed and 4k more gold. This match lasted over half an hour, but BLG ended things with a whopping 10k gold lead, and used that advantage to march into C9’s base with confidence.
Another day, another clean sweep. BLG has scored a satisfactory three wins out of five, leaving C9 in the lower bracket as it advances with the rest of the competition in the upper bracket. Tomorrow, we’ll see 
JD Gaming go up against 
Golden Guardians.
