TOP ESPORTS are on the board at Worlds. In a meeting of two teams that both lost their opening Swiss matches, TES beat Anyone's Legend in a best-of-one on October 24 to move to 1-1, while AL drop to 0-2 and now face a much narrower path through the stage.

The final numbers leave little room for argument. TES finished with twice as many kills, 18 to 9, and took eight towers to AL's one in a game that ran 30:18. A Baron and a 3-2 dragon count went the same way, and the gold gap at the end sat at roughly 9,500.

Tian and Creme set the tone

The standout line on the scoresheet belongs to Tian. The jungler went 4/0/10 on Nocturne, finishing without a death and with a hand in 78% of his team's kills. Creme provided the damage in the mid lane, finishing 8/2/3 on Locke as the team's top scorer and leading TES in gold at 14,726, just ahead of JackeyLove. The veteran marksman added a clean 5/2/8 on Kalista, while Zhuo's 0/4/13 on Renata Glasc and 369's 1/1/8 on Ambessa rounded out a performance in which nobody on the winning side was a liability.

For AL, the spread was more even and arguably more worrying. No player finished with more kills than Hope's three, and Breathe's 2/5/2 on Rumble was the roughest line on the board, even if his 20,304 damage was the highest of anyone in the game. Hope's Lucian put up 19,406 damage of his own, so the output was there in places, but it didn't turn into structures: a single tower is a thin return from a half-hour game.

A difficult spot for AL

Losing to KC in round one and now to TES leaves AL with no more margin. They are not eliminated yet, but at 0-2 every remaining match carries elimination stakes, and the team will need to find answers quickly after two losses in which the scoreboard has gone against them.

TES, meanwhile, have steadied themselves after the opening defeat to HLE. At 1-1 they sit in the middle of the pack, and their next opponent is still to be determined. Whether this was a reset or simply a favourable matchup should become clearer in the next round.