The "dade Award" is a community created label assigned to the player who failed to deliver upon broadcast, community, regional or personal hype or expectations at that year’s World Championship more than any other that year. From 2013 through 2016 it was awarded by MonteCristo and Thorin on the show Summoning Insight. Community discussion about the award continues since Summoning Insight's cancellation, but this page only includes "winners" from the years that the show awarded it.

Overview [ edit ]

The award's namesake derives from the Korean mid laner dade, who was attributed a considerable amount of hype and expectations following a 2013 season that saw dade win the OGN Champions Spring 2013 MVP Award and lead Samsung Ozone to first and third place finishes, but underperformed at the Season 3 World Championship as Samsung Ozone failed to make it out of their group. Since the award’s “inception” the qualifications of the award have been thoroughly debated, but a few criteria remain consistent among all perceived iterations of the award.

The Award can only go to an individual, not an entire team. The player must have entered the World Championship with extremely high expectations from the broadcast, community, regional performance, or personal expectations. The most prominent example of this is correlation between performance and the position of a player on the yearly “Worlds Top 20” which is compiled by members of the Riot Games broadcast team. That player must have been deemed to have “underperformed” by the majority opinion more than any other player considering the degree of expecations surrounding the player, the perceived quality of their opponents, and the performance of the player against opponents. An example of this would be a player ranked number three prior to the World Championship losing to a player ranked ten being judged less harshly than a player ranked eight who was outperformed by multiple players not included in the Top 20.

Historical "Winners" [ edit ]

The following players have received the label of having won the dade Award.

The namesake of the titular “dade Award” entered the Season 3 World Championship as part of the Korean Circuit Runner Up, Samsung Ozone. Having won the OGN Champions Spring 2013 MVP and placed eighth in the Summer MVP Standings, dade was touted as the second best mid laner in the tournament behind Faker. Expectations were high for the Korean mid in a group that Samsung was predicted to win, containing the European LCS champion Fnatic and third seed Gambit Gaming, South East Asia champions Mineski, and NA LCS third seed Team Vulcun. Samsung Ozone would go on to finish 5-3 and lose the tiebreaker to Gambit in disappointing fashion.

In all four losses Samsung suffered, dade combined for a KDA of .95 to his opponents’ 11.83 while also sporting significant gold deficits by twenty minutes in each contest, and finished middle of the pack for his role in nearly every statistic over the group stage. This performance would give birth to the now infamous label.

The Chinese marksman came into the 2014 World Championship ranked fourth, the highest among all ADC players, on the first ever Worlds Top 20 list after dominating the 2014 LPL Summer Season and Playoffs, sporting the highest KDA among ADC players in both and winning both LPL splits that year as part of Edward Gaming. The white hot player was dubbed as the next great Chinese ADC in the same vein as WeiXiao and Uzi. Going into a group with the Korean third seed Samsung White, Taiwan’s AHQ, and Turkey’s Dark Passage, EDG was expected to cruise through the group to the quarterfinals. While EDG made it out of their group, they had to play in the tiebreaker against an AHQ squad perceived as far weaker than them and were dominated by the eventual World Champion SSW. They fell to their rival Star Horn Royal Club in five games, in which Uzi seemed to have NaMei’s number throughout.

NaMei in particular was called out for the failure of EDG at the 2014 Worlds, with the three deciding moments of the second game against EDG all kicking off by NaMei getting hooked to start fights. For someone atop the LPL all year, NaMei was middle of the pack in nearly every statistical category, not living up to his fourth ranked hype established prior to the event.

The Chinese mid laner was hot coming into the 2015 World Championship. Playing on the LGD that dethroned the Chinese powerhouse and MSI winner EDG, GodV had a massive “playoff buff” in which he would perform far and above the best out of Chinese mids in both the 2015 LPL Spring and Summer playoffs, the latter of which LGD took first place. Placed into the reported “Group of Death” along the likes of KT Rolster, Origen, and TSM, LGD were expected and expected themselves to stomp through the group and were the odds on favorite to win Worlds, with GodV taking the third spot on the Worlds Top 20 in 2015, second of all mids only behind Faker.

However the high ranking led to a long fall, as LGD started 0-3 in the worst start by a first seed in week one of any World Championship up to that point. GodV in particular was called on for particularly poor play, having the fourth most deaths among mid laners at the tournament, and had the most deaths among Power 5 mid laners through four games with 16.

The Edward Gaming jungler was a practically unkillable ganking machine in the 2016 LPL seasons, averaging less than 1.4 deaths a game between the Spring and Summer Splits and leading the LPL in KDA among all players who played at least 50% of games both splits and placing third in Summer MVP voting. After dominating the LPL MVP MLXG in the Summer Finals, Clearlove netted the fourth spot on the Top 20 list at the 2016 World Championship, the highest among junglers.

Once again a top four placing did not bode well for the Chinese player, as he was notably thrashed by Brazil’s Revolta on the opening day and beaten twice by Jankos to close out the group stage, sporting rather pedestrian numbers during the group stage before getting outclassed by Peanut of the ROX Tigers in the quarterfinals as the pride of China bowed out in the quarterfinals for the third consecutive year.