Does MSI Predict the Worlds Champion? Six Rows of Data and the Trap of How We Count

My data column is exactly six rows long. Three years, two events per year, four names repeating on the left side. On the right sits a results column that almost anyone would read the same way at a glance: winning MSI means winning Worlds. I reopened that spreadsheet on an evening in Penang, right after the grand final ended. By then social media had already settled on its conclusion. The "told you so" lines outnumbered every column of figures I had. It took me about forty minutes to cross-check sources for those six rows, and in those forty minutes, thousands of people had finished the thinking for me. The gap between the speed of concluding and the speed of verifying is why I am writing this. I have no intention of denying the trend. I only want to put it on the scale it deserves. MSI — the Mid-Season Invitational — is Riot Games' mid-year event, gathering the first-half champions of the major regions. Worlds — the League of Legends World Championship — is the year-end event where everything is converted into trophies. The two have coexisted for more than a decade, and throughout that time they have always been read in two opposite ways. One reading treats MSI as a dress rehearsal. The team that wins there holds the best form, the best read on the live patch and the best mentality, and therefore enters Worlds with an edge. The other reading treats MSI