Myth revisits LoL Esports’ smartest plays, from xPeke’s backdoor to T1’s modern macro

LoL Esports has released a new historical retrospective dedicated to the moments in which professional players appeared to operate several moves ahead of everyone else on Summoner’s Rift. Hosted by streamer and content creator Ali “Myth” Kabbani, The Biggest Brain Plays in LoL Esports History examines the decisions, predictions and calculated risks behind some of competitive League of Legends’ most memorable plays.

The selection stretches from Fnatic’s confrontation with SK Gaming at IEM Katowice in 2013 to the Worlds 2025 semifinal between Top Esports and T1. That range covers more than a decade of mechanical development, strategic refinement and increasingly sophisticated team coordination.

Rather than presenting another montage of pentakills and perfectly timed skill shots, the video focuses on why certain decisions succeeded. The important question is not simply what happened on screen, but what information the players possessed, what they correctly inferred and how quickly they turned that understanding into an advantage.

“500 IQ” is entertaining shorthand, not a scientific measurement

The video naturally embraces the familiar “500 IQ” language used throughout gaming culture. It is an effective way to describe a decision that appears unusually clever, but it should not be confused with an actual measurement of intelligence.

In professional League of Legends, a supposedly high-IQ play generally combines several more specific skills: game knowledge, situational awareness, risk assessment, mechanical execution, communication and the ability to predict an opponent’s likely response.

The smartest option is not necessarily the most complicated. A player may ignore an apparently attractive team fight because the enemy Nexus is exposed. A support can deliberately reveal their position to create a false sense of security elsewhere. A jungler may concede one objective because contesting it would create a worse map state. Sometimes the best decision is to attack; on other occasions, intelligence is demonstrated by refusing to take the bait.

What separates the greatest plays from ordinary good decisions is the amount of uncertainty involved. Professional players rarely possess complete information. Vision is limited, opponents can disappear into fog of war and crucial abilities may be available without being visible to the other team. Every decision is therefore based on a mixture of confirmed information, timing calculations and educated assumptions.

xPeke’s backdoor became part of League’s vocabulary

The earliest confirmed example in the retrospective is also one of the most recognizable sequences in esports history.

During Fnatic’s game against SK Gaming at IEM Katowice in 2013, Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez used Kassadin to enter the opposing base and attack SK’s exposed Nexus. SK Gaming’s Kevin “Kev1n” Rubiszewski returned on Olaf and attempted to stop him, while the remainder of both teams were occupied elsewhere on the map.

What followed was mechanically messy, strategically brilliant and almost impossible to reproduce deliberately. xPeke repeatedly repositioned around the Nexus with Kassadin’s Riftwalk, avoiding enough of Olaf’s attacks to continue damaging the structure. Both the champion and the Nexus were reduced to almost no health before Fnatic completed the backdoor.

The play was impressive because xPeke understood the actual victory condition. SK Gaming’s apparent advantage in the ongoing fight did not matter if its Nexus could be destroyed first. He also recognized that Kassadin’s mobility gave him a chance to delay Olaf’s damage while continuing to attack the structure.

It was not a risk-free or mathematically inevitable decision. If Kev1n had landed enough damage, if xPeke had mistimed one movement or if SK had reacted slightly earlier, the attempt could have failed. Its brilliance came from identifying a narrow opportunity and committing fully before the opposing team could close it.

The moment became so famous that “xPeke” developed into community shorthand for winning through a backdoor. Few esports plays achieve that level of cultural influence. The player’s name effectively became a description of the strategy itself.

League’s smartest plays are not always mechanical outplays

The xPeke backdoor also demonstrates why intelligence and mechanical skill should not be treated as opposites.

The initial decision was strategic: attack the Nexus instead of joining the conventional fight. Completing the play still required movement, target selection and composure under pressure. Without the correct mechanics, the intelligent decision would have produced only an unsuccessful backdoor attempt.

Other famous competitive moments reverse that balance. Faker’s 2013 Zed duel against Ryu, for example, is remembered primarily as an extraordinary mechanical outplay. Faker survived an engagement that initially appeared favorable for Ryu by managing Zed’s shadows, abilities, items and positioning with exceptional precision.

PraY’s cross-map Ashe arrow against SK Telecom T1 at Worlds 2016 depended on timing and prediction. The arrow prevented Duke from recalling while ROX Tigers attacked the base, translating information from one side of the map into pressure on the other.

Ruler’s flash-assisted engage onto Faker during the 2017 World Championship final was less elaborate mechanically, but carried enormous strategic risk. If the initiation had failed, Samsung Galaxy could have surrendered its advantage. Instead, catching Faker opened the route to the Nexus and ended SK Telecom T1’s attempt to win a third consecutive world title.

These examples illustrate different forms of competitive intelligence. One player may calculate an escape route in fractions of a second, while another recognizes an objective opportunity developing across the map. A third may understand that an opponent’s positioning can be punished only during a tiny window.

The new LoL Esports feature is therefore strongest when it treats “big brain” as a broad category rather than another name for mechanical highlights.

T1 versus Top Esports represents a different competitive era

At the opposite end of the timeline is T1’s Worlds 2025 semifinal against Top Esports. T1 won the best-of-five series 3–0 and subsequently defeated KT Rolster in the final, securing the organization’s sixth World Championship and the first three-title streak in Worlds history.

The video’s published description identifies TES versus T1 as its modern endpoint but does not disclose the exact sequence selected from the series. It would therefore be inaccurate to attribute a particular interpretation to Myth without that additional information.

The broader contrast with 2013 is nevertheless revealing. An early League highlight such as xPeke’s backdoor can be understood largely from one camera angle: a player sees the Nexus, takes the risk and attempts to finish the game. By 2025, many of the most sophisticated plays unfolded through coordinated vision control, target prioritization, objective sequencing and synchronized movement among five players.

T1’s semifinal victory was characterized by disciplined control and an ability to convert relatively small openings into objectives. The team repeatedly placed pressure on Top Esports’ principal damage sources, controlled the areas surrounding neutral objectives and prevented TES from finding comfortable fights.

That kind of intelligence can be difficult to communicate through a short highlight. The decisive action may have begun a minute earlier, when a player pushed a side lane, cleared a ward or deliberately showed on one part of the map. By the time the fight starts, much of the strategic work has already been completed.

A modern “brain play” may consequently belong to an entire team rather than one recognizable protagonist. The player landing the final crowd-control ability receives the visual payoff, but the opportunity might have been created by a teammate managing the minion wave, withholding an ultimate or positioning outside the opponent’s vision.

Prediction is built on information, not magic

Professional players occasionally appear to predict actions that should be impossible to anticipate. They dodge an ability fired from fog of war, interrupt an unseen opponent or arrive at an objective at precisely the right moment.

These plays are rarely random guesses. Players construct predictions from multiple fragments of information: the last known position of an opponent, champion movement speed, ability cooldowns, minion-wave direction, jungle camp timers and the objectives available on the map.

Even missing information can be informative. If an enemy support has not appeared in lane for an unusual amount of time, that absence narrows the list of plausible actions. If a jungler ignores a visible camp, the opposing team can infer that something more valuable is being prepared elsewhere.

Vision manipulation is therefore not simply about seeing the enemy. It is also about controlling what the enemy believes. Teams can clear wards to conceal a rotation, leave selected wards alive to feed misleading information or briefly reveal a player to encourage a particular response.

The most impressive predictions work because the player understands what an opponent should do and positions to punish that expected decision. They are reading habits, incentives and map conditions rather than accessing information unavailable within the game.

The cost of a failed genius play is easy to forget

Retrospective compilations inevitably contain survivorship bias. Audiences remember the unconventional decisions that succeeded, while similar attempts ending in immediate defeat are more likely to be dismissed as mistakes.

A backdoor can become legendary if it destroys the Nexus, but reckless if the player dies before completing it. An unexpected engage can decide a World Championship or throw away an otherwise winning position. The visible action may be nearly identical; the outcome completely changes how it is remembered.

A rigorous analysis must therefore judge more than the result. The relevant questions are whether the player had sufficient information, whether the risk was proportionate to the potential reward and whether a safer alternative existed.

Some famous plays contain a degree of desperation. If a team is already losing through conventional play, a low-probability backdoor may be the rational choice. A 20% chance of winning through an unusual strategy is preferable to a near-certain defeat produced by waiting.

Other plays are impressive because the player rejects unnecessary risk. Elite teams frequently win through decisions that appear uneventful: abandoning a compromised objective, refusing to pursue a low-health opponent or delaying an engagement until a key cooldown becomes available.

Those sequences rarely generate the loudest crowd reactions, but they are often closer to the decision-making professional coaches want their players to reproduce consistently.

Myth brings an outsider’s perspective to the archive

Myth became widely known through Fortnite and later expanded into other competitive games and creator-led entertainment. He is not primarily associated with professional League of Legends analysis, which makes his involvement an interesting editorial choice.

A specialist analyst can explain draft priority, vision patterns and objective setups with greater technical depth. Myth instead provides a recognizable perspective for viewers who understand competitive gaming but may not have followed every era of LoL Esports.

That distinction matters for a historical feature covering more than a decade. League of Legends has changed substantially since 2013. Champions have been reworked, items removed, objectives redesigned and entire strategic conventions replaced. A play that veteran viewers understand immediately may require explanation for audiences encountering it for the first time.

The format must consequently balance technical accuracy with accessibility. Explaining the players’ thought processes provides more lasting value than simply replaying the moment and relying on nostalgia.

Comparing different eras remains inherently subjective

Selecting the “smartest” play in LoL Esports history cannot produce an objective answer. The game played at IEM Katowice in 2013 was fundamentally different from the version used at Worlds 2025, and professional standards evolved alongside it.

Early players operated with less established strategic knowledge. Many concepts now considered fundamental were still being discovered through competition. Modern professionals possess more advanced coaching structures, analytical tools and accumulated knowledge, but they also face opponents trained within the same sophisticated environment.

An older play should not automatically receive extra credit for nostalgia, and a newer one should not be considered superior merely because modern League is more strategically developed. The fairest comparison concerns what the player understood relative to the competitive knowledge of their own period.

There is also a distinction between cultural importance and competitive complexity. xPeke’s backdoor may be the most influential play because it became inseparable from League’s vocabulary. Another sequence might require more precise coordination, deeper preparation or a more difficult mechanical execution without achieving comparable recognition.

That tension is what makes the final question—what is the highest-IQ play of all time—worth debating. The answer reveals what each viewer values: mechanical mastery, creativity, prediction, team coordination, bravery under pressure or the ability to recognize the simplest route to victory while everyone else is looking elsewhere.

After 15 years of LoL Esports, the smartest plays are not merely those that look impossible. They are the moments when a player or team understands the map more clearly than the opposition and acts before everyone else realizes what is happening.