For a pro even seemingly innocuous comments about the game can be disastrous

Players in the western regions have always walked a difficult line trying to keep information out of their opponents hands while still interacting with fans via social media and streaming. For the most part players can manage to stream and use social media regularly without giving anything more valuable than already well known facts like Doublelift enjoys playing Lucian. Sometimes however players let slip too much information without even realizing it.

That comment no doubt seemed innocuous to Amazing when answering his AMA on Reddit, in fact it looks like he's suggesting he can't be banned out easily. In the eyes of analysts who work for teams like Cloud 9 or LMQ however, that reply was a clear tier list and a potential point of weakness for TSM.

In the opening game of the summer split Cloud 9 targeted Amazing banning all 3 champions listed in his comment and first picking away the Lee Sin that had made Amazing's name in EU. The heavy jungle focus forced Amazing out of his comfort zone and resulted in him looking rather lack luster on Xin Zhao. Dignitas in week 2 would repeat the winning strategy of focusing on Amazing again putting the TSM newcomer out of his comfort zone. This time Amazing tried the season 3 favorite Volibear to unfortunately disastrous effect. In both cases the information that slipped through in Amazing's AMA was used to remove him as a threat in the game.

Lest you think I'm picking on him, Amazing was not the only one to make such a mistake recently. CompLexity's mid laner Pr0lly is guilty of giving away too much with a seemingly innocent comment after posting this tweet last week.

my yasuo is still at the point where i take a turret shot because i want to CS with my e

— pr0lly (@coL_pr0lly) June 6, 2014

It's a lot less obvious, something most fans (myself included) no doubt passed right over without thinking twice. Not nearly as disastrous as giving away your entire champion pool, but Pr0lly's tweet still tells opponents he's not comfortable enough to pick Yasuo in the LCS. While you may not have, and I certainly didn't, picked up on what that tweet meant at the time LMQ's champion select strategy makes it clear they understood.

LMQ ban away Ziggs and Annie from Pr0lly to limit his champion pool, then first pick away the Lulu to both ensure Pr0lly does not take it and that should CoL take Nidalee the Yasuo counter would have ample knock ups. They then proceed to build a strong pick composition that would work well with both Nidalee and Yasuo. Because of Pr0lly's tweet LMQ are safe in the knowledge he isn't going to bring out Yasuo. That means the only reaction CoL could have to the composition is to steal away Nidalee if they saw it coming, but would result in XiaoWeiXiao happily playing Yasuo, a well known counter to Nidalee and a champion XiaoWeiXiao had favored in their previous LCS games.

A Yasuo pick would have been incredibly effective against LMQ's composition, but thanks to Pr0lly's slip up LMQ knew they were safe to build a poke heavy pick comp. What resulted was the first and so far only outing for XiaoWeiXiao's Nidalee in the LCS and an absolute disaster of a game for CoL that propelled multiple LMQ members to score over 60 fantasy points in week 3.

Players have always walked a fine line of interacting with fans without giving away too much, and like we see here sometimes they make mistakes with hefty consequences for their teams. It's sad to see every time it happens and another fresh young pro learns just how guarded they have to be on social media. Unfortunately this is one mistake that is likely to keep repeating until the infrastructure around teams develops a bit more and coaches learn that social media training is a must before new players are let loose onto Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit.