Our LEC MVP for Week 1: Team Vitality's Bo

With three wins out of three games, Team Vitality is looking strong - and in his LEC debut, Zhou "Bo" Yang-Bo showed that his reputation for being an amazing young player is well-deserved.

The LEC is back! The 2023 Winter Season began with a three-day weekend that served us a buffet of amazing League of Legends from the 10 best teams in the region. Several teams weren't able to back up the high expectations we had for them, while others overperformed and made us reassess our expectations. In the end, only two teams remained undefeated, G2 Esports and Team Vitality. 

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Team Vitality was a team we thought could have a very high ceiling, but the many moving parts and new players - and the bad experience of their 2022 superteam experiment - made us somewhat wary of committing to them. However, after a very tense game with Fnatic they won off a pair of great lategame teamfights, the team smashed through the opposition in the two next games. We saw some great plays from all their players, but for us, the best came from their jungler Zhou "Bo" Yang-Bo.

• Play your best game with the Logitech G502 Hero K/DA Gaming Mouse!

The young Chinese player's journey to the LEC was not an easy one. He was seen as one of the rising stars of the LDL before a suspension for being involved in match fixing in early 2021. He joined Vitality as a substitute in 2022 without much fanfare before debuting officially as part of the squad before the winter split. In the opening week, Vitality defeated Fnatic, Team Heretics and MAD Lions, and in all three games Bo showed himself to be on the very high level that he was rumored to be. He played his best game against MAD Lions, where he and mid laner Luka "Perkz" Perković demolished the normally solid MAD mid and jungle duo of Yasin "Nisqy" Dinçer and Javier "Elyoya" Prades Batalla, but he was Vitality's ace in the hole in every game.

Throughout the week, Bo played Graves, Sejuani and Vi. With all three, he was very active on the map early on and played a major part in his team getting early leads, especially against MAD. Tellingly, Graves and Sejuani were banned against Vitality after he played them - though it didn't seem to affect his performance any.

Read More:

• LoL Patch 13.2: What Changes Are Releasing When?
• LEC Week 1: G2 and Team Vitality Rule the Roost
• LEC Winter Split 2023: Schedule, Standings, Teams & More

Team Vitality enters the second week with a 3-0 record, but they are set to face off the other yet undefeated team, G2 Esports. Bo will be fighting another promising young jungler in Martin "Yike" Sundelin. Will he prevail?