The statementWhat the team wrote
ChallengerTCG posted at 15:51 UTC: "ChallengerTCG has removed Koko Lopez from the team. After speaking with his opponent, the event staff at RQ LA, and Koko, we believed his disqualification was a one-off misunderstanding. Koko maintained that he was innocent of the accusations against him. Clips shared today from multiple matches show otherwise, and Koko has now made a statement to us admitting culpability. We do not tolerate cheating. We're sorry to the players he faced and those who stood up for him."
The statement does not say which matches. The most shared clip, posted this morning on r/riftboundtcg, comes from streamed practice games: according to the uploader it shows Koko Lopez sorting the runes of his Kennen deck instead of shuffling them. According to the thread's author, the Los Angeles disqualification came for the same reason, an unshuffled rune deck, which Koko Lopez had described publicly as an honest mistake.
Why it mattersThe rune deck in two lines
In Riftbound every player has two decks: the main deck and the rune deck, twelve cards that act as your resource pool. Two of them come into play every turn, and they provide the energy and the colors you need to cast your cards.
If you know the order they will arrive in, you know in advance when you will have the color you need. The Kennen list Koko Lopez took to the Barcelona final ran 9 Chaos and 3 Order runes, and those three Order runes are exactly the ones you want at the right time.
That is why both decks must be shuffled before every game and presented to the opponent, who can shuffle or cut them too.
Who he isThe Barcelona finalist
Across the official UVS events I track, Koko Lopez has played 46 tournaments with 208 wins and 44 losses. His biggest result is second place at RQ Barcelona on August 22-24 with Kennen: 13-1-2 in Swiss, then a 2-1 quarterfinal win over Italy's Hisoka, a semifinal win over MICE Squirtle and a 2-0 loss in the final to MICE TheManland's Ornn. Bracket and lists are in my RQ Barcelona standings and my meta breakdown of that event. Nothing currently ties the allegations to that event.
In Los Angeles, the event standings show him at 2 wins and 2 losses. As of today, there is no word from Riot or UVS about any penalty beyond the event disqualification.
Why it matters to us. The European Regional Championship in Stuttgart is a month away (November 6-8), with several Italian players qualified. The practical advice comes from players themselves in today's threads: before every game, shuffle your opponent's deck and their runes yourself, and if something looks off, call a judge right away. A cut is not enough: if the Order runes were spaced out evenly, cutting only moves the starting point and the order survives. It is not distrust, it is the rules.
In short
- ChallengerTCG removed Koko Lopez from the team on October 7.
- He had been disqualified at RQ Los Angeles: the team believed it was a misunderstanding, then clips from multiple matches surfaced and, according to the statement, he admitted culpability.
- The most shared clip shows him sorting his rune deck in streamed practice games.
- He finished second at RQ Barcelona in August, beating Italy's Hisoka in the quarterfinals.
Sources: ChallengerTCG statement on X, r/riftboundtcg thread; results from official UVS events. Photo: ChallengerTCG. Card: Riot Games.
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