All About The Smurf Queue in League of Legends

Have you ever had to play against players with a much higher level than you in your lol solo queue match or duo queue rankeds? So you are probably assigned to the smurf queue in League of Legends. Don't worry, here we will explain everything about the smurf queue league of legends. Let's start!

What is Smurf Queue?

The Smurf Queue is a parallel dynamic queue created specifically for smurf players (and so different compared to flex queue). To do this, the video game itself detects that you are a new player with a higher rank than you really have and brings you together with other smurfs. This could be beneficial, as it would separate the normal queues of those players who simply have an account to destroy users with a much lower level than them.

However, there are certain moments in which the SmurfQ is poorly planned. And it is that League of Legends cannot detect to which elo each player belongs, so it brings them all together. This means that a diamond rank smurf can be playing against a gold or against League of Legends pros such as challengers.

But there are times when a good or better player is not smurfing and sometimes sneaks into this queue, something that ends up being detrimental to both the player and the MOBA itself.

Theoretically, the Smurf Queue system is capable of detecting players who create a secondary account and forces them to play against each other. A measure that Riot Games would have taken to prevent those members of the community with higher MMR from spoiling the games in the lower rank ELO.

However, the developers have repeatedly denied the existence of such a complex system and there is a much simpler explanation for these situations.

How does the Smurf Queue work?

In September 2020, Riot Games introduced an interesting change to ranked matchmaking. The system had been adding more and more additional elements to make the rankeds fairer. For example, both teams have long had the same number of players out of position.

A move that improved the quality of matches without long queue times and served as a precedent for a further adjustment to matchmaking: making the system only match players who were in the same rank.

Until these adjustments, the players that had to play in a normal match were only determined by MMR. This hidden number values ​​us as players and is usually accompanied by a certain rank.

However, if we win games non-stop, it is common for the score to increase and get into the smurf queue. You may also take a look at our guide about how to see MMR in LoL.

According to Riot Games, the system has several benefits that increase the quality of the matches, although one of its side effects is to group the players that use secondary accounts since these are the ones that tend to have the greatest disparity between their MMR and the rank.

This means that yes, it groups players together, but it is not the primary purpose of the settings nor is there a complex mechanism to detect if an account is actually the second identity of a high-ranked normal game player.

There is no such thing as "entering Smurf Ranked Queue" as the measure affects the entire community (even the north american league) equally and improves the overall experience of the game. Additionally, these measures do not affect MMR matchmaking gain at all, nor do they pit secondary account players against enemies above their level.

How to avoid the smurf queue?

Now that you know more about the smurf queue, you probably want to avoid it, and although no one has a 100% reliable technique to achieve this goal, there are a number of methods you can use to "alter" your MMR and avoid the smurf queue:

Use the remake in your favor

This option has been around for a while to hack the League of Legends queue and basically consists in that if a player is offline from the beginning of the game, after 3 minutes they can vote to make a remake and the map ends at that moment.

Apparently, the MMR is not affected and you do lose LP (although less), and according to comments on Reddit, it is used to avoid the smurf queue and play with players of the categories in which the account in question is without affecting the win rate so much. You may also check our guide about how to remake in LoL.

Get out of the game in the Champion Selection

Another method to avoid the smurf queue is to leave the game during champion select (also known as a queue dodging strategy or queue dodgers). To do this, all you have to do is close the game client. However, you will have a time penalty to enter the queue again due to abandonment.

This method is a bit more efficient to avoid the smurf queue if you don't mind waiting 1-2 hours due to queue lockouts to enter a queue again, and it doesn't affect your league points.

As you will see, there is no method that may seem "usual" to avoid the League of Legends solo queue, but it will definitely save you a hard time if you are in this queue and must play against people in ranks much higher than you. This is another good way to not appear on the losers queue or low priority queue.

This has been all in our guide on the smurf queue, if you liked it, you can take a look at our guide on the low priority queue in LoL and how to avoid this queue or you can check out this guide about ranked flex matches in League of Legends and start dominating the game. See you at the Summoner's Rift!