Why 5 matches decide 3 months
Provisionals are the highest-leverage games you play all season, because they compress a fortnight of grinding into just five placements. They aren't played blind, either: since Update 36.1 the run is seeded from your previous season's final RP, and how those five matches go decides where the seed actually lands. Play them well and you open the season tiers above a cold start, skipping dozens of low-tier matches that earn almost nothing per game; play them badly and you start lower than your history deserves. A season now runs roughly three months — Season 42 went live June 17, 2026 and carries through to around early September — so those five matches set the floor you spend the entire run building from. That is the real return here — not five wins, but the tier you don't have to grind back up to. A strong placement block is the difference between opening the season already inside the range you want and clawing there in week four.