The OP is right; the latter sentence is better than the former sentence.

It seems that the phrase “in spite of” has been used as a conjunction in the former. If it’s so, the sentence isn’t grammatical. How do you say “in

spite of everyone played well, we lost the game”?

The fact that of, literally only after the phrase is correct: I lost

the result, we ended up losing. We had a really good game!

Why is it necessary to use the word “although” instead:

Although everyone really played well, we lost the

game with all the thugs.

When the word where refers to a destination, you usually don’t use the preposition “to” as it’s redundant. Why do people use this preposition?

From where are you coming from?

The sentence is highly grammatical. The author is absolutely right about it. When “where” refers to a point of origin, the preposition “from” is required (The Free Dictionary,

pp. 44-48).