EU LCS February 2nd Schedule (Week 4 Day 1):
H2K +198 @ Splyce -278
ROCCAT +141 @ Team Vitality -189
Giants +137 @ Misfits -182
Fnatic -294 @ Unicorns of Love +207
G2 eSports -167 @ FC Schalke 04 +125
Moneyline: Splyce -278 (4 units)
I think it''s pretty well known by now that I think H2k are the worst team in Europe, maybe the second worst if you like UOL more. Splyce on the other hand are a playoff team that, while suffering from a rough start, are a fairly solid macro team with a good understanding of the metagame.To make matters worse, H2K signed Selfie and it is rumored (via theshotcaller.net) to be replacing rookie Caedrel while Caedrel moves to jungle to replace veteran Santorin. If that rumor is true this move makes some sense. Caedrel hasn't been the problem with H2K it's the overall team dynamic and their direction and secondarily their individual player quality. Europe isn't exactly a hyper competitive region so you could get by with functional players and good team work until you're facing the elite teams. He's had his moments over the years but the truth is that this is one of those band aid type of moves that teams used to do to avoid relegation. With no more relegation I really don't see the point of this move unless they feel Caedrel needs more time to develop. I think it's a bizarre move in a now (pseudo) franchised league. All of this essentially adds up to a one question: Does the fresh blood bring a more effective and winning team or does this delay the development process and keep this team bad while the transition happens? I'm going with the latter and even if this works out well I'd probably still favor Splyce.
Result: WIN (+5.44 units)
Moneyline: ROCCAT +141 (1 unit)
Vitality have been better than I anticipated going into the season in large part due to the stellar performance of Jiizuke in the mid lane. ROCCAT had a great start but have started to fall back down toward the middle of the pack where I expected them to be at the beginning of the season. The thing people don't seem to realize is that, while Jiizuke has been great, Blanc hasn't been that much worse. In fact he has a better damage per gold total, and better gold and experience differentials at 10 than Perkz and Caps and only trails Nukeduck and Jiizuke. The other thing about Jiizuke's performance is that, while it's been flashy, is statistically due for some regression. At some point teams are going to figure out that this team runs through him and doesn't function that well otherwise. With a couple weeks of data and film teams should be able to deconstruct this and bring him at least back down to a manageable level. I the underdogs for a unit here. I think this line is just a tad too generous to the record and "feel" of how good Vitality have looked but typically when a team exceeds expectations they look better than they actually are. With more film and preparation I think ROCCAT can pull out the win against this relatively predictable Vitality style. For what it's worth you could start saying Vitality are "due for some losses" but I prefer to look at the statistics and metrics and say that this teams numbers are inflated by a six game sample size with five wins. ROCCAT out wards them, does slightly more damage per minute as a full team, and has shown that they're capable of beating good teams. This line says "this is a 5-1 team vs a 3-3 team" when there is much more to the story.
Result: LOSS, This was a weird game. Vitality were way up on kills but ROCCAT showed off their excellent macro ability to stall this into one of those 70 minute games by running Vitality around the map. Eventually the game ended on a ADC teleport backdoor but make no mistake, despite not getting a kill for a 35+ minute stretch in this game ROCCAT were in full control without even landing any kills. It was actually really impressive and I hope they can sort out their team fighting woes.
Moneyline: Misfits -182 (2 units)
These two teams are evenly matched more or less across the board by the numbers but I've identified this situation as one team slightly overperforming in Giants and another team slightly underperforming in Misfits. I also think this happens to be a rough matchup for Giants who have been heavily reliant of Ruin outplaying precarious situations or just dumpstering his lane opponent. Alphari and Maxlore are going to have a game plan for handling him especially because they're going to get side selection for this game to presumably take red and counterpick top lane or jungle for a superior 2v2. I also think by seasons end Misfits are the better team. This is less a knock on Giants and more a bet on Misfits returning to form and having the correct players to "solve" the problem that is Ruin.
Result: LOSS, Misfits were up in this game despite Sencux's best efforts to lose this game. I think they were just outscaled by Azir + Tristana and lost a critical fight at baron. Could have gone either way. Misfits could have maybe did more with their lead which is becoming a trend for them. They seem to botch closings fairly often and Giants are a pretty good late game team so maybe I shouldn't have been 2 units on this one and it should have been one.
Moneyline: Fnatic -294 (4 units)
Fnatic finally wised up and stop trying to play scaling against everybody and just beat teams before games could get there and damn did they look good doing it. I think they've finally found their form after a rocky start. If this match were to happen two weeks from now I'd bet it's -500 even in a best of one format as this is, in my opinion, the best team in Europe against arguably the worst. I'll take my heavy favorite value while I still can.
Result: WIN (+5.36 units)
Fnatic look like a dominant early game team able to shove leads and end games substantially under the European average. That's a huge advantage.
Moneyline: G2 eSports (2 units)
Before the season started I had these two squads as my second and third place teams behind Fnatic. I still think things will end up that way but I'm going to go into some more progression and regression talk with a slightly different twist this time. If you look at the numbers G2 are absolutely demolishing everyone. They're doing almost 200 damage per minute more than every other team (more than 400 compared to league average) and that's considering they have the fourth fewest kills. They have an absurd 1400 gold lead at 15 per game, 50% first blood percentage, take the first tower in two-thirds of their games, and have, for my money, the best player in Europe in Perkz who, I might add, has been "struggling" relative to his typical performance. How does this team only have three wins? Because they've struggled to close games. It's a lot easier to fix macro from ahead than it is from behind and while I think this is an intriguing matchup when you look at the individual players and how they compare to one another, I just can't help but think G2 have been quietly annihilating everyone and just not closing. Schalke have had the exact opposite problem, they've typically lost or slightly lost lane phase and played decisively and effectively in the mid game by creating big swing plays instead of passively letting the game end. They've also had some lineup juggling with the sickness Upset was going through so I don't think we've seen this teams full potential yet. I really do think this game should be close and is definitely the most intriguing matchup tomorrow to me. That said, I think G2's problems are a much quicker fix and I'm not sure Schalke having the advantage of side selection will matter as much against Wunder who has made a career out of nullifying counter picks even if his carry performances are few and far between.
Result: WIN (+3.2 units)
This was a close fought slugfest between two excellent teams. I'm glad to say that both showed well and it just came down to whoever made more unbelievable plays. Now it didn't quite work out how I'd expected it to but the takeaway from this match is that these two teams seem to belong in the top 4 in some order. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Result: WIN (+5.44 units)
Moneyline: ROCCAT +141 (1 unit)
Vitality have been better than I anticipated going into the season in large part due to the stellar performance of Jiizuke in the mid lane. ROCCAT had a great start but have started to fall back down toward the middle of the pack where I expected them to be at the beginning of the season. The thing people don't seem to realize is that, while Jiizuke has been great, Blanc hasn't been that much worse. In fact he has a better damage per gold total, and better gold and experience differentials at 10 than Perkz and Caps and only trails Nukeduck and Jiizuke. The other thing about Jiizuke's performance is that, while it's been flashy, is statistically due for some regression. At some point teams are going to figure out that this team runs through him and doesn't function that well otherwise. With a couple weeks of data and film teams should be able to deconstruct this and bring him at least back down to a manageable level. I the underdogs for a unit here. I think this line is just a tad too generous to the record and "feel" of how good Vitality have looked but typically when a team exceeds expectations they look better than they actually are. With more film and preparation I think ROCCAT can pull out the win against this relatively predictable Vitality style. For what it's worth you could start saying Vitality are "due for some losses" but I prefer to look at the statistics and metrics and say that this teams numbers are inflated by a six game sample size with five wins. ROCCAT out wards them, does slightly more damage per minute as a full team, and has shown that they're capable of beating good teams. This line says "this is a 5-1 team vs a 3-3 team" when there is much more to the story.
Result: LOSS, This was a weird game. Vitality were way up on kills but ROCCAT showed off their excellent macro ability to stall this into one of those 70 minute games by running Vitality around the map. Eventually the game ended on a ADC teleport backdoor but make no mistake, despite not getting a kill for a 35+ minute stretch in this game ROCCAT were in full control without even landing any kills. It was actually really impressive and I hope they can sort out their team fighting woes.
Moneyline: Misfits -182 (2 units)
These two teams are evenly matched more or less across the board by the numbers but I've identified this situation as one team slightly overperforming in Giants and another team slightly underperforming in Misfits. I also think this happens to be a rough matchup for Giants who have been heavily reliant of Ruin outplaying precarious situations or just dumpstering his lane opponent. Alphari and Maxlore are going to have a game plan for handling him especially because they're going to get side selection for this game to presumably take red and counterpick top lane or jungle for a superior 2v2. I also think by seasons end Misfits are the better team. This is less a knock on Giants and more a bet on Misfits returning to form and having the correct players to "solve" the problem that is Ruin.
Result: LOSS, Misfits were up in this game despite Sencux's best efforts to lose this game. I think they were just outscaled by Azir + Tristana and lost a critical fight at baron. Could have gone either way. Misfits could have maybe did more with their lead which is becoming a trend for them. They seem to botch closings fairly often and Giants are a pretty good late game team so maybe I shouldn't have been 2 units on this one and it should have been one.
Moneyline: Fnatic -294 (4 units)
Fnatic finally wised up and stop trying to play scaling against everybody and just beat teams before games could get there and damn did they look good doing it. I think they've finally found their form after a rocky start. If this match were to happen two weeks from now I'd bet it's -500 even in a best of one format as this is, in my opinion, the best team in Europe against arguably the worst. I'll take my heavy favorite value while I still can.
Result: WIN (+5.36 units)
Fnatic look like a dominant early game team able to shove leads and end games substantially under the European average. That's a huge advantage.
Moneyline: G2 eSports (2 units)
Before the season started I had these two squads as my second and third place teams behind Fnatic. I still think things will end up that way but I'm going to go into some more progression and regression talk with a slightly different twist this time. If you look at the numbers G2 are absolutely demolishing everyone. They're doing almost 200 damage per minute more than every other team (more than 400 compared to league average) and that's considering they have the fourth fewest kills. They have an absurd 1400 gold lead at 15 per game, 50% first blood percentage, take the first tower in two-thirds of their games, and have, for my money, the best player in Europe in Perkz who, I might add, has been "struggling" relative to his typical performance. How does this team only have three wins? Because they've struggled to close games. It's a lot easier to fix macro from ahead than it is from behind and while I think this is an intriguing matchup when you look at the individual players and how they compare to one another, I just can't help but think G2 have been quietly annihilating everyone and just not closing. Schalke have had the exact opposite problem, they've typically lost or slightly lost lane phase and played decisively and effectively in the mid game by creating big swing plays instead of passively letting the game end. They've also had some lineup juggling with the sickness Upset was going through so I don't think we've seen this teams full potential yet. I really do think this game should be close and is definitely the most intriguing matchup tomorrow to me. That said, I think G2's problems are a much quicker fix and I'm not sure Schalke having the advantage of side selection will matter as much against Wunder who has made a career out of nullifying counter picks even if his carry performances are few and far between.
Result: WIN (+3.2 units)
This was a close fought slugfest between two excellent teams. I'm glad to say that both showed well and it just came down to whoever made more unbelievable plays. Now it didn't quite work out how I'd expected it to but the takeaway from this match is that these two teams seem to belong in the top 4 in some order. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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