Betting: January 15th (LPL)

LOL Pro League January 15th Schedule:

SinoDragon are a new team and winners of the LDL Summer Championship (China's Challenger scene). The lost in the winners bracket semis to Unlimited Potential before winning their losers bracket semis and then going on to win the finals 3-1 in a rematch. Truthfully I don't know too much else about this team since the LDL is one of the few leagues I don't really watch or research. This is a total unknown quantity to me and because of that I'll be limiting wagers here but one thing I do know is that they'll likely perform better than the new look Rogue Warriors did yesterday as this team was, in more or less every way, a better challenger squad than the one the four new RW players played on. 

EDward are more or less the same team with the same lineup. Continuity can be a strong point and the odds show that. EDG were, in my opinion, the 5th best team in the LPL over the course of the calendar year last year and they performed about as well as I expected them to at Worlds this year. 

EDG are a good team with continuity and probably a chip on their shoulder from being eliminated by Fnatic (not that Fnatic is a bad team by any stretch) however this is also a team that lost to the improved Suning Gaming in the Demacia Cup. As you guys know I don't put too much stock into preseason tournaments as it's difficult to see who is motivated and who isn't and inparticular teams that were at Worlds often rarely prepare for these in order to give their players some time off. 

I don't know much about SinoDragon but honestly EDG should crush this. You could go all transitive property on me and look at the Demacia Cup results and try to compare that way and say "oh there's value here in SDG because they took a game of Suning just like EDG did" and I wouldn't blame you for that but I'm going to take the Worlds representatives to 2-0 this for a small wager. I'm also going to take the OVER 25.5 kills in both of these games. New teams tend to be really hungry and aggressive in my experience and even if I expect EDG to wipe the floor here I think it's safe to look at yesterdays games where three out of four went WAY WAY over 25.5 kills and expect early season China to remain as aggressive as always. Let's farm that value while we still can.

Handicapped: EDG -1.5 maps @ -122 (1 unit)

Prop: Map 1 OVER 25.5 Total Kills @ +101 (1 unit)

Prop: Map 2 OVER 25.5 Total Kills @ -103 (1 unit)

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In early December BiliBili acquired ADD and Kuro from the LCK. Two criminally underrated players over the course of their careers in Korea. I became excited about BiliBili's potential. Shortly after on December 17th there were a few departures of subs and coaches which made me a bit skeptical again. So I really don't know what to expect here. BiliBili had a great Spring split last year being the "grown up" team in the LPL playing with heavily influenced Korean style and discipline. Slow and steady wins the race but they were winning with Korean Mid Athena at the helm. During the Summer they moved some starters around and without Athena playing as much really struggled quite a bit. Granted the meta became pretty bad for that style but they still struggled. It appears that they want to go back to that disciplined style based on the pickups of ADD and Kuro who are two veteran LCK players. I'm not sure how much weight to put on this and I'm not going to assume they'll do this because there isn't a Korean coach but I think it's safe to say that they wanted to at least get back to that style a bit.

LGD also imported a few players in Ian and Kramer from the LCK and RD from the LMS. They also picked up Condi, one of 2017's strongest junglers and still a solid one last year, from World Elite, and renewed star support players Pyl's contract. They also changed head coaches on December 16th to UDJ who was an assistent during the Summer and previously coached JDG. To me this LGD lineup actually looks solid. I think people are going to have some "price memory" of LGD being one of the worst teams inthe LPL last year but towards the end of the year they actually appeared to be figuring things out even if it was too late.

This is two teams that I think will be much improved and will likely be mid tier LPL teams this split. Somewhere in the 5-8th range. Based on how these teams appear to want to play I like LGD a bit more in this matchup and the odds line up with that. I tried to find an angle to play the over/unders with BBG's tendency to want to play slower and controlled but I want to see it first. I won't be making any plays on this game just a slight lean to LGD and a slightly lean to the OVER 32:00.

No Wagers