Betting: January 24th (LCK, LMS)

LCK Spring 2019 - January 24th

   

SKT are going to blast Sandbox back down to earth like Mr Smith did to Neo in the 3rd Matrix movie 

Look, I'm excited that we have sweet new teams in the LCK doing well but let's examine this before we get caught up in overhype for another upset here. Sandbox showed up with their balls to the wall almost old school LPL style of relentless aggression and unwavering commitment to every fight which caught a couple of old, tired dogs (Gen.G and Kingzone), for the most part, completely off guard. I'm not necessarily saying that this style can be used against them because, frankly, the meta really encourages it, but what I do think is that nobody is going to be surprised anymore and SK Telecom have already done some running over of slow teams themselves albeit much cleaner. 

SK Telecom have better players at every position, a mid/jungle duo that are playing with better chemistry than Heisenberg (or Heisendong, take your pick), and are going to see this aggression coming a mile away. This line is indicative of a heavy favorite, obviously, but I'm not sure there's a lot of faith in SKT to remind everyone exactly why the look like one of the top 2-3 teams in Korea this split. Add to this a history of SK Telecom have of giving the "friendly neighborhood welcome" to new LCK teams and I absolutely LOVE this spot for a handicap. 

• Sandbox are due for a regression mostly due to the fact that they've run over teams that are currently flailing or were caught off guard by them
• New SKT play for early game and their mid/jungle duo is vastly superior and firing on all cylinders right now.
• Sandbox overhyped by the public.
• Sandbox are honestly really sloppy if you watch their games they're simply brute forcing everything and that's not going to work against a team as good as SKT.
• Do we really think this Sandbox team is this good? Really? I don't.
• Sandbox haven't shown us the ability to do anything else.
• SKT have already punished clumsy play AND shown the ablity to jump out to leads.
• SKT have only earned first blood in 25% of their games and they're still undefeated. Sandbox has first blood in three of their first four for 75%.
• PROP: Sandbox only know one way to play and that's to fight. They average 16 kills per game over their first four games while SKT is averaging 11. SKT, however, were playing against two relatively passive and/or lost squads in Jin Air and Afreeca. I like the OVER 19.5 in a match that's sure to be full of forced conflict even if I expect SKT to handle it.

Think of Sandbox like a wild bull and SKT are the matador except this matador is a smarter bull that's just going to have some fun with somebody his own size before finishing the job. This is my second five unit play of the year. I missed on the first one, which you must be informed was Gen.G against, you guessed it, Sandbox but I'm surpremely confident in the SKT 2-0. 

Handicapped: SK Telecom -1.5 maps @ -143 (5 units)

Prop (O/U): Map 1 OVER 19.5 total kills @ -125 (0.5 units)

Prop (O/U): Map 2 OVER 19.5 total kills @ -125 (0.5 units)

This is actually a really fascinating matchup that's going to tell us a lot about both of these teams. Both have shown tiny glimpses of life and both have tremendous rosters capable of much more than they've shown us so far. The question is who adapts first. My money is literally on Afreeca to do so.

Last year was not just the emergence of Kiin but an absolute coaching clinic by the whole staff at Afreeca. They were consistently well-prepared and were able to compete at a higher level than their roster potential indicated. So far this year I'm not sure Afreeca's coaches have the right idea but I trust them to adjust quickly and confidently just like they did last year. They remind me a lot of the 2014 and 2015 iterations of SK Telecom. Relatively slow starts with a handful of weird losses and the odd roster shuffle with Tom/Bengi and Faker/Easyhoon and Wolf/Piccaboo. Kkoma also had a really weird read on the metagame with priority on mid Zilean and Chogath for Faker at different points when the rest of the team was struggling and he probably just should have been on a carry. Even the great coaches have a wrong read once in awhile. It's sort of like us as cappers, we need to make a predetermined read and sometimes that read is just off like Vitality/100 Thieves for me last year. I think Afreeca's coaches had the wrong read and will be making every effort to quickly pivot and adjust. Gen.G, however, are historically stubborn to metagames and unlike years past I don't think they can get away with "sticking to their guns" as that 2-core scaling strategy is simply not in the cards in high level professional play anymore.

It's not a big wager because both of these teams are sort of in a weird limbo but I like Afreeca to turn it around and I think IF Gen.G make adjustments that they'll be LATER rather than sooner. I think this line is accurate because both teams look shakey and are full of unknowns but between my trust in their coaching staff and their superior individual players I think Afreeca win this series, potentially in a blowout if they've been able to pick up a lot really fast.

I'm also taking the UNDER 19.5 total kills in both of these games with my thinking being that IF both of these teams are still stuck and/or are slow to adjust then they'll want to play good "old fashioned" Korean League of Legends; slow, controlled, methodical and LOW KILL count. PapaSmithy made a good point on the broadcast last night that a lot of these "old school" (not his words) teams are going to play those kinds of games and from what stats I looked into it was mostly accurate. Until this line of thinking is accounted for and the books or teams adjust I'll be looking at exploring this potential edge. Here we have two potentially old school for an almost guaranteed under OR a team that's quick to adjust and cleanly wins. There's an outside chance this just turns into a sloppy bloodbath with both squads flailing like a kid new to swimming and these games will be a mess but I think the first two scenarios make up a much larger portion of the likelihood pie.

Moneyline: Afreeca -123 (1.5 units)

Prop (O/U): Map 1 UNDER 19.5 total kills @ -114 (1 unit)

Prop (O/U): Map 2 UNDER 19.5 total kills @ -114 (1 unit) 

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LMS Spring 2019 - January 24th

(pending but probably no action)