Betting: February 18th (LPL)

LPL Spring 2019 W5D1 - February 18th

Snake have actually had one of, if not the hardest schedule in the LPL thus far facing Invictus, Suning, SinoDragon, FunPlus, and EDward but the question is whether or not their 1-4 record is the result of this, bad play, or both. Other than Suning and IG they've actually been competitive in each series and if you consider that SinoDragon is more or less the same style of team and massive deathball teamfights are closer to 50/50 then perhaps that's a team that might be worse or similar level that's not an ideal matchup for them because their advantage is sort of negated. I know that's kind of outside of the box and all but it's worth considering. Really I just think this team can't be this bad and after this murderers row of a schedule they're probably on the upper end of the middle of the table teams while BiliBili look more towards the bottom end of that middle tier. BiliBili got destroyed in game two against JD I have a feeling Snake are a slightly better team than JD this season and should be able to win this series. 

I have absolutely no idea why this line is this far apart. My only thought is that the metrics looked at the records and said Snake are a bad team and they aren't. These teams are even AT WORST and honestly I think Snake is probably better. If nothing else Snake are the WAY better team for this specific metagame. Flandre is a split pushing monster and they're the better team fighting team than BBG as well. This seems like a slam dunk to me and we'll be opening the week with a five unit hammer play of the week here.

Moneyline: Snake +162 (5 units, PLAY OF THE WEEK)

JD won fairly convincingly against a mediocre BiliBili team that isn't equipped to play in a metagame like this and while the 2-0 was impressive immediately afterwards the more I thought about it the more I found myself saying that BiliBili might be closer to a bad team than a good one. That said I don't think JD are that hot either. That's going to sound like crazy talk considering their win over Invictus the day before the two week break but I'm going to attribute at least some of Invictus' anemic performance (and it was) to looking forward to the break too much. Then again who knows IG lost coming out of the break as well. 

Basically, I think JD look better on paper than they do if you actually watch them. This isn't exactly a sound fundamental team they've just kinda stumbled into a lot of their victories. It's not entirely that they've had wins gifted to them but other teams certainly haven't showed up against them. Maybe this team is good, maybe they aren't but I'm betting that they're definitley not as good as their 3-1 record. They were also bodied by FunPlus, a team that I think is in a similar vein to TopSports. There's also the fact that we haven't seen TopSports since before the break while we've seen a series from JDG so TopSports have the information as well as the element of surprise on their side.

I absolutely love TopSports here. I wasn't super confident about this team with 369 up top but the other four players have just been so completely dominant and with plenty of time to prepare as well as game film on JDG combined with JDG perhaps being slightly overrated because of recent results I think TopSports is the right side here.

I'll be taking the handicap but if -244 isn't that rich for you feel free to fire on that.

Handicapped: TopSports -1.5 @ +133 (2 units)

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I'm also going to parlay both the TopSports -1.5 and Snake ML and TopSports + Snake ML. I feel strangely confident about this slate tomorrow. 

Parlay (2): TOP ML + Snake ML @ +269 (1 unit)

Parlay (2): TOP -1.5 + Snake ML @ +510 (0.5 units)