Betting: April 6th (LPL Quarterfinals, LEC Semifinals, NA LCS Semifinals)

It's very rare that I get really bent out of shape over a loss, even big ones because it's a long season and in the grand scheme of things it rarely matters but we took an absolutely brutal loss yesterday. I don't like to get all conspiracy theory on everyone but that sincerely felt fixed. That EDG -1.5 was the most confident in a pick that I've been more or less since the World Championships (where we also got roasted). I'm not going to sit here and bitch and moan about losing 15 units in embarassingly bad fashion but I did want to bring this up because we'll likely be using this as a topic on the cast next week. When do you change expectations vs stay the course? It's the billion dollar question right? We had this type of paradigm shift in the LCK last summer when we simply couldn't believe Griffin could actually be this good. Are we at that stage with the new rising teams in the LPL? Are the old dogs done? Obviously we don't want to overreact to a few brutal beats this season but at some point the question needs to be asked. Are we wrong, unlucky, or some combination of both? And if it is both then which has more weight? I'm not sure but we're going to talk a lot about it next week. 

ONWARD TO VICTORY!

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LPL Spring 2019 - Quarterfinals:

After the absolute beating we've taken the past couple weeks in the LPL it's probably going to come as a surprise that I'm confidently going to fire on RNG here. After rewatching the WE/JDG series again I found that I didn't think the Team WE drafts were quite as egregious as I originally thought upon a second take except for game three. The Morgana pick doesn't work unless you have a lot of damage coming out of the jungle and top lane otherwise you end up with this 1.5 core situation that hasn't been relevant since Juggermaw. I actually admire JDG's willingness to keep it simple. Dive Mystic. That was the game plan and it worked. We even got to see the LvMao Fiddlesticks in game four!. I'll throw some respect on JDG for this one. Team WE looked like the better team and while I still think they were the right side I do regret betting them as heavily as I did. This should have been a light wager on Team WE. That was the correct move. Now.....

Enter RNG. A team that's looked really weirdly not themselves over the past few weeks. At times they've appeared to be "coasting to playoffs" even though they, by no means, had any sort of guarantee until the last week. Other time they looked as though they were flailing and panicking. Then Zzta1's return. There's just been a lot of weird momentum swings with RNG but historically this is a team that ALWAYS gets their shit together for playoffs. As a matter of fact in previous years they've come in similarly to this, with roster shuffles, ups and downs, and then they just seemingly turn it on in playoffs. Last year IG looked so much better than them the entire year except in the playoff series they played where RNG suddenly looked like the best team on the planet. 

So can RNG once again come up big in the clutch? I think yes. I do want to play devil's advocate a bit here. If you examine Team WE and RNG they're similarly constructed with strong carry players, an aggressive "firestarter" jungler, and role players otherwise. RNG have struggled at times this season with teams that just put a ton of pressure on Uzi partially because they leave him to his own device in some games and assume, correctly most times, that he'll play his way out of bad situations. I also think part of that is just lack of focus in regular season games. 

To me this series boils down to a couple of key angles:

• RNG got to see how JDG handled a series against a fairly similar team to them in Team WE and will have the strategies and approach that JDG take in advance and can be prepared.
• JDG have the right weapon for this job and are going to present problems for RNG

I was speaking with John George (@TheESportsPlug) about this and I made the comparison of JDG having scissors, the correct counter to RNG's paper.... but RNG's paper is more like carbon fiber or sheet metal or something. So are the scissors going to be enough here? 

I'm going with RNG -1.5 for six units (three units normal). If I got to see this before this morning I wouldn't have even hesitated. I don't want to put too much weight on "RNG always show up for playoffs" because, as we've seen this split, history doesn't mean jack sometimes. To me this series actually hinges more on Xiaohu and Karsa than it does Uzi. Uzi is going to receive his focus and this JDG team have more or less been playing the same way all split with varying degrees of consistency. With a sample size to scout and prepare for against a relevant opponent I'd expect the veterans on RNG and their coaching staff to be well prepared for this series. They also get side selection. Keep in mind that the further into playoffs we go the more of an edge information has when in the hands of good teams. We shouldn't ignore momentum, such as with JDG here, but information almost always triumphs.

"Gut": RNG -1.5 (heavy)

Confidence: 4.0/5 (handicap), 5/5 (ML)

Value: 0.5 /1.5 (handicap), 0/1.5 (ML)

Handicapped: RNG -1.5 maps @ -154 (6 units)

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LEC Spring 2019 - Semifinals:

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I fired earlier in the week on G2 -1.5 @ +100 for five units and I'll be sticking with that bet. We talked extensively about this one on the cast. G2 are in a very similar situation to RNG except they haven't seen a series in advance from Origen. I expect this series to play out similarly to how Fnatic/Splyce did this afternoon where it's competitive for two or three games but eventually the cream rises to the top. G2 have more or less been coasting for five weeks and who knows what kind of things they have cooked up for this series. If G2 are going to drop more than a game in this series it'll be because the ADC metagame doesn't favor Perkz that much AND he's shown the capability to be a weakness at times. I actually think he'll be the liability if this goes south for Origen but I don't think that's likely. 

It was said a lot on the post game shows for today's match but G2 just have so many unbelievable players and any one of them can steal a game on their own so it's very difficult to bet on any team but the most exceptional to make this a series. I have respect for Origen but they're not even the same species as G2 and I'm not going to shy away and hedge this bet just because we've been burned a few times this week. We're also getting plus odds on the -1.5 when I think, sincerely, that the most likely outcome in this series is a 3-0 or 3-1 (leaning 3-0). G2 are going to smash this series, likely in intimidating fashion.

"Gut": G2 -1.5 maps (heavy)

Confidence: 4.5/5 (handicap), 5/5 (ML)

Value: 1.5 /1.5 (handicap), 0/1.5 (ML)

Handicapped: G2 eSports -1.5 maps @ +100 (5 units)

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NA LCS Spring 2019 - Semifinals:

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Similarly to G2 I fired on Cloud 9 ML @ -110 earlier this week. On the cast we tried to figure out every which way we possibly could why on EARTH TSM were slight favorites (-118) in this series or why this was remotely close to even money. What we boiled it down to was that the elo algorithm that the books likely use saw that TSM have won six straight and have a 2-0 record against Liquid who are likely the top elo rating team based on this season while Cloud 9 have lost to Liquid twice and have only gone 4-2 in their last six. Does that sound like a stretch to anyone else? Look I think we all respect TSM and they could very well make this a competitive series but this line should be closer to -175 or more for Cloud 9. They've had playoffs clinched for awhile, started their challenger team, and TSM have been battling to avoid the cluster until the last week. 

I have Cloud 9 and Team Liquid a full tier better than TSM and TSM a full tier better than the rest of NA and yet they're favored here. Cloud 9 also get side selection. It's NA and we only get to see best of ones so the depth of strategies might not be there but Cloud 9 have looked better to me in every way and that's in no way any disrespect to TSM. Almost every metric is led by Cloud 9.  They have an absolutely absurd 1.13 damage per gold ratio which rivals Invictus' 1.19. Both teams have a surprisingly low ~41% ward clear percentage but that's about the only metric they're close in. Cloud 9 have also not had to show anything strategically in a couple weeks which is a huge edge.

This is one of the best value bets this year and it happens to be in a best of five and involving a team that's really really good in Cloud 9.  The metrics say Cloud 9, the strategic advantage goes to Cloud 9, the algorithm that puts these lines out is just dead wrong here just like it is for G2, and was for EDG. We sometimes lose those but we can't be afraid to bet the value where we see it unless we have good reason not to. In this case we have a ton of reasons that encourage us to. 

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Gut": Cloud 9 -1.5 (moderate)

Confidence: 5 / 5 (handicap), 4.5/5 (ML)

Value: 0 /1.5 (handicap), 2.0 /1.5 (ML)

Moneyline: Cloud 9 -110 (5 units)