Saturday, April 6, 2019

Betting: April 7th (LCK Playoffs Round 3, LPL Playoffs Semifinals

LCK Spring 2019 - Playoffs Round 3:


This is an absolutely fascinating matchup! Kingzone look unbelievably good this year (glad I got one prediction right!) but as impressive as they looked in their 3-0 vs DAMWON we need to remind ourselves that all year long we've said SKT and Kingzone both are a tier better than DAMWON and Sandbox. So the question becomes how do these two teams stack up? Is SKT substantially better? A little better? Not better? Let's take a closer look.

Before any sort of discussion of metrics or other thoughts I want to do something that I'm going to try to pay more attention to in my capping moving forward and that's the generalized approach of both of these teams. What kinds of compositions do they like to play? What are their strengths? Are they versatile? How do they measure up against each other? 

SK Telecom have shown a lot of versatility this split. They've tried all sorts of compositions but their bigger picture styte regardless of whether it's a late or mid game focus is to maintain two priority lanes. Super fundamental and rather simple in theory but the bind that their superstar roster puts other teams into during draft is how they're able to get it so often.

Kingzone have also shown a lot of versatility playing a ridiculous number of champions and styles and the late career resurrection Pawn has seemed to have has allowed Kingzone to do a lot of things we couldn't have imagined before this season started. Kingzone are a lot more willing to take risks in draft than SK Telecom are which is unsurprising considering the coaching both of these teams have.  The biggest difference besides that risk aversion level is that Cuzz is much more focused on playing tanks and playing proactive defense while Clid is a much more about getting actual gold into the hands of his lanes through kills or his own through jungle 1v1's. Both junglers are more than capable of playing other things but that's been the general approach by both this season. 

So what does all this big picture stuff mean? The way I see it, Kingzone actually have a higher strategic ceiling because they're much more willing to take risks in the draft. That's not to call them a risky team but they're willing to try something different. SKT aren't completely risk averse either but they're much less so than Kingzone are. If Kingzone can jump out and take game one then SK Telecom are going to be in quite the bind because of Kingzone's willingness to try different things but SKT also have a handful of Hall of Fame players that have the ability to stabalize.

This is an extremely difficult one to call. I think SKT have the higher overall ceiling and I think they are the slightly better team. So many of their advantages have come in the draft, Clid getting lanes ahead, and their bottom lane just generally being incredible but Kingzone's bottom lane has looked like the best bottom lane in any region this split. Deft and Tusin are ridiculously good and they don't miss any edge they can get. To me this series boils down to Clid and Faker vs Pawn and Cuzz. It's close. Before this season I would've said Clid and Faker no problem but Pawn's late career ressurection and history of having Faker's number could come into play here. It's more even than it looks.

Another angle is momentum and whether or not SKT can stop it. SKT have had the film advantage and we saw in the Kingzone vs DAMWON series just how huge of an advantage that can be. SKT are likely going to know exactly how Kingzone want to approach things but SKT are also a much different team than DAMWON is in how they approach the game so maybe the film doesn't reveal much. 

I know a lot of these thoughts were scatterbrained and segemented but it's all a really long way of saying that I believe SKT probably win this series but I think the correct bet is actually the Kingzone moneyline from a technical standpoint. This series is extremely close considering how hot Kingzone have been and I don't think there's as big a gap here as there was. I don't say that just because of the absolute tear the Kingzone have been on either. They've looked like they're in the same tier as SK Telecom the second half of the split.

I'm going to put a light wager on the Kingzone moneyline because I think we're actually getting some value here but other than that I'm going to just enjoy this one. These two teams look excellent and SKT have had a lot of time off to prep so this could be an unstoppable force meeting and impenetrable wall sort of situation.

"Gut": SKT ML (lean)

Confidence: 5 / 5 (KZ handicap), 2.5 / 5 (ML)

Value: 0 / 1.5 (handicap),  1.0 / 1.5 (ML)


Moneyline: Kingzone +149 (1 unit)


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LPL Spring 2019 - Semifinals:


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