Betting: June 11th (LPL)

LPL Summer 2019 - Week 3 Day 1

We got a little crushed this morning with OMG looking like a team possessed taking a game off our beloved BiliBili Gaming and, perhaps more importantly, Invictus straight up losing to Victory 5, a team I wouldn't be surprised to see finish dead last. I'd like to personally apologize for wasting peoples' money on Invictus as well as my own. This is a team that, for some reason, I refuse to learn my lesson from. Even when they're the best team in the world they punt games all over the place and it's almost never worth betting them to sweep unless it's against a good team and you're getting exceptional odds. For the recommendation I made yesterday I'd like to apologize but the important thing we've learned is that this Invictus team straight up sucks. 

As far as I know Baolan was benched due to public perception and outcry. Whether that's true or not we don't know but with IG saying nothing let's just assume that's the case. Baolan has always been an excellent player but I think even for someone that was higher on him than the public, I may have underrated him. I also wouldn't rule out that this is some sort of weird protest/revolt by the remaining members of IG to get him back because Lucas has looked pretty bad and when good players have a bad player on their team getting a payday they tend to check out psychologically. I'm not sure whether or not this is happening or whether this is just a chemistry thing but IG look completely off right now. Their top trio isn't doing the things they normally do, their drafts aren't terrible but don't really make a lot of sense for the things they like to do, and there is just this general air of "something is off." I'll be avoiding them until further notice unless I'm betting against them but unfortunately I'm not sure we'll be getting good odds on them now as everyone seems to have realized this. We shall see.

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This is a really interesting matchup because both of these teams have faced IG and had different results. Dominus opened their season against IG and should have 2-0'd them if not for a blown lead and then a punted early game. They outplayed IG in just about every facet of the game including laning so much so that I felt that I needed to upgrade them to the next tier up in my pre-season rankings. The interesting thing is how we rate these teams relatively because LNG managed to 2-0 IG. How much weight do we put on those games? Do we put any weight on it? Personally I think both looked great against IG and while Dominus had a challenging loss to EDG, LNG got to face the relatively easy JDG but looked impressive beating a team composition that outscaled them in the late game in all three games.

I'm going with Dominus. While it's impressive to me that LNG were able to outmaneuver late games against JDG with the composition they had I not only think that JDG are a very mediocre team but that LNG more than likely should have ran over JDG in these games and simply didn't push the envelope at all. Dominus on the other hand appear much more adept at playing proactively early and I think playing around priority is the best way to play the game now and pretty much always if you have the ability to do so. Dominus are, with a few exceptions, doing all the right things and playing the game pretty close to what seems optimal in my opinion. They're the better team on film and the only knock against them is actual victories (forgiveable due to schedule), and two errors they made against Invictus costing them exactly two games. While those errors are on my radar and I'm not ignoring them, I care a lot more about the process than the result at this point in the season especially and Dominus look like a much more tuned and nuanced team to me than LNG do. I also think Dominus have better individual players and can play late game with similar champions significantly better than JDG can so LNG won't be able to rely on their opponents beating themselves nearly as much as they did in that match.

Before you ask, I'm not giving any credence to the "snake pit" narrative either. Home field has shown very little correlation with anything in the LPL.

I like LNG. I like them a lot actually and the LPL is a lot more fun when these middle of the table teams are competitive but I think Dominus pass the eye test a lot more for me so we're firing based on my film review, higher potential, and what I expect to be some positive regression coming their way after a tough starting schedule. While it would've been sweet to see them at plus odds I still think we're getting great value for a team that I think should be -130 to -150 favorites. And that's factoring in a lot of respect for an LNG team that looks solid right now.

Moneyline: Dominus -111 (5 units)

Prop: Dominus 2-0 @ +198 (1 unit)

FunPlus look pissed at how last season turned out and absolutely massacred a BiliBili team that I expect to finish in the top 5 this season and got their sweet payback on JDG in under 54 minutes. I'm talking absolutely obliterated a team (BBG) that, stylistically, has the capability to punish their playstyle and they just manhandled them. What a showing! I guess let the FunPlus revenge tour begin! Rogue Warriors unfortunately are about to run into a buzzsaw here and unlike a team like IG that takes games off, FunPlus salitvate at the opportunity to annihilate bad teams. In fact, all of last season, to teams in the bottom half of the table, FunPlus only dropped games to SinoDragon (now Dominus), Snake (now LNG), Suning, and LGD. If you want to count team WE and JDG, teams that barely made playoffs, they had nine series against "mediocre to bad" teams and only dropped four games. FunPlus revel in the opportunity to smash and poor Rogue Warriors, who, by the way, just got destroyed by a similarly stacked RNG squad, are just going to be another victim. 

Even after getting burned this morning and perhaps finally learning my lesson after years of Invictus robbing me on -1.5 wagers, I still feel confident enough to fire on FunPlus here. I rarely fire on lines this high but FunPlus looked possessed and on a completely different level than most of the LPL right now and Rogue Warriors are looking like a team that will, unfortunately, finish towards the bottom of the standings.

(I fired on this on Sunday so I got a better line than is posted. Tail at the new number at your own discretion.)

Spread: FunPlus -1.5 @ -263 (7 units)

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Parlays:

Parlay (2): Dominus ML + FPP -1.5 @ +162 (1 unit)

Parlay (2): Dominus 2-0 + FPP -1.5 @ -294 (0.5 units)

Parlay (3): FPP -1.5 + DOM ML + GenG -1.5 @ +343 (1 unit)

Parlay (3): FPP -1.5 + DOM 2-0 + GenG -1.5 @ +??? (??? pending currently limited)