Betting: June 20th (LCK)

Still dealing with some limitation. I'll update the sidebar once I sort out how I want to organize it but I have a backlog right now. We're down from the number posted.

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LCK Summer 2019 - Week 3 Day 2

Griffin are playing old school Korean League of Legends to such a ridiculous level that I think if we had this team three or four years ago they probably would have whooped on SK Telecom. I like to compare Griffin to a boa constrictor. They slowly choke the life out of you and all they need to do is make sure with your last stand you don't escape their clutches. I'd say it makes Tarzan's job really easy when he has laners this good but the fact of the matter is that he's probably the best jungler in the world in any region. It feels like he's  ALWAYS exactly where he needs to be. Griffin are so good at what they do that honestly their games can be boring for most people to watch. Their laners just build advantages from being better than you (except, notably, against Afreeca), it takes awhile but the enemy team eventually realizes "hey we need to make a play" then all Griffin, primarily Tarzan in this case, needs to do is realize where that play is happening and how to abosrb or shut it down to finally choke them out of the game. It's not as easy at it looks. There's a lot of creative things you can do in League of Legends but unless you jump out on Griffin you just lose. They might be the best macro team ever in the post-lane swap era. 

Here's the catch though. I don't think that's the optimal way to play right now. The game in it's current iteration is designed to encourage aggression and reward risk. Griffin (as well as Gen.G and SKT albeit worse than Griffin) are trying to minimize risk. Their perception, at least in my opinion, is that "We have better laners than you, why would we introduce more variance to that?" And for SKT and Griffin at least, that's mostly the case. Allow me to use a couple sports examples.

Imagine you had Steph Curry but the metagame in the NBA become one of slowing the game down and taking fewer shots. Are you going to tell Steph to take half the shots he'd normally take? What about if you had Peyton Manning at QB and asked him to throw half the passes? Maybe you have a certain gameplan against a team that utilizes an exposed run defense weakness or you're simply trying to mindgame your enemy but generally speaking you "don't get cute" with situations like this and let your players play to their strengths. Griffin must see it that way.

I find it really interesting that Griffin went from the slow it down, control the game, choke you out, and let Viper carry team that they were when dominating the challenger scene, to the complete opposite of that in their debut in the LCK and are now back to where they started. A lot of people don't know that Griffin used to play the way they're playing now because most people haven't watched their tour of destruction. Griffin literally changed their entire style as a brand new team full of rookies in the LCK and completely smashed the league until finals. Now they're doing it again. Complete 180 degree turn. 

Just because this team isn't playing an optimal style doesn't mean we should start assuming they'll start punting games to bad teams. I'll go ahead and say it because I'm going to eat some crow on this one in this longer post but KT Rolster are bad. "But Gelati, they just whooped on Gen.G!" Yea did people watch those games? The first game was a really bizarre and massive mistake by Gen.G that basically spoon fed the game to KT, then KT did a similar thing in game two, and then Gen.G did the same in game three. Those were not good games and it was not a good series it was just two mediocre to bad teams making a catastrphic error very early. These teams aren't "uptempo" teams now. They aren't "trying to play faster" or creating plays on their own. Three really stupid errors made for three really stupid games. That series taught us nothing about KT or Gen.G except that apparently these teams are prone to these which isn't anything new. 

The reason I wanted to clear the air on that is because I'm firing for a book max 2.5 units on the Griffin -1.5 @ -182. It's a high number but I actually think Griffin are being undervalued here because they have a few game losses and KT just won a series, if you want to call it that. I don't see any way bad teams ever take games off of Griffin. KT Rolster have some players that could hold their ground but to me there isn't a chance in hell KT win this series and I think this is more along the lines of an 80+% chance that Griffin sweep while these odds imply roughly 65%. 

Griffin are one of the best teams in the world and while it pains me to say it with my pre-split power rankings in mind, KT are not good. Don't be fooled by the waste of time of a series you just watched against Gen.G. Unless this team fixes everything over night they'll be back toward the bottom. Trust me, I want to be wrong but KT flat out suck. Will they get better? Yea probably, more time together should build chemistry but they're going up against Griffin here. A team that eats mistake prone teams for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. Don't hold the fact that Griffin are playing on hard mode make you pass on this.

Outside of their really competitive series against Afreeca and what pitted, in my opinion, two of the top three teams in the LCK against each other and challenged Griffin, they've had under 20 kills in every single game. Their average might tip the books to this and while I think this is a low number, Griffin are super disciplined and don't often get down and dirty especially against bad teams when they don't have to. LOVE the unders.

Spread: Griffin -1.5 maps @ -182 (BOOK MAX 2.5 units)

O/U: Map 1 UNDER 20.5 kills @ -118 (0.75 units)

O/U: Map 2 UNDER 20.5 kills @ -118 (0.75 units)

This line is super tempting but I was a bit shocked at Gen.G's performance against KT in that absolutely dreadful series I just talked about. It wasn't just some weird flukey things going wrong it was catastrophic miscommunications and, in my opinion, a poor approach. I think Gen.G 2-1 is the most likely outcome here but frankly I just can't get a good read on this series. I'd be rather heavy on this if it weren't for the fact that Gen.G looked downright awful against KT and tend to play down to their competition. I'm going to cut my wager in half because of these factors and go for two units on Gen.G. My brain and information and research is telling me this should be a three to four unit selection based on the value of the line we're getting and Gen.G's quality up until last series. I also think Hanwha are simply not that good. They're aren't particularly great at anything they're just mediocre at a few things and bad at the rest. Gen.G should be able to enact their slow the game down plan here with relative ease and take care of this.

I'm also going to tag a half unit on each map for the under 20.5. It's an extremely low total but Gen.G games tend to either end how they want them (or with backdoor covers.... damn it) or they just get run over so either way you're somewhat insulated taking the under here.

Moneyline: Gen.G -12 (2 units) 

O/U: Map 1 UNDER 20.5 kills @ -127 (0.5 units)

O/U: Map 2 UNDER 20.5 kills @ -127 (0.5 units)

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Parlays:

Parlay (2): Griffin -1.5 + Gen.G ML @ +182 (1 unit)

Parlay (2): Griffin -1.5 + Afreeca- 1.5 (Sunday) @ +193 (1 unit)

Parlay (3): Griffin -1.5 + EDG -1.5 vs WE (Friday) + Afreeca -1.5 (Sunday) @ +313 (0.5 units)