Betting: September 3rd (LCK Regional Qualifier Round 1)

LCK Worlds Regional Qualifier Gauntlet

Round 1

Afreeca Freecs -172 (-1.5 @ +154)

vs

Kingzone DragonX +131 (+1.5 @ -204)

Over the course of the Summer season these two teams had entirely different trajectories. Kingzone started strong and after a good performance at Rift Rivals appeared to be stepping into a roll as one of the elite Korean teams before a somewhat abrupt crash back down to earth. It wasn't any one thing that brought Kingzone down but a combination of many. To call their solo lanes subpar would be an injustice to the performances of both Naehyun and Rascal who far exceeded the expectations many of them had going into the split but the truth is in a region with such high level solo lane talent they just didn't measure up. Rarely could they take over games. 

Another thing missing from Kingzone's game later in the season was the outstanding uptempo play we saw from them early. Kingzone were a very versatile team capable of adapting to their opponent and we saw a lot less of that in the second half. Perhaps it was the patches and their focus on Corki and Karma and Azir that did them in but that variety in Kingzone's strategy was lacking. After failing to make playoffs after the middle of the table really elevated their play and Kingzone fell off I think a lot of people are left wondering what to expect here.

Afreeca are a much more linear team that also struggled throughout the season to adjust to patches but unlike Kingzone they had the solo lane talent to steal games from time to time and continued to master their uptempo, priority focused playstyle. Afreeca were eliminated by SK Telecom in the first round of the playoffs and after the tremendous run they put together I'm not sure you can fault literally anybody for losing to this SK Telecom team in their current form. The thing that's worth noting is that they were able to take a game from SKT in that series after losing the first and they did it with a wild Yasuo/Draven composition. Afreeca know who they are and aren't ashamed of it and they're damn good at it.

So that brings us to this series. I feel fairly strongly that Afreeca will win this but with so much preparation time and Kingzone not having to play a playoff series I have to think they're at somewhat of an edge but Afreeca have had plenty of time to prepare themselves and I think stylistically this is a nightmare matchup for Kingzone. During the season I took Afreeca against Kingzone both times they faced each other with the justification that Kingzone struggle not only against talented solo laners which Afreeca have in spades, but against really linear teams as well. Kingzone, much like Sandbox, take a jack of all trades, masters of none approach and try to remain versatile which gives them game against anybody on any given day but they tend to struggle with the hardline linear teams like Afreeca.

I'm going to be on Afreeca here but I can't help but have a weird feeling about it. I'll be placing a moderate wager on the moneyline as well as a smaller one on the Afreeca 2-0 (which I think is the most likely outcome here). I'm going to be waiting a bit on line movement but I'm going to fire on the -1.5 right now and lean toward a moderate wager on the moneyline if it stays under -180.

Moneyline: Afreeca -174 (4 units)

Spread: Afreeca -1.5 @ +154 (2 units)

-----------

Parlay (2): Afreeca ML + FunPlus ML @ +139 (1 unit)