January 18th: LPL (China)

LPL Spring 2020

Week 1 Day 5 Recap

Spread: FunPlus -1.5 maps @ -233 (2.33 units)
Spread: TOP -1.5 maps @ +116 (1 unit)
Net: -1.17 units


I more or less recapped this on Twitter but here are a few of the highlights. 1-5 are regarding FPX/eStar and 6 is about TOP/LNG.
1) FPX prolly going to be fine as long as they realize that if you’re never going to threaten to play 5v5 and/or weakside with Khan (something he’s also great at) then having this two top setup is kind of pointless and easily exposed.

2) I need to stick to my own advice of fading faves in the current League of Legends unless they're a clean, disciplined team. Comebacks are more difficult than they were before with all of the tools favoring the team that’s ahead on the map. Resist the temptation to take better teams, it doesn’t matter right now.

3) eStar impressed me with this a bit. They looked like a completely different team than the garbage performance they showed against a poor RW team. That said FPX helped out a lot tunneling on split. Still, well navigated by the new guys.

4) I’m still likely going to be fading eStar against competent teams until they prove they’re good. Beating the former world champions isn’t enough of a sample size especially because that wasn’t exactly the world champs we all know and love we just watched.

5) that said, I’ve seen enough to move eStar up from F tier to D tier for the time being. These are real players and the lack of prep time doesn’t seem to matter much in the current iteration of league and more specifically in the LPL.

6) TOP are clean and very disciplined already which is a welcome change of pace for the LPL. TOP are like catnip for someone like me, they're an excellent fundamental team that I can trust to do the smart thing and then exceptional players put them over the... top... ok I didn't mean to do that I was just trapped by my sentence structure. Seriously though TOP look like they're more or less in midseason form already and it's great to see a team that isn't just running around like a bull in a china shop for a change.

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LPL Spring 2020

Week 1 Day 6

Team WE +284 (+1.5 @ -103)

vs

JDG -433 (-1.5 @ -101)

I mentioned in my takeaways that I haven't been listening to my advice to fade early season favorites and for the most part that's been true but I also mentioned that the exception is with particularly clean or disciplined teams. JDG of old weren't that and it was almost entirely based on the roll of the dice that we had in Imp. That's gone. Loken is about as good an ADC as you'll find on the planet right now and more importantly, brought the stability that this team needed. I've compared this to a -10 to +10 comparison, it's a double swing, and in their first series against OMG we saw that. You could make the argument that OMG didn't look great but I think it was more a matter of that team needing some more time to build chemistry and, a factor that I underrated, that JDG have almost full continuity from last season but with a severe upgrade. I predicted JDG would hit the ground running and they did, I won't hold that against OMG. 

Team WE are one of the few teams we haven't seen yet this season but in my preseason tier list I had them ranked #14 and in my C tier. They had a good showing in the Demacia Cup but I don't want to put too much weight on that. My primary concern with this team is how quickly they're going to figure out their new, post-Mystic identity. They have some degree of continuity from last year including the return of budding star jungler Beishang and they did finish the Summer season strong relative to the rest of last year. WE are a tough team to evaluate because, for many years, their greatest strength was also their greatest weakness. Mystic is a hell of a player and WE spent years building a style to play around and enable him even when that style was suboptimal. WE are a pretty big unknown.

So I know I've been utterly crucified for trustiing favorites and not listening to my advice to fade early season rust and lack of film but I project WE's best case scenario forward and I still see that version of the team struggling against even a subpar JDG performance. I'm going to go ahead and bet the spread here but only for a single unit. JDG looked tremendous in their last match and not only that, but I expected them to hit the ground running because of the level of continuity present by returning four members that have played together for a long time. JDG were embarassed last year and this feels almost like the FPX FU Tour from 2019. This team is a legit contender and if I had to pick the best team in the LPL right this minute I'd say it's JDG with all of FPX's question marks. I had JDG in my S+ tier vs WE in my C tier. I actually see a lot of value in the favorites here but we'll temper our wager due to variance in the game, lack of film on WE, and because WE have so many unknowns. I may end up adding to this later but we'll keep it at 1.5 units for now.

Spread: JDG -1.5 maps @ -101 (1.5 units)

Map 1 UNDER 26.5 total kills @ -107 (0.5 units)
Map 2 UNDER 26.5 total kills @ -108 (0.5 units)


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Royal Never Give Up -256 (-1.5 @ +141)

vs

BiliBili Gaming +180 (+1.5 @ -147)

Another team that we have yet to see in RNG, the winners of the Demacia Cup, make this an intriguing game to handicap. I had these two teams directly next to each other at #6 for RNG and #7 for BLG and in the A tier in my preseason tier list. Both had some questions but also exceptional enough talent to be a clear cut above the bottom teams in the league. 

We've seen BiliBili against Vici already but it's somewhat difficult to figure out what to take away from that series because of how terrible Vici looked relative to expectations. Forge inparticular was awful. BiliBili were more or less clinical except for a weird botched close in game two that allowed Vici a window back into the game despite BLG having superior scaling. Cube sort of bodied Kingen in that game and without that sidelane pressure the Camille wasn't able to create the opportunities she normally would. I'll remind everyone again, Mordekaiser is strong, Cube's Mordekaiser is godlike. This series also reminded everyone just how good Meteor is and why I think that this season he'll present a damn good case for why he's the strongest jungler in the league.

RNG are a bit tougher to gauge. We saw them win the Demacia Cup in somewhat dominating fashion. Betty slotted into Uzi's spot seemlessly and XLB put up an excellent debut performance in the jungle. I mentioned during the Demacia Cup that while XLB looked great replacing Karsa, that RNG would eventually be affected by that loss. Karsa is one of the best to ever play the position and he's still playing at a very high level. So the question is when that will happen and to what degree. Offseason tournaments are one thing, the real deal is another and now teams have some film on him and every bit of that goes a long way. You see this a lot with new junglers, eventually they get figured out and the true greats continue adapting to other teams adaptations to them to stay ahead of the curve. We'll have to wait and see. 

I had these two teams directly next to each other and in the same tier so why the massive line disparity? Both are great teams with great players and, if anything, RNG have more question marks than BLG do. My best guess is that it's a combination of price memory from last year and recent results. RNG did represent the LPL at Worlds and they did just win the Demacia Cup so the price memory angle is definitely in play. I have these two teams graded out as just about even so we're getting a ton of line value here plus we're getting all the underdog and variance angles I discussed in my takeaways preface. These teams should be even money not this.


Spread: BiliBili +1.5 maps @ -147 (2.94 units)

Moneyline: BiliBili + 180 (1.5 units)

Spread: BiliBili -1.5 maps @ +432 (0.5 units)

Map 1 UNDER 27.5 total kills @ -115 (0.5 units)
Map 2 UNDER 27.5 total kills @ -116 (0.5 units)

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Parlays:

Will update this post later if I'm on any.