Saturday, February 29, 2020

March 1st: LCK, LCS

February 29th Recap:


LCK: 3 - 1 (+2.74 units)
LEC: 2 - 0 (+2.2 units)
LCS: 2 - 2 (+1.56 units)


TOTAL: 7 - 3 (+6.5 units)



In case you miss Tusin, the support for KT Rolster, 1v2'ing the solo lanes of Hanwha Life to remind you how utterly broken "no farm" or "fasting" Senna is...


Yes that's both of Hanwha's solo laners...

This strategy is far more flexible than Tahm Kench which is the most common variant we've seen so far. You can basically play any "support carry", particularly melees. In this case the Volibear support is already an exceptional counterpick to Yuumi and even better with Yuumi+immobile marksmen but to supercharge it with gold is absurd.  This is a Pandora's box. Yasuo, Olaf, Vladimir, Soraka, etc... there are so many options and they're all ridiculously powerful. Currently the "counters" to this strategy are things like Blitzcrank and Ziggs, people that can reliably burst or disrupt Senna's predictable harass patterns and slow auto attack animation but even those haven't been enough in some cases. This is going to be here for awhile or at least banned.

Origen look like they're trying to push the tempo and develop that part of their game. While I think this is good for them long term it's going to be make betting them a bit of a sweat for a little while. They weren't textbook on some of the dives in this game but I did love seeing that they had the right idea and are pushing the pace. It's a different and refreshing look for them. 

Excel played an excellent Karthus jungle game, managing to play keep away from the Olaf on the side of MAD. An excellent draft gave Excel counters in both solo lanes. I love the Tristana pick against Zoe and it serves double duty as a good ADC vs Kalista later in the game. Well played by Excel.

I don't post it but I put a buck on the Saturday exacta parlay every Saturday. I hit 10 out of 11 legs and had only Evil Geniuses to cash a ~+21,000 parlay... not gonna go too nuts over it but losing on the last leg is a pretty savage beat. The point is this team has been getting way too much benefit of the doubt for having good players. There's simply too much philosophical dissonance to rely on EG as favorites. The players all want different things. I feel terrible for recommending them continuously in a metagame where individual player ability matters much less than overall approach. Until they prove otherwise we won't be taking them as favorites. Maybe as long dogs they'll be able to steal some games but they're just not reliable enough to bet on as a favorite. 

Cloud 9 played arguably their worst game of the split against FlyQuest today. I actually think FlyQuest are actually good, at least for this current iteration of the game. In so many words they "get it." FlyQuest might be even better than I think they are. 

My read on the TSM/Liquid game was spot on in that Liquid should be able to snowball what TSM give them but weirdly TSM decided to prioritize dragon in this game which is something they haven't done all season. Weirdly I think if they were themselves it might have worked out better although I'm not sure. Tactical also looked quite good!



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LCK (Korea)
Week 4 - Day 5

APK Prince +692 (+1.5 @ +197)
vs
Gen.G -1961 (-1.5 @ -287)

Trends:

APK Prince have a single win, a 2-0 vs KT, and have been underdogs in every game
APK have been over +388 (4.88 for your decimal fans) or higher underdogs except against KT where they were +144 (2.44)

Gen.G are 6-1 this season with their lone loss coming to T1 and have been favorites in every game
Gen.G have been favorites of -178 (1.56) or greater against everyone except DragonX

Tale of the Tape:
APK Prince: 
1.08 damage per gold, 50% first blood, 63% first tower
45.3% of wards cleared, 4.2 wards per min
Differentials - Gold @ 15: -1541, CS @ 15: -27.6

Gen.G: 
0.906 damage per gold, 89% first blood, 67% first tower
48.7% of wards cleared 3.8 wards per min
Differentials - Gold @ 15 +1904, CS @ 15 +11.2

APK actually lead the LCK in wards per minute which is kind of wild and their 1.08 damage per gold is rather impressive but when you consider that there are four Illaoi games for Ikssu and that APK's economy stats have been terrible it's pretty easy for that to be a deceiving number. APK are a bit funny. I don't think this team is as bad as a team like Jin Air from last split but with so much parity in the LCK they're going to have a difficult time measuring up. 

There isn't a lot to break down with this game. If you think APK can take a game off of Gen.G it would have to be off of an early snowball and Gen.G have actually been quite good early in the game. Other options would include Gen.G overconfidently leaving up Illaoi for Ikssu or the no farm Senna option and after yesterday I'm not sure any good team wants to mess with doing that. 

I'm passing this but possibly including the Gen.G -1.5 in parlays.

No wager

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Griffin +236 (+1.5 @ -141) 
vs
DragonX -350 (-1.5 @ -102)

Trends:
Griffin are 1-5 as underdogs wth their lone win coming against Sandbox
Griffin are 3-3 as underdogs against the spread (+1.5 maps)
Griffin are 2-5 (6-12) on the year with their two wins against APK and Sandbox
Griffin have gone to a third game in 4 out of 7 series

DragonX are 5-1 as favorites with their only loss coming against T1
The underdog spread (+1.5) has cashed in 4 out of 6 series where DRX were favorites
DragonX have gone to a third game in in 5 out of 7 series



Tale of the Tape:
Griffin: 
0.915 damage per gold, 50% first blood, 33% first tower
45.1% of wards cleared 4.0 wards per min
Differentials - Gold @ 15: -662, CS @ 15: -15.3

DragonX: 
1.04 damage per gold, 21% first blood, 63% first tower
45.1% of wards cleared, 3.7 wards per min
Differentials - Gold @ 15 +1306, CS @ 15  +39.4

If you were to have bet DragonX in the four spots where they were -262 (1.38) favorites or smaller you'd have a ~+17% ROI and that includes the loss to T1. Their economy statistics are just shy of Gen.G who have one more win and two fewer losses. They have the highest team damage per minute in the league.

I've said time and time again that when you are high on a team, like I was about this squad, and then their two biggest question marks end up blowing expectations out of the water then you've caught lightning in a bottle and have to attack. Keria and Pyosik have been absolute studs to the point where I think they've been the most impressive players on DragonX. Think about that. On a roster with Deft, Chovy, and Doran, the two new people have been the most impressive. You could critique that they lost a game each to KT and Sandbox in week one or that they "haven't beaten a good team" after going 1-2 against both Gen.G and T1 within the same three days but you'd be nitpicking. This team is a contender and they're only going to improve.

Griffin, on the other hand, have struggled mightily even though they have a very talented roster. Coaching concerns have come up time and time again and my skepticism about former Jin Air coach H Dragon has somewhat come to fruition. That said, I don't think this team is quite as bad as public perception. This league is very competitive this season and the current metagame can make a team look very bad for even one or two bad decisions in a game. It's not very forgiving. Griffin aren't a bad team, they're too talented for that, but I do think they're struggling to find an identity right now like a lot of teams are.

The trends would tell you to take the over 2.5 maps in this spot with a lot of confidence with both teams going to three games a combined 9 out of 14 instances but I think DragonX are going to roll here. Based on their last few drafts I think DragonX understand the power picks in this current metagame and have developed ways to work around the ones that get through while correctly identifying the most crucial ones to eliminate. You could argue that the familiarity of some of the players and coach might make this a bit of a closer match but to me this coaching mismatch is the most severe in the league and that matters a lot in the current iteration of the game. DragonX roll.

Spread: DragonX -1.5 maps @ -102 (1.02 units)

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LCS (North America)

Week 5 - Day 2

Team Liquid -260 vs 100 Thieves +172
FlyQuest -142 vs Dignitas -102
TSM -654 vs CLG +345
Evil Geniuses -193 vs Golden Guardians +135

Liquid didn't miss a beat against TSM in what I thought would be a great stylistic matchup. Liquid have shown the ability to close with precision this season even amongst all the other issues they've been having. Now that it appears that they have a good grasp on what to ban and pick I'm going to trust them a lot more, even with Doublelift sidelined. His performance will only get better than it was, which was underhwelming so far this season but let's assume we're seeing Tactical again. He was pretty good in his debut but the game had very little to do with him. Broxah was getting a lot done and it's good to see him finally settling in. I know 100 Thieves kind of blew up my spot yesterday but it was more a function of... well, EG's dysfunction. I was able to find a good number and Liquid are one of the only teams I'll lay this kind of money as favorites in a best of one along with Origen, G2, and Fnatic ... maybe Cloud 9 if we ever see anything remotely close to this.

Moneyline: Liquid -215 (2.15 units)(5Dimes)

FlyQuest pushed Cloud 9 to their closest game this season and as I discussed in the recap, I think they might actually be good and not just a hot starter. They've been the only team that's been remotely competitive with Cloud 9 and that might mean something. Regardless I think they roll over Dignitas here. I'm not entirely sure why this number is so close. I expected it to be more in the -170 range. Small value on FlyQuest but still a best of one so lighter to just win a unit.

Moneyline: FlyQuest -142 (1.42 units)

I'm thinking about a lottery ticket on CLG here but for the time being I'm just going to pass on this one.

No wager: CLG/TSM

This number was just too good to pass up. Evil Geniuses are a team I've been wrong about. This might look like an overreaction to yesterday but again we have two teams trending opposite directions. With the hole that EG have dug themselves there's a reasonable chance that we see some psychological frustration setting in. There's already a lot of tension with the philosophical dissonance on this team with everyone wanting to do different things, as the losses pile up and playoff hopes look bleaker that could reach a new level. They're not out yet but this team looks like a mess and Golden Guardians have been looking very good. Closer looks like the best jungler in the league right now.

Moneyline: Golden Guardians +150 (1 unit)(5Dimes)

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Parlays:

Round Robin:
DragonX ML
FlyQuest ML
Team Liquid ML

4 parlays (each combination of these three), 1 unit each, to win ~5.1 units

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