Betting: FIRST Week In Review (January 18th - 22nd)

I'm going to start doing my week in review on Monday mornings because that's the slowest time of the week and will allow me to take a look back on a complete LCS and LCK week. The idea is to review my strongest and weakest bets like I've been doing with my in-post updates to the betting day posts but with the bigger picture in mind. What can I learn from the mistakes as well as the successes. I'll also tally up my ledger for the week to discuss how much we put in, how much we made or lost, and other thoughts I might have.

Since I started this venture off last Thursday for the first day of EU LCS we had a short week lacking in LCK action which is the league I know the best so this one will be a bit shorter but you'll get the idea. I'll also come up with some kind of neater way to present this as a total in couple of weeks maybe with organized columns and such (no I'm not importing a spreadsheet mine are ugly).

Winners:

Moneyline: Giants Gaming +135 to defeat Unicorns of Love

Wager: 0.5 unit

Payout: 1.175 unit

First bet of my year was more about Unicorns being tremendously overrated than Giant's being particularly great. Value bet a line that should have been very close to 50/50 and profited.In this segment I'll likely focus more on bets that were good even if they weren't necessarily the biggest money winners.

Moneyline: Cloud 9 +108 to defeat CLG

Wager: 1 unit

Payout: 2.08 units

Another example of value betting a grossly inaccurate line. If I wasn't brand new to this I would've slammed a lot more on this but I'm trying to be controlled and calculated about this. Cloud 9 is the superior team in every way imaginable UNLESS their rookie is an absolute dud. I bet this as if I liked Cloud 9 more but didn't trust the rookie when in reality I should have bet this stronger, maybe a 2 unit wager, to represent that I felt that unless Licorice completely sucked they were going to win this game. I'll revisit this one in lessons learned.

Moneyline: Echo Fox -169 to defeat FlyQuest

Wager: 2 units

Payout: 3.18 units

Initially this was a 1 unit wager mostly based on the fact that I pinned Echo Fox to be a clear Top 6 roster and FlyQuest to likely finish in the bottom two. A strong team vs a weak team in every sense. I bumped it to two upon hearing news that FlyQuest would be missing Fly, likely their best player, due to visa issues. Diligent research rewarded.

Moneyline: Echo Fox -143 to defeat Clutch Gaming

Wager: 4 units (biggest pregame so far)

Payout: 2.8 unit

This is how you identify a matchup that's severely lopsided from a strategic standpoint but not to the books. I'm a lot higher on Clutch than most people are but this is just a horrific matchup for them to deal with and I was dead on about it. Huni just ran train on Solo.

Losers:

Moneyline: Golden Guardians +165 to defeat Clutch Gaming

Wager: 0.5 units

Payout: Loss

I justified this to myself by remembering my prediction that this team would "start hot" as most Hai-led AND non-language barrier squads tend to do before flaming out. This team is just a lot worse than I thought. A week one hunch is fine for a small wager but don't rely on that moving forward without evidence or a damn good reason to pick a bad team to beat a good team.

Moneyline: SKT -1.5 at -143 to defeat Jin Air

Wager: 1 unit

Payout: Loss

This was a metagame lesson to learn. Until a team shows you the ability to close fast you can't assume that they will. SKT has always been a slow playing team, at least since season 3 anyway, so why bet on a 2-0 at limited value over a team that's entire strategy is to play late and take coinflips against better teams. This was dumb. The SKT moneyline would have been a smart bet to me but expecting a 2 - 0 with how sloppy they've looked was just incorrect.

Moneyline: TSM -313 (3 unit)

Wager: 3 unit

Payout: Loss

This was a tilter. I would have given FlyQuest maybe a 20% chance to win this game and that's just week one generosity. TSM look terrible. They're not on the same page, their drafts are absolutely atrocious, and the public is really digging into them. I'll talk about this in next weeks wagers but this is a perfect place to strike next week while everyone is down. When we look back I think this loss isn't going to make a lot of sense in a few weeks when TSM is rolling mostly everyone but every dog has their day I suppose.

Lesson Learned:

1) Don't shy away from heavy moneyline favorites:

I got burned really badly by TSM and a bet that I probably should have made but didn't in SKT as a moneyline favorite against Jin Air (phew dodged that bullet). If you look into any sort of sports betting strategy you'll inevitably find something about the success rate of big moneyline favorites. Now League of Legends isn't quite the same as college football where a team can have literally bigger, stronger, and faster guys leaving little up to chance but over time, quality teams are exactly that: quality. I'm not going to be gun shy because I got burned week one. Even if I'm picking only games I like there's a good chance I'm going to lose a lot of those bets to random things like this so if I'm unwilling to make a little bread on big moneyline favorites like this then I'm just going to be slowly bled out.

2) Unless you have GREAT reasons to, do NOT go heavy on a bad team to defeat a good team:

In a weird way that half unit Golden Guardians bet was good and bad. It was good because I had a few factors in it's favor: no language barrier, a strong, veteran leader and maybe the best Western shotcaller of all time, and a team with a chip on it's shoulder already against a new squad with imports. The bad was that I didn't look at player quality and the fact that the imports were not going to have communication issues like usual in that situation. Another good thing was the major lesson to be learned here. If you have a hunch like this and want to get on it ahead of the market that's fine but don't bet heavy on it.

3) Cut your parlay wagers down to smaller numbers:

I'll be listing my combo/parlay results in their own slot but all you need to know for this week is that it almost cut my profits in half. I barely missed on a couple of them but that's the nature of parlays, you'll often barely miss. Keep the wagers down to 0.2 units or less until you build a bankroll and limit large number plays.

Week One Roundup:

NA LCS: +2.383 units

EU LCS: -1.825 units

LCK: +0.32 units

LPL:  -0.12 units

Parlays/Combos: -1.27 units

TOTAL FOR THE WEEK: -0.512 units

I'm writing this after the fact but I absolutely destroyed LCK betting this morning hitting big on ROX Tigers to beat BBQ Olivers but I'm going to include that in next weeks results.

Bets for tomorrows games, if any, will be up later tonight. 

Until next time...
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Preaseaon Predictions Articles can be found here:

NA LCS Spring 2018 Predictions and Preseason Bets

EU LCS Spring 2018 Predictions and Preseason Bets

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