Betting: Week In Review (February 12th-18th)

We got absolutely crushed this week by heavy favorites losing but that's the nature of the game. On a few I feel it was misevaluation but others just dumb luck. Let's dive into a few.

Winners:

Moneyline: G2 eSports +103 to defeat Team Vitality

Wager: 6 units (pregame) + 4 units (live @ -174) = 10 units 

Payout: 15.32 units

I'd been the conductor on the "Team Vitality is overrated and will get figured out" train since week 2 and it finally paid off for us. G2 look like one of the best two teams in Europe. They're disciplined, calculated, focused, and have the best player in Europe in Perkz playing at a great level right now. Perhaps G2 will win Europe again.


Moneyline: Clutch Gaming -103 to defeat FlyQuest 

Wager: 3 units

Payout: 5.91 units

A team is allowed to be better than you think and yet still overrated. FlyQuest looked better than I anticipated before the season started with their full lineup (well they subbed a support but that didn't matter too much). Fly and AnDa are pretty good but this team still has holes and they had no business being remotely close to a favorite (they were -114). I should have hammered this one for like 6 unit but I was afraid of what the new FlyQuest could look like. In the future don't hesitate on a read like this. Even if FlyQuest is better than you think this line should have been like a -159 to +118 or something like that. Perhaps do your own handicapping moving forward.

Losers:

Moneyline: Team Liquid

Wager: 4 + 4 + 1 = 9 units

Payout: LOSS

This game legitimately looked like Team Liquid didn't prepare or strategize for it at all. Like they were just going through the motions. As impressive as this team can look at times they really have a lot of mental lapses. Lack of QSS's against a Skarner, giving Skarner away in the first place, letting a team that you could have fought with just roll around the map felt eerily similar to old TSM teams that would just let team's walk all over them and die without a fight. I'm hoping this is just a blip on the radar but I'm now skeptical... maybe it's time to zig when everyone's zagging and go heavy on them next week. This should be a wake up call.

Moneyline: TSM -250 to defeat Clutch Gaming

Wager: 

Payout: LOSS

This team needs to wake the hell up. They have all the talent in the world but I'm starting to wonder if this is a coaching issue or a player issue. They haven't done anything proactively until Saturday's match against Cloud 9 which could have turned into a win and it's like they became afraid to push the envelope after that because it didn't work in one game.

Moneyline: Giants Gaming -233 to defeat Unicorns of Love

Wager: 4 units 

Payout: LOSS

This one was a bizarre performance from Giants. Sometimes a team shows up and another doesn't and that's all this was to me. I don't think this was an incorrect wager at all. The line was about right even for Giants not being a great team. Unicorns had showed nothing at all not even a fight. We now know they're capable of at least anything albeit not much.

Lesson Learned:

1) Stick to moneylines, parlays haven't been good, even small ones, because of all the upsets happening.

I was experimenting with a lot of small parlays with heavy favorites this week and got absolutely crushed on them. I would've hit on 3 different ones had Liquid not lost but c'est la vie. I'll be abstaining from anything greater than 4 and likely keeping wagers extremely light. I knew I was likely going to take a hit on these for the sake of seeing how I'd fair but I'm just punting value at this point.

2) Make sure a bad team is as bad as you think and a good team is as good as you think because best of ones really suck if you're not sure.

Liquid, TSM, Giants... These are teams that haven't proven that they're "elite" teams just good teams. Golden Guardians, Clutch, UOL... these are two bonafied bad teams but one has a fighting spirit (GG), one is actually bad and I just severely overrated Giants (UOL), and TSM has yet to show me yet that they can punish a mid tier team like Clutch who more or less plays to scale.

3) Pay more attention to stylistic considerations and keep heavy favorite wagers minimal unless they belong there.

TSM should not have been as heavy a favorite and I found justification after the fact, as is easy to do in this game. Clutch and TSM are similar teams and one should not have been as heavily favored as they were regardless of my predictions for the second half.

4) Don't overadjust to one weekends events but make some adjustments.

I had TSM finishing the season in first, that's not going to happen anymore so where do we really see them. Are they in the A tier or do they still end up in S tier? Are they B tier right now and end up A tier? etc. Ask these questions for EU and NA this week and readjust.

5) Make your own lines and see how the books come up. If there is a big discrepency attack it aggressively.

I'm going to start putting my "projected lines" without looking at the lines first for lineups for the season. If I know where I stand I won't be viewing from a skewed perspective.

Week Five Roundup:

NA LCS: -8.001 units

EU LCS: +11.58 units

LCK: no games

LPL:  no games

Parlays/Combos: -8.2 units

TOTAL FOR THE WEEK: -4.621 units

Until next time...