We've finally arrived to the beginning of professional League of Legends in the West for 2020! LET'S GOOOOOOO! I'm writing this on Thursday afternoon since I'll actually be traveling this weekend so if I'm a bit quiet on social media for a few days that's why. I'll be watching the games for sure but maybe not in real time. Next weekend I'll be around and active as usual.
I'll be putting all of NA and EU into one post this weekend and updating it as I go along as to not spam your feeds.
If you haven't checked out the Pre-Season Tier List preview posts (and The Gold Card Podcast Episodes!) then I'd highly encourage you to do so as they're going to give a lot more context on these selections than this post will. For the sake of brevity I won't be diving into each and every game as this is a full weekend worth of writing in a single day but I will give you the selections and reasoning from a big picture perspective and for some of the more unique choices in this post.
The Gold Card Podcast can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and PodBean!
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Friday January 24th - W1D1
MAD Lions +345 vs G2 eSports -654
SK Gaming -102 vs Team Vitality -141
Rogue -234 vs Misfits +160
Excel +118 vs Schalke 04 -167
Origen +172 vs Fnatic -260
Saturday January 24th - W1D2
MAD Lions -234 vs Team Vitality +160
Excel +160 vs Rogue -234
Origen -286 vs Schalke +197
Fnatic -422 vs Misfits +271
SK Gaming +593 vs G2 eSports -1408
Generally early in the season, especially on the first weekend, I like to fade favorites. There are a number of reasons for this.
First, assuming most rosters were assembled at a reasonable time, this is a significantly longer preparation time than teams will have for the rest of the season meaning that they are about as prepared as they can possibly be for the first few games. This creates a scenario where these initial games are almost always closer to a coin flip than people want to think. On one hand you could argue that this helps the better teams but typically it ends up being more the opposite. Good teams are already closer to as good as they can be, although there's plenty of room for growth this early. A similar phenomenon happens at the end of the season. Weaker teams that have more things to improve upon or new members getting caught up to speed have a lot more ground to cover and often will. Typically we see the cream rise to the top over the course of a season and a big reason for that is that talent, depth of ability, and superior coaching staffs will make the proper adjustments and utilize game film more effectively than inferior ones but that takes time, game film, and a sample size to take effect.
Second, even great teams and more specifically great players have to figure a lot of things out early in the season. Sometimes that manifests are "rust" for players that have been out for extended time. For those that didn't make it to the World Championships, their last games were in August or September and for many players, especially the ones on bad teams, their last truly meaningful games were long before that. Sometimes it manifests as a "hangover." Players that had extended seasons, such as those at the World Championships which run for over a month into the offseason, will often take time off after that while a lot of players start preparing for Spring in that time which can create a bit of a gap in practice regime.
Third, motivation can play a factor. For a team coming off of a successful season you'll sometimes see them resting on their laurels a bit while a player that's in the last year of his contract or a team that was embarrassed last year will often have extra motivation to start off on the right foot.
Fourth, the game of League of Legends itself tends to be as unbalanced as it will be all year long. Without relevant data from the professional scene upon which a lot of patch changes are made, it's really hard for the balance and design team to identify as quickly what the "broken" things are while teams are very efficient at this out of necessity. This can create extremely high variance metagames where there are a handful of utterly broken champions or strategies which can level the playing field for inferior teams against superior ones allowing these bad teams to "steal" games.
Fifth, if that's even a word, is rather simple and that's the the Western regions are still best of one in the regular season. Over the course of a three or five game series a better team can often lose a game and then make the necessary adjustments needed and come back to win the series. Good teams tend to have a deeper strategic pool and can adapt better. In a best of one you don't get that opportunity. It's one of the reasons the West can be frustrating but that's a topic for another time.
Sixth, pricing is the least accurate early in the year and is almost entirely based on last years pricing at most sportsbooks. Once the sample size increases, markets become more efficient and tougher to beat so early is the best time to attack if you have good reasoning and research to go on.
The last point is more to do with the current state of the game which I may take some time to discuss on next weeks show or in a separate post. Right now League of Legends is very VERY snowbally game. What I mean by that is that the team that gets ahead stays ahead. Comebacks are very difficult. Between the dragon souls, being unable to cancel teleport, two heralds, elimination of comeback experience in the jungle, tower plating, some other experience changes along with the current stronger items the game just gives so many powerful tools to the team in the lead that it's nearly impossible to make comebacks unless the leading team severely botches their lead. It's very close to a one fight game where there's almost always a four or five man fight at the first dragon or in bottom lane that leads to the first dragon and the team that's ahead almost always wins the game. Already in the LPL I've seen far superior teams just lose the game at the 8 minute mark. It's possible that eventually good teams will figure out ways to not take this coinflip or that the game gets rebalanced in a way to get away from this but for the time being, especially in best of ones, I'm absolutely in love with underdogs because of this if the skill level is even remotely close.
There's also historical evidence of early season being a big wild. Fnatic was an outstanding team last year that took awhile to kick into gear but once they did they smashed everyone except G2 for the rest of the calendar year. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of time for the superior squads to separate themselves from the pack.
A few examples of "upsets" and big underdogs winning from opening weekend in Spring 2019:
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LCS Spring 2020
Week 1 - Days 1,2, and 3
Evil Geniuses -167 vs Dignitas +118
Immortals +222 vs Team Solo Mid -313
Cloud 9 -422 vs Golden Guardians +271
Counter Logic Gaming -207 vs FlyQuest +147
(UPDATE: via Inven - Crown is having visa issues so Tuesday will start for CLG this weekend. Tuesday is quite good so I won't add on to my wagers against CLG but I will feel a bit better about them.)
In much the same way that I'm approaching Europe, I'll be on a lot of, but not all of the dogs in North America for many of the same reasons so I'll spare you the details. I'm avoiding Immortals vs TSM and Cloud 9 vs Golden Guardians because I do think the talent edge is big enough that I'll pass on those. I also think Golden Guardians might be ok by the end of the season but might start slow as they develope chemistry with the young, new lineup.
The only really intriguing thing is that the Liquid matches are currently off the board because of questions regarding who will be starting in the jungle. With Broxah having publically disclosed visa issues (as per Liquid owner Steve's Twitter) Liquid's options become Pobelter who was practicing with the team after the original announcement or Oceanic import Shernfire who arrived on January 21st and was practicing with the team (source). I expect Liquid to be a great team but jungle is a tough position to step into and I could see some early struggles, especially if this disrupted their offseason practice. That said, they're still good enough that it wouldn't surprise me to see them succeed anyway. I will, however, bet against that if we get plus odds, especially because both Cloud 9 and TSM are looking to be worthy adversaries at the top of the table. I absolutely love TSM on Monday if they post a line before Liquid's Saturday match at ANY plus odds. TSM are my #2 going into the season and should be able to compete with Liquid even at full strength.
The only favorite on my ENTIRE WEEKEND SLATE is Evil Geniuses who I think should be able to handle Dignitas quite well despite all the week one trends working against them. To me this is more of a stylistic mismatch. EG have big advantages in 4 out of 5 positions and their best player Huni is up against a budding star in Kumo in the top lane so he's going to have a hard time solo carrying Dignitas. Is Huni capable of it? Yes but it's going to be challenging to say the last. Similarly I like EG against 100 Thieves because 100 Thieves are also structured in a similar manner. That one is a tad riskier because I do think CodySun and Stunt could provide a closer bottom lane matchup and Ry0ma is an unknown but I'll lay EG anyway.
I just wanted to mention the FlyQuest pick against CLG. I think CLG are a vastly superior team with a ton of continuity and an edge more or less across the rest of the map but I think V1per is on the verge of being a truly elite talent and gets to square off against CLG's weakest member in Ruin. I'm not saying Ruin is bad, just that he's the weak link here and I could see V1per solo carrying this game.
Moneyline: Cloud 9 + ??? vs Liquid (??? units)
Moneyline: Dignitas ML +197 vs CLG (1 unit)
Moneyline: Golden Guardians ML +147 vs 100T (1 unit)
Moneyline: Evil Geniuses ML -167 vs Dig (1.67 units)
Moneyline: FlyQuest ML +147 vs CLG (0.5 units)
Moneyline: Evil Geniuses ML -167 vs 100T (1.67 units)
Moneyline: TSM ML + 150 vs Liquid (1 units)(5Dimes)
------------------
Parlays:
I'll be putting all of NA and EU into one post this weekend and updating it as I go along as to not spam your feeds.
If you haven't checked out the Pre-Season Tier List preview posts (and The Gold Card Podcast Episodes!) then I'd highly encourage you to do so as they're going to give a lot more context on these selections than this post will. For the sake of brevity I won't be diving into each and every game as this is a full weekend worth of writing in a single day but I will give you the selections and reasoning from a big picture perspective and for some of the more unique choices in this post.
The Gold Card Podcast can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and PodBean!
------------------
LEC Spring 2020
Week 1 - Day 1 and 2
(all lines from Nitrogen but obviously shop around for the best you can find)Friday January 24th - W1D1
MAD Lions +345 vs G2 eSports -654
SK Gaming -102 vs Team Vitality -141
Rogue -234 vs Misfits +160
Excel +118 vs Schalke 04 -167
Origen +172 vs Fnatic -260
Saturday January 24th - W1D2
MAD Lions -234 vs Team Vitality +160
Excel +160 vs Rogue -234
Origen -286 vs Schalke +197
Fnatic -422 vs Misfits +271
SK Gaming +593 vs G2 eSports -1408
Generally early in the season, especially on the first weekend, I like to fade favorites. There are a number of reasons for this.
First, assuming most rosters were assembled at a reasonable time, this is a significantly longer preparation time than teams will have for the rest of the season meaning that they are about as prepared as they can possibly be for the first few games. This creates a scenario where these initial games are almost always closer to a coin flip than people want to think. On one hand you could argue that this helps the better teams but typically it ends up being more the opposite. Good teams are already closer to as good as they can be, although there's plenty of room for growth this early. A similar phenomenon happens at the end of the season. Weaker teams that have more things to improve upon or new members getting caught up to speed have a lot more ground to cover and often will. Typically we see the cream rise to the top over the course of a season and a big reason for that is that talent, depth of ability, and superior coaching staffs will make the proper adjustments and utilize game film more effectively than inferior ones but that takes time, game film, and a sample size to take effect.
Second, even great teams and more specifically great players have to figure a lot of things out early in the season. Sometimes that manifests are "rust" for players that have been out for extended time. For those that didn't make it to the World Championships, their last games were in August or September and for many players, especially the ones on bad teams, their last truly meaningful games were long before that. Sometimes it manifests as a "hangover." Players that had extended seasons, such as those at the World Championships which run for over a month into the offseason, will often take time off after that while a lot of players start preparing for Spring in that time which can create a bit of a gap in practice regime.
Third, motivation can play a factor. For a team coming off of a successful season you'll sometimes see them resting on their laurels a bit while a player that's in the last year of his contract or a team that was embarrassed last year will often have extra motivation to start off on the right foot.
Fourth, the game of League of Legends itself tends to be as unbalanced as it will be all year long. Without relevant data from the professional scene upon which a lot of patch changes are made, it's really hard for the balance and design team to identify as quickly what the "broken" things are while teams are very efficient at this out of necessity. This can create extremely high variance metagames where there are a handful of utterly broken champions or strategies which can level the playing field for inferior teams against superior ones allowing these bad teams to "steal" games.
Fifth, if that's even a word, is rather simple and that's the the Western regions are still best of one in the regular season. Over the course of a three or five game series a better team can often lose a game and then make the necessary adjustments needed and come back to win the series. Good teams tend to have a deeper strategic pool and can adapt better. In a best of one you don't get that opportunity. It's one of the reasons the West can be frustrating but that's a topic for another time.
Sixth, pricing is the least accurate early in the year and is almost entirely based on last years pricing at most sportsbooks. Once the sample size increases, markets become more efficient and tougher to beat so early is the best time to attack if you have good reasoning and research to go on.
The last point is more to do with the current state of the game which I may take some time to discuss on next weeks show or in a separate post. Right now League of Legends is very VERY snowbally game. What I mean by that is that the team that gets ahead stays ahead. Comebacks are very difficult. Between the dragon souls, being unable to cancel teleport, two heralds, elimination of comeback experience in the jungle, tower plating, some other experience changes along with the current stronger items the game just gives so many powerful tools to the team in the lead that it's nearly impossible to make comebacks unless the leading team severely botches their lead. It's very close to a one fight game where there's almost always a four or five man fight at the first dragon or in bottom lane that leads to the first dragon and the team that's ahead almost always wins the game. Already in the LPL I've seen far superior teams just lose the game at the 8 minute mark. It's possible that eventually good teams will figure out ways to not take this coinflip or that the game gets rebalanced in a way to get away from this but for the time being, especially in best of ones, I'm absolutely in love with underdogs because of this if the skill level is even remotely close.
There's also historical evidence of early season being a big wild. Fnatic was an outstanding team last year that took awhile to kick into gear but once they did they smashed everyone except G2 for the rest of the calendar year. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of time for the superior squads to separate themselves from the pack.
A few examples of "upsets" and big underdogs winning from opening weekend in Spring 2019:
- SK Gaming as +265 underdogs against eventual LEC Worlds representative Fnatic
- Schalke 04 as +121 underdogs against Vitality (maybe shouldn't have been dogs)
- Excel as +100 underdogs vs Rogue
- Origen as +131 underdogs vs Fnatic
There were more in Week Two including Vitality as short dogs against Fnatic, Misfits as big dogs against Origen, and SK Gamings vs Excel. I think you see the point I'm getting at here. If you know what you're doing, early is absolutely the best time to attack before the lines can be adjusted.
Most of these bets are simply line value plays. It's a bit unexciting and while I don't have any real "hot takes" about individual games in this spot, when you consider all of the factors discussed above AND the lack of sample size you see some pretty weird lines by the books and they almost always favor the favorites from last year. This is a prime time to strike.
(Note: These are from Nitrogen. There are some MASSIVE discrepencies between their match moneylines and game one moneylines. The game 1 ML is who has the most kills on that map. The win with fewer kills happens so few and far between that you should just take these if the discrepency is big enough. Those indicated as "Map 1" you can find it on that tab)
Kill Total: SK/Vitality OVER 27.5 kills @ +100 (0.5 units)
Moneyline: Excel ML +118 vs Schalke 04 (1 unit)
Moneyline: Origen ML +172 vs Fnatic (1 unit)
Moneyline: Map 1 Misfits ML +183 vs Rogue (1 unit)
Kill Total: Misfits/Rogue OVER 26.5 kills @ +101 (0.5 units)
Moneyline: Vitality ML +160 vs MAD Lions (1 unit)
Moneyline: Schalke 04 ML +197 vs Origen (1 unit)
Moneyline: Map 1 Excel ML +216 vs Rogue (1 unit)
Moneyline: Map 1 Misfits ML +327 vs Fnatic (1 unit)
I'm more or less playing every single underdog except for SK Gaming vs Vitality because its at minus odds (bummer because it was +150 when we recorded the podcast and it was my pick of the week then...) and those facing G2 eSports who I think are going to come out in full on New England Patriots style "FU" Mode and smash after being embarrassed in the World Finals. If you want to go a little wild you can add half a unit to Schalke ML vs Origen and Vitality ML vs MAD, and Origen ML vs Fnatic because those are my most likely to "upset" on this slate.
I'll be updating this post as kill totals are posted so check back closer to game time, only a few are up right now and only a few that I like so far. I think with a juiced 25.5 set on most of these matches, particularly against the bottom half teams, I think the number is way too low. Europe tends to be pretty close to the LPL in terms of kill totals in games and if the LPL is any indication these lines should probably be in the 27.5 or 28.5 range as there have been a lot of high kill games between lower table teams. Under when good teams are battling, over when bad teams are battling. The current state of the game encourages tons of fighting. The biggest point in the game is the first fight and the ONLY way to come back is to FORCE FIGHTS. It's a match made in heaven.
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LCS Spring 2020
Week 1 - Days 1,2, and 3
Saturday January 25th - W1D1
Cloud 9 vs Team Liquid (OTB)
Dignitas +197 vs Counter Logic Gaming -287
Golden Guardians +147 vs 100 Thieves -207
FlyQuest -128 vs Immortals -113
Sunday January 26th - W1D2
Immortals +222 vs Team Solo Mid -313
Cloud 9 -422 vs Golden Guardians +271
Counter Logic Gaming -207 vs FlyQuest +147
Monday January 26th - W1D3
Evil Geniuses -167 vs 100 Thieves +118
Team Solo Mid vs Team Liquid (OTB)
(UPDATE: via Inven - Crown is having visa issues so Tuesday will start for CLG this weekend. Tuesday is quite good so I won't add on to my wagers against CLG but I will feel a bit better about them.)
In much the same way that I'm approaching Europe, I'll be on a lot of, but not all of the dogs in North America for many of the same reasons so I'll spare you the details. I'm avoiding Immortals vs TSM and Cloud 9 vs Golden Guardians because I do think the talent edge is big enough that I'll pass on those. I also think Golden Guardians might be ok by the end of the season but might start slow as they develope chemistry with the young, new lineup.
The only really intriguing thing is that the Liquid matches are currently off the board because of questions regarding who will be starting in the jungle. With Broxah having publically disclosed visa issues (as per Liquid owner Steve's Twitter) Liquid's options become Pobelter who was practicing with the team after the original announcement or Oceanic import Shernfire who arrived on January 21st and was practicing with the team (source). I expect Liquid to be a great team but jungle is a tough position to step into and I could see some early struggles, especially if this disrupted their offseason practice. That said, they're still good enough that it wouldn't surprise me to see them succeed anyway. I will, however, bet against that if we get plus odds, especially because both Cloud 9 and TSM are looking to be worthy adversaries at the top of the table. I absolutely love TSM on Monday if they post a line before Liquid's Saturday match at ANY plus odds. TSM are my #2 going into the season and should be able to compete with Liquid even at full strength.
The only favorite on my ENTIRE WEEKEND SLATE is Evil Geniuses who I think should be able to handle Dignitas quite well despite all the week one trends working against them. To me this is more of a stylistic mismatch. EG have big advantages in 4 out of 5 positions and their best player Huni is up against a budding star in Kumo in the top lane so he's going to have a hard time solo carrying Dignitas. Is Huni capable of it? Yes but it's going to be challenging to say the last. Similarly I like EG against 100 Thieves because 100 Thieves are also structured in a similar manner. That one is a tad riskier because I do think CodySun and Stunt could provide a closer bottom lane matchup and Ry0ma is an unknown but I'll lay EG anyway.
I just wanted to mention the FlyQuest pick against CLG. I think CLG are a vastly superior team with a ton of continuity and an edge more or less across the rest of the map but I think V1per is on the verge of being a truly elite talent and gets to square off against CLG's weakest member in Ruin. I'm not saying Ruin is bad, just that he's the weak link here and I could see V1per solo carrying this game.
Moneyline: Cloud 9 + ??? vs Liquid (??? units)
Moneyline: Dignitas ML +197 vs CLG (1 unit)
Moneyline: Golden Guardians ML +147 vs 100T (1 unit)
Moneyline: Evil Geniuses ML -167 vs Dig (1.67 units)
Moneyline: FlyQuest ML +147 vs CLG (0.5 units)
Moneyline: Evil Geniuses ML -167 vs 100T (1.67 units)
Moneyline: TSM ML + 150 vs Liquid (1 units)(5Dimes)
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Parlays:
Will update this post later if I'm on any.
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