The League of Legends betting podcast is brought to you by my Patrons at patreon.com/jalatiLOL. There, you can find bonus content like in-depth articles on macro trend analysis and league previews, as well as thoughts on breaking news and the podcast picks before the show is released to platforms. You also get to support your creators more directly. patreon.com/jalatiLOL. That's G-E-L-A-T-I-LOL. Good evening everybody. It's currently about 4.45 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, July 30th, 2024. Quick recap from this morning. We had a really, really good betting day today. A very clean 3.0 for a... What was the... I think it was positive. We were up 2.365 units on the day. We hit our three wagers here. Billy Billy versus anyone's legend. We had anyone's legend map to kill spread. They won that map outright. It was a little bit of a roller coaster ride there. They kind of opened up a pretty decent lead. Nothing significant but noteworthy lead. Kind of threw it all the way back. Billy Billy probably should have won this game at that point. Like this was... Billy Billy ended up ballooning... I think it was like close to like a 5,000 gold lead or so. By the time it was all said and done before they threw it all back and anyone's legend kind of won out of nowhere. We had no business winning this bet. Actually the kill spread... We were probably going to cover that even if Billy Billy won. So there's that. But we had no business actually winning the game outright. But we had kill spread so I guess we were okay. Games one and three were one-way traffic for Billy Billy and this probably should have been a 2.0 but hey we'll take it. Game one, LG Diverse, NIP is 54 kills in this first game. This series was an absolute clown fiesta. This was an embelment special. Shout out Matt. Until game three when it wasn't. But yeah this was a fucking clown. The game one in this series was one of the worst games of League of Legends. I think I've seen in... It was hilarious and entertaining but quality-wise it was one of the worst games of League of Legends I've seen in a while. All summer really. This was a bottom five probably. This is a pretty bad one. Yeah there were like five different throws in this game. I don't know this was silly. This ended up being like a goofy 45 minute like LG D should have won this like four different times and then didn't. Second game, LG D kind of ballooned out a really really big advantage early. It was looking like it was gonna be one-way traffic. A little bit of a hiccup but they did eventually shut the door and win that one as well. Game three was kind of like one of a... Game three was a much slower start, much lower combined kills game after the complete circus we saw in the first two. But this was one of the classic LG D wins where nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens. They kept it close and there was a coin flip fight in the mid game and they flipped the game on that in one. LG D are not a bad team. Like they're... Game one was bad. They play bad games. But there's... LG D are surprisingly reliable with a lead. Game one was not a great example of that but they did get across the finish line. They ended up winning this in reverse sweep. They covered the map to... They got the map to Money Line Home and they got the series Money Line Home for us to make us three and all on the day. So pretty good betting day. Alright, moving on to LPL Summer Week 5, day three. This is the last day of the regular season. We do not have a date for the playoffs yet. I believe I'm gonna double check that right now live on air here. I believe the playoffs are probably going to start on Friday. They're probably gonna start Friday or Saturday. I don't think we have an official thing yet. I didn't look on socials. It's just kind of a rush to get this done. But we'll see. I'm pretty sure they start on Saturday but we'll see. Last day of the regular season. Again, keep in mind motivations. Not everybody's playing for everything. I think in both these instances... Oh, I think in the first match, Billy Billy are playing for potentially getting a number one seed. Other than that, I don't think we have any real motivations here. So just keep that in mind. From plus Phoenix plus 4.98 on the winning line plus 1/2, minus 1/2, minus 1/2, plus 11/30, 70. It's Billy Bill of Gaming. When I say 48 on the winning line, minus 1/2, minus 1/65. No lineup changes, but we'll note that way is starting in the jungle for BLG. So Benway, Nite, Alkenon, and then ZDZ is still playing for FPX. Nookie Waycare, Doc Tom and Life. Model made this not too far off market price. But the favored play, which was flagged in both models as a very strong play in both models, was the over 12 and 1/2 towers. I'm going to be playing that in this contest. FPX, do you have side choice? I guess I just mentioned the over 12 and 1/2 tower, so I'll bring that up. In the Ascend group, Billy Billy will have gone to at least a 13th tower in 55% of their games. FPX have done so in 64.7% of their games, and we're getting plus money on this. The number I'm going to read out to you guys is just a placeholder bet. I don't think we're going to get that good of a price. I just ripped these from 365. The market making books have not put the tower total or the other derivatives up yet. So when I get those, I'll be posting an update on the Patreon, so check that out. So over 12 and 1/2 towers, plus 137 maps one and two for one unit each. It's probably going to be closer to 15 if I had a guess. This is a bad number from 365. Again, using this as a placeholder, I'll update later on. As for actual sides in this game, models weren't too far off the market price from percentage standpoint. FPX have side choice, but they still haven't all been really that good against good teams this summer. You look at their underlines, this is still a negative agnostic differential team, like a significant negative. I don't think FPX are all that good. I don't think they figured anything out. They've just had these random spike games where they look pretty good, and then they've looked kind of middling or disappointing otherwise. I think with a 2-0 win here, Billie Billy actually will pass LNG at the number one seed, but it has to be a 2-0 win. Because LNG on the head to head, so they have to have the game differential lead there to not to avoid that tiebreaker. 2-1 win, LNG will get the first seed. Both of them get an extra buy, so the first seed is really only a side choice situation. Like in a finals or head to head match up for those two. I would imagine we get a game effort from Billie Billy here. It's possible that we don't, but just keep that in mind. To me, for the actual side, I think it's darker pass, but just at price, only because they have side choice. If you forced me to take a side in this one, I'd play maybe like FPX map 1 kill spread, plus 8.5 kills or 7.5 kills, whatever it is, but I'm not playing anything on the side in this one. I'll let everybody know on the Patreon what I end up playing for the tower totals. X matches JD gaming JDG plus 165 on the money line, plus 1/2 set minus 1/96. The minus 1/2 is a plus 400 against top piece, but it's minus 2/17 on the money line, minus 1/2 is a plus 150. The plus 1/2 is a minus 6/22. Sheer getting to start for JDG. He's been starting a lot. No lineup changes other than that. Model made this. The full summer model made a plus 174 minus 199, so pretty close to market. The full summer model flagged under 1/2 barons and under 4.5 dragons. Both are strong plays. The model for just the Ascend group. The Ascend group data set made this plus 237 minus 276. Top have been utterly dominant in that iteration of the model. I actually liked top sides a little bit in that one. Flag kill total overs as like a later moderate play as well. JDG a choice for this series. They've had a few off games here and there this summer in this group, but the underlines are still excellent. They have a significant lead in 1/3 of their games. They have a significant deficit in just 5.6% of their games. 80% closing rate is good, albeit not outstanding. The issue that JDG been running into is while their agnostic economy is good, they have a 1700 plus agnostic gold per minute. They aren't creating huge advantages from an agnostic perspective. They rely on a little bit more on kills than some of these other teams are, which I don't normally like. I think there's kind of room for positive regression in this, but that's kind of been their bugaboo. If you had to pick one thing to be picky about with JDG, it's that they've had a couple of games where they've kind of blown leads. And then they've had some other games where they're not exactly grinding advantages out on the map as well as some of the elite teams. That said, JDG, this lineup is still elite. They're still very, very good. They just had a few bizarre games. And they're still putting up a huge percentage of their games, their competitive close games, their early games a lot better than it was in spring. They have side choice for this series. To me, this is JDG or Pass, just because I think the price is right. Maybe I'd play like a map one money line or just to split the map one in series money lines, something along those lines. This is almost certainly a matchup we're going to see in the playoffs at some point. I doubt we see a no-show, but I think it's possible that because this is a matchup we might see and that this match doesn't really mean anything for the standings for either of these teams. It's possible that we see kind of like a, either a no-show or like a, like a conservative don't show anything, don't reveal the good plays or the good picks or anything like that. And we just see like a really boring, like, you know, one team shows up with their full effort and the other one doesn't. Not likely, but possible. So just keep that in mind. The other thing is like when you, when you get these opportunities, like sometimes you see the opposite and you see a team kind of throw out a weird pick just to kind of maybe keep, you plant the seed of doubt for like a draft advantage later on. Like if you just win a game on, I don't know, I'm just making some shit up here, but like if you win a game on like mid crit, like mid-crital sticks or, you know, crit fiddle sticks or some shit, some goofy weird niche pick that they're like, "Oh, holy shit, what is this?" and they have to ban it. You know, sometimes you see that in these kind of things too. So this could either go way off the rails because it doesn't matter or it could just be like a completely un-entertaining matchup. On paper, looking at this slate schedule wise, this should be an absolute banger of a slate in the LPL. It should be extremely entertaining, but it's also possible that because there's not much to play for with these two that we, you know, don't see much that matters. It's kind of a bummer that the standings kind of shook out the way that they did where this match might not matter for these teams, but hopefully we just get a game effort and these are like a playoff preview for both these teams and we get a good match. So no place for me in this lean JDG map one. Moving on to the LCK, we have week seven day one people on the pitch on. I posted the power ratings through six weeks. The only real notable change is that, you know, as you'd expect, Fiorex had been kind of the major, you know, grower, moving up to the standings here. They're now kind of a league average team in a tier by themselves with Katie Rolster who got it hurts my brain seeing them average because you know this team is all margins and not anything actually remotely close to an efforts team. Anyway, I digress. We'll talk about them in a little bit. First match is a banger T1 minus 144 on the money line minus one to have massive plus 205 plus one to have some minus 435 against D plus Kia plus 119 on the money line plus one to have is that minus 256 the minus one to have is that plus three 26. So the model makes this plus 103 for T1 and minus 114 for D plus so it makes the wrong team favorite in this contest. It's tough to disagree with that. Based on what we've seen so far or really particularly of late, the last like four or five weeks in the summer, the last month or so for T1 has not been great. They have not completely free fallen. They've picked up wins where they've needed to. They got wins against KT. But this is ultimately like a rubber meets the road handicap. Do you think we've seen the worst of T1? Do we think they've bottomed out? Do you think we see a bounce here from them? Or do you think that they are going to stay in this rut? Because D plus Kia are playing unbelievably well right now. Just because they haven't gotten across the finish line against huge NGs and your Han was, they've played those teams extraordinarily well. They've just unfortunately been there on the wrong end of also exceptional performances from those teams. They've done really nothing wrong. It's tough to really disagree with the model that D plus should be favored here. If you factor in the T1 half side choice, maybe that knocks them down a peg and this should be closer to a pick them. That's personally where I think this should be. I think this is probably like, yeah, this should be a pick them like split minus one 12s or one 15s or whatever eSports VIG is. So like, I don't, the interesting thing with this one is T1, it feels like they're playing bad because they've set an unrealistically high expectation from the rest of the year. You look at like games one and three against KT Rollster, graded out as their seventh and fourth best individual game grades respectively this season. Their game two against DRX last week was their third best individual game grade this summer. But their game two lost to DRX and the game one, or the game two lost to KT and the game one against DRX were 24th and 18th. So, you know, in some ways you could, and this is just a qualitative or quantitative based on mostly the economy. In those games it's not a perfect measure, it's not a qualitative game grade, I do those separately. So like, in some ways you could point out that like maybe we're seeing improvement, it just hasn't been against good teams. And you know, like they actually graded out pretty well against their two losses against Homolife eSports last week. But if you watch those games, or two weeks or a week and a half ago, but if you watch those games like they just looked pretty off and in one of them they were playing like an early game tempo look and the execution was just not very clean. And when you're playing an execution heavy comp, that's not great. So like, the underlines are still there for T1. They're still, they haven't completely fallen off a cliff, they're not in disaster mode, they're just in a bit of a slump. They're not, they're just not playing particularly well right now, more than they're playing bad. So this isn't a team that's dead in the water, like completely collapsing and everything. I think their fatigue is kind of setting in, they're just kind of in a little bit of a rut right now, and that's all. But I still think this should probably be a pick them, because I think D+ have been in good enough for them that even offside, I think, I think D+ is the play here. I play D+ Moneyline + 118 for one unit, the line actually moved since I was writing this just a little bit. So I play D+ Moneyline + 118, I like it +110 or better, really, really +105 or better, I think this should be a pick them. Maybe D+ short favorites. I'm also going to play the under 4.5 Dragons, this is another placeholder pick, actually, no, this one is not a placeholder pick, because they actually posted these. So I'm going to play Map 1 under 4.5 Dragons at +137. These two teams tend to be really, you know, when they win, they win hard. They don't, they don't, we've seen close games and epic games with these two teams in general, but most of the time in most of their wins against good teams or bad, they are dominant shellackings when they do wins. So like, I love neutral unders across the board, the model flag neutral unders across the board, the model actually flag D+ first blood too, if you want to get spicy and play something along those lines. But under 12.5 Towers, 1.5 Barons, 4.5 Dragons, all very, very strong edges. But the dragon under was the strongest of those, so that's the one I'm going to play, and I do think we end up probably seeing, you know, a stomping in game 1 from one of these two teams either way. So, yeah, D+ Moneyline, +118, 1 unit, Map 1 under 4.5 Dragons, +137, 1 unit. As for now, at least, we have KT Rolster, +323 in the Moneyline, +100, +100, +100 against Homolife Esports, +430 in the Moneyline, the underdogs, or the Homolife Sweep is at -115. Model made this +214, -240, so short in the model, lights KT sides a little bit more, neutral unders, it liked them all a lot, under 4.5 Dragons showed the strongest edge. KT Rolster have side choice for this series. What's our rule with KT Rolster? We fade them as favorites, and we back them as big underdogs. The question I have is, do we have the stomach to back them against the Hamwa team that's more or less playing immaculately right now? Homolife, I can't stand this team from a team building and ideological perspective, like what they're doing, because it's basically putting a cap on their upside by not practicing, and I don't think this team is going to win a world championship or anything like that. They're not even in the conversation, because eventually, unless every other team just plays poorly at Worlds and they end up going and just doing what they do, that's what it's going to take for them to get there. That said, EDG kind of did that a little bit in 2021, so it's possible we see something like that, but I digress. They feel a lot like Samsung blew to me, but that's just me. KT had been kind of getting away with murder in a lot of their games. The reason I say that is they've been getting across the finish line and getting wins, but they've been making a lot of mistakes that haven't been punished, and Homolife are not a team that's going to let you get away with that. I personally don't have the stomach to back KT here. I know you're getting a good enough price to warrant consideration for it. I would actually go the other way in this contest. I think Homol. KT made too many mistakes for me to want to get involved here. I know I've been kind of crushed going against my model, so I'm going to half-stake this, but I'm laying Homolife to sweep this. I'm playing Homolife minus 1 to half-mass minus 1 to 9 for a half unit. I'm downstaking again because I'm going against the model and it's been crushing me this year. The other thing is if you look at the head-to-head between these two, Homolife just owned this team this year. In their last match, we got two of their biggest gold leads at 20 minutes from this entire summer from Homolife. It wasn't even their best game raise, but they were big gold leads from them and they were not close. They allowed four kills in just two games. It might not be that extreme a win, but I think we'll probably see something similar again. It's a little weird playing a sweep offside in the LCK because it means they're going to have to win offside both maps. Homolife have actually been pretty solid offside as well. I just think KT are not that good. If you look at their underlines, this team still isn't very good. They're still a negative agnostic, old differential. They've just picked up a couple wins. I still think they're a huge cut below the elite teams and they haven't really shown well against the elite teams outside of the two T1 series. T1 had been a little off lately, less a month or so. I don't know if we'd call them an elite team based on what we've seen in the last month or so. I'm sure they'll get back to it. I'm not worried about that, but right now they're just not in great form, so how much do those two wins really mean? They get some credit for it, but it's not huge. Maybe KT shut me up and I should have just listened to the rule and backed them as big dogs, but I don't have the appetite for it against this team. Maybe against the T+ or T1, I could get involved with it, but I really don't think KT are that good. We just haven't seen as many of the upside games this season as we saw in spring, so that's going to be it for me today. for me today. I will see you all tomorrow.
