The League of Legends betting podcast is brought to you by my Patreons 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 morning, everybody. It's currently about quarter to five AM Eastern on Monday, July 22nd, 2024. Getting this out a little bit later than I said, I think I said it was like three to four, but then I'm getting held up with a few things. Quick recap of the LCS and LEC from yesterday. We'll start with the LEC. Heretics vs. Gyanex. Heretics kind of had their first blown lead that actually resulted in a loss of the entire summer split. Seems like a miracle because they've had a handful of leads that they've thrown before, but they've never actually lost the game. They did this time. Second game was one way traffic and favor of heretics. You can make an argument that this should have just been a 2-0 from that point forward, but here we are. Third game was incredibly close to the first 25 minutes of this game. Gyanex won a crucial team fight in the top-river right before Baron here. I honestly can't believe they won this fight. Trimby landed a three-person Alistair Q, but they had a black shield on the carry that mattered. One of the carries that mattered, and Morgana Jungle showed that it was super super potent, and there were just too many carries for heretics to deal with, and that was the end of that. They ended up picking up a Baron and shortly afterwards the game. Yeah, caps off a really disappointing season for heretics, but at least they put up a fight in this one. I would argue they should have won this one. Kind of said yesterday that, you know, one of these teams is drastically underperformed, and one of them has slightly overperformed, in my opinion, but neither of them have been particularly good this year. I guess there's something to build on for Gyanex. They could keep playing, though. Carmine Corp vs. Midline's almost definitely should have won this first game. I like their setup quite a bit more, and they blew out a statistically significant gold lead, but they just couldn't seem to do anything with it. They've looked lost, like they've looked lost basically all summer. Carmine Corp and, man, I can't believe I'm saying this actually navigated the neutral objective setups a little bit better, and that was the difference in this game. Midline's looked like they lost the script, and they've done that a few times this season, not just throwing leads, but they just look like in the mid... It's so bizarre because they were the opposite during the Winter Split. When they looked really, really good and promising, it's like they would get behind in games, and they knew exactly what to do to get back in. They knew exactly how to navigate from a position of advantage. They knew exactly what all the checkpoints were along the map to do, right? They were a really good fundamental team, it was surprising, and then they also had all these weird pocket picks. I don't know what has happened to this team, but it looks like the communications just going out the window, and it looks like they just forgot how to play as a team, quite frankly, and I don't know exactly what happened with them, but this has to be... Yeah, I was thinking about this, like, 10/8. This, this midline's collapse was like very quietly one of the worst, like, meltdowns that I think I've ever seen. At least recently, like, I can't remember a team that looked so promising and so good for, like, an entire third of the season, albeit, you know, Winter Split is usually when weird shit happens, but they looked so good and so promising, and they had this all Spanish roster, and they were doing their own thing, and they had their weird, all their weird picks, but they were also fundamentally sound, and it just kept getting worse. It seems like every time there was downtime, they just got worse and worse and worse and worse, and they were fucking terrible all summer long, and this was kind of the capstone. Um, yeah, I don't know, it was... This was... They should have won this second game, too. But again, it looked completely lost, setting things up. They didn't look like they knew what to do to, like, progress their game state forward. I don't know if this was just nerves or frustration or what, they just looked completely lost, and quite like, it's a stunner. Not, like, it's not a stunner based on what we've seen this summer. It's just, like, the whole trajectory of this team, it was literally just like, "Oh, excited, said it." Ooh, and it was, like, freefall the entire rest of the way, and I don't remember. It's weird because, like, there wasn't really high expectations on this team, and they drastically overperformed, but they looked legitimately good, not even just like, "Ah, there's a team that's getting some wins, and they're hyped up and everything." They were gonna get figured out a little bit to some extent, but, like, they were, like, kind of fine still in spring, and then they just fell off a fucking cliff this summer, man. It's, it's honestly sad because, like, you know, a lot of these LEC teams are aging, and this league is in kind of a transitional period. Last year was particularly bad for this. It was a little bit better this year. There's some, it wasn't a two team league this year, which is good, but, like, you're looking for, like, younger talents come through, and, man, like, you saw it, and it was exciting, and then they just completely collapsed, just a really, really disappointing result, like, for the seat, like, for the year for Mad Lions, not even necessarily for just this summer, like, we all kind of knew they were bad this summer, like, yeah, I think I put in the Patreon post, I was thinking, like, not to spoil anything, but, like, anybody that had seen the wire, I was like, I really felt like making ulti here. I'm like, oh, string. I had such fucking hopes for us. Like, literally, literally, like, that's exactly like how I felt this entire fucking season with them. It's been really bizarre. Anyway, that was the LEC. We'll get to the match in just a minute. Cloud9 vs 100 Thieves in the LCS, absolute shit stomping from Cloud9, as expected. I just, give me all the confirmation bias. I'll lap it up, just give it to me all day long. That's fine. Shop Fivers Energy, however. My God. This was brutal. Not only was this a brutal, just watch, like, watching AT... This felt like... You know what this match felt like? Maybe it's not a good comp, but the absolute meltdown that Brock Purdy had on Christmas Eve after putting... I mean, the guy was going to be the MVP before that game. And even if he just had, like, a mediocre game in that game where he was just, like, you know, maybe one touchdown, one pick, and, like, 250 yards or something. If he had just a mediocre game in that game, he's probably the MVP, but because he specifically melted down there... Anyway, I'm not salty, I promise. Shopify looked really good through, like, the first 30-some-odd minutes of this first game, and they simply couldn't put this away. And it was a series of throws, and recoveries, and throws, and recoveries, and throws, and recoveries. And this game went on for almost an hour. It's the longest game, I think, in any league this season. Multiple Alder Dragons, I think there was, like, six or seven barons in this game, like... And they could not get it home. And it was tragic, because they had an infernal soul in this game, and an infernal soul, when everyone's full build is basically unbeatable. Just... just... I don't know. This was a tilting loss to watch, and I can't imagine how it felt for them. And then it happened again in the second game. They were well in control of this game, and somehow managed to lose this one, too. This was two games that I would say they were probably... I mean, the first game they were legitimately, like, 98% to win this game, and just bungled it. The second game, they were up at one point in this game, 17 kills to seven, and they only had, like, a 600 gold lead. You guys hear me preaching about agnostic economy all the time, and that's, like, my go-to, you know, measurable for what a team is. This is why this was actually a really, really good illustration of that. Shopify have a god-awful agnostic economy. Like, their agnostic gold per minute is, like, mid-1500s, which is, like, abysmal. There's challenger teams with better, right? Like, that's really, really bad. And I know this team is bad, and... but the thing is, like, the best LCS teams that are out there. The best LCS teams that aren't Cloud9 are only, like, 100 ahead of that, which isn't a lot. You know, you look at, like, the LPL, and there's, like, a 200, you know, agnostic gold per minute gap between the best and the worst teams, so... we're 250, rather. So, you know, I knew this going in, and it was just a good illustration of it, but even in that situation, like, they had kills on all the right people, all the money was on all the right people. They were still in control of the game, despite the gold lead not being that big, actually, and they just looked... they just got split apart, and, like, they clearly looked tilted, and this was like... I'm, like, watching the... like, I watched the first game before, like, before it, like, on the... like, while I was eating dinner before work. I, you know, got up, did some work, things that worked to get opened up and everything, and then I caught from, like, 15 minutes on in this game. And... this was, like, this was a tragedy in real time, like, this was, like, such a disappointing thing. You could feel the frustration on the team, you could feel how disappointed they were, and you could kind of feel like the weight of the world on them. Boogie came back and looked really good in both games, especially the first game, and it felt like, man, you know what? The break did them some good, they fixed a lot of things, they looked clear and concise. The opening 30 minutes of that game was fucking tremendous, they were great! They were legitimately good in that first, like, 30 minutes, and then... it just came crashing down, and the second game was just a fucking shit show, too, and... Man, this is like... This is tough, man, like, we lost our bets on this. This was, like, one of those vomit, like, made me feel ill kind of bets, even though I knew who I was getting in bed with Shopify. On the plus side, despite losing the bets, and really, we were 98% to cash this plus 1.5 maps in map 1, and then we had a really good shot to do so in map 2 as well, and still didn't get there, it was just brutal. On the plus side, energy pick up a 2.0, but energy are total frauds, and I think this series did nothing more than illustrated exactly that. This team fucking sucks, too, and this was the absolute correct handicap, I would do it again in a heartbeat, I have no regrets. In fact, if these teams rematched again tomorrow, I would probably do the same exact thing, and I would double down. So, on the plus side, we kind of got some confirmation that energy still, in fact, sucked, and they're going to be easy-fade moving forward because they're finally going to have to play some good teams, and if they're underlines, fucking blow against all the bad teams, I can't imagine how badly this team's going to get their shit kicked in against the good team. So, we'll have our chance to get ours against energy in the next few weeks, so I guess that's a silver lining here. We lost -1.4 units on the LCS, but we still ended up, like, plus, you know, 1.8 or so units for the day, we had a good day, we had a really good day in the east, so, and we landed the one LEC bet that we had. Right, tomorrow, LEC playoffs, the year now, so this is the first match in round four, we're kind of skipping around the group because of the schedule. This one's going to be a best of five between Fnatic and G2. We've seen this a bajillion times before. Fnatic plus 2.48 on the money line, plus 1.5 maps, plus 1.13, plus 2.5 minus 2.87, the minus 1.5 is a plus 4.94, and the minus 2.5, the underdog sweep is at plus 1,245. G2 are a minus 3.19 on the money line, the minus 1.5 maps is at minus 1.37, the sweep is at plus 2.26. The model made this a minus 1.39 fair, meaning no big fair there. Yeah, this is a frustrating one because Fnatic are almost always going to show value in the model. They've shown value in the model, I'm pretty sure, like, the last, like, fucking 10 meetings that we've had between these two teams, and they just never, ever get over the hump. They did get them in the spring regular season. They do have that victory going for them. The summer regular season went to G2. I actually forgot to put that in the Patreon post. G2 won the Winter playoff match 2-1. They won the spring playoff match 2-0. They won the spring finals 3-1. So, you know, net on net for the season, Fnatic have gotten 1-2-3 games against G2. So, G2 are up 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. No, they've only gotten two games against them, so it's 9-2 to G2 on the season across all the different games. We've seen these two face off a million times. This is like the modern El Classico, right? And, you know, G2 seemingly always win. I actually, I was trying to come up with, like, I don't remember the last time Fnatic won. I'm pretty sure it was back in, like, 2021, maybe 2022, but it's been a long time since they've actually gotten G2 in the Best Stuff series. They've gotten them in games, they've gotten them in the regular season, but they have not beaten them in the Best Stuff series in a long time. They've gotten close a few times, but, so really, pretty much everything you can look at, like, numbers-wise, is going to tell you that, you know, Fnatic are a value here, but you really just have to ask yourself, is this time different? Because there is clearly some kind of mental edge that G2 have in this matchup, because Fnatic have just simply not been able to get over the hump with them. I will say G2 have looked vulnerable times this season. It was mostly right after MSI, the beginning of the summer split. They haven't actually had a gold deficit at 20 minutes since trailing by about 1600 gold to Giant X back in Week 2, and that was on June 15th. That was five weeks ago, guys. You know, I know there was, like, time for travel and all that stuff, and there were only single games or whatever, but that was, like, more than a month ago. They haven't had domestic gold disadvantage at 20 minutes in, like, five weeks. Now, coincidentally, the last time they lost a game domestically was the week before that, and those first four matches that they played this summer were all kind of, like, hairy. They trailed badly in two of those. The other one, they trailed to Giant X. They lost three of those, I believe. So that was, like, that rough start, and then they kind of got their ship back together again. Really, the only close games G2 have played this season were in that week one with MSI Hangover, and it was also against good teams, like, SK and BDS. And then the game I mentioned against Giant X and, you know, Fnatic. And then BDS last week was the, like, they looked good in that series. I'm getting all lost in my words here, sorry, because I'm, like, half reading off of my post. I'm kind of tired. Anyway, so, the point I'm making is, in some ways, you could argue that G2 might not be all that much better than the other good teams. And if you look at the numbers, that actually, like, bears out that way. They're just kind of a noobstomper. Like, they completely shit stomped the bad teams most of the time, like, to the tune of, you know, two standard deviation goldies kind of deals, right? Like, these are, this is a team that's going to beat the bad teams, like, badly. Like, they're going to be up, like, six K goal in 20 minutes. And, yeah, so, when they go up against the good teams, they haven't had, like, all those explosive games. They've got, they've got mostly wins still. But, if you look at how they've performed against the good teams this summer, there's a case to be made that, like, okay, they're not blowing these teams out. These games have been kind of coin flip-y. So, you could say the same thing about Fnatic, incidentally. Fnatic haven't had that many great performances against the good teams either. You know, they've gotten wins, but they haven't had any, like, blowout games. Like, their win last week against SK was, like, their first, like, win against the quality opponent. And the last time they had that was also against SK back in week two. So, Fnatic have had a tough time getting wins against the good teams, but the games have been pretty close. So, you know, there's a lot you could make of that. Like, I think you could make a case that, like, maybe there is just a gargantuan gap between the top four teams in the LEC and the rest. It doesn't always feel that way, but it's kind of looks that way. Like, when you kind of look at the results, I don't know, the fact is with this match, you could talk this match up to death. The reality is, they always play each other close and tough, but Fnatic never seemed to get the actual win, and this is going back years at this point. You know, I quite literally can't remember the last time Fnatic took the best of series, and I already mentioned that. Just for comparison, G2 or minus 574 in the spring finals, that was the best of five. They're minus 319 here. Before that, they were minus 229 in that spring playoff, best of three. So, you know, getting a little bit of respect on Fnatic's name, they've been pretty good this summer. But, you know, even if you, like, I'm just concerned about how Fnatic have looked against good teams, and you can include international competition because they looked pretty bad at the international competitions they've gone to, both of them. Maybe they're just not good against good teams. It's possible. I don't know. I think you, unfortunately, this is one of those situations where, like, no matter how rational or logical you are looking at this match, it's tough to, it's tough not to just look at the results, and the results are that G2 always win. G2 just always win this match-up. It's just a matter of, like, how much tolerance for pain you have to me. I think this price is good enough that you just have to bet Fnatic, even though it's gross and it feels shitty because they never beat G2. I think you just have to bet Fnatic some way, because the price you're getting is still really good. It's not quite as good as the spring finals, but I think you have to take, like, the plus two and a half maps at minus 287, the plus one and a half maps at, you know, even money or so. I think it's plus 115 or something like that. I think you could do either of those things. I'm going to opt to take the kill spreads because the kind of games G2 have been playing in this summer, and really, if you look across the globe, the kind of games that we've been getting in this meta game, we're getting a lot more double-digit kills on both sides kind of games. It's bizarre. I think part of it is just the weird Baron dancing and maybe the way of the layout and the LPL, because we see the most games in the LPL with the parody of teams. But, like, anytime we get teams that are, like, decently matched up against each other, it seems like we're getting a lot more of these, like, you know, 15 to 12 kind of games or, you know, 12 to 10, like that kind of stuff. The thing is these two, we have super explosive early games, so this could end up being really stupid, but instead of playing the plus one and a half maps or plus two and a half maps for Fnatic, I'm going to play the plus seven and a half kills. And I'm going to lay the juice three times here, which is maybe a little risky, but I like Fnatic to maybe get a map or two in this series. I think that's reasonable. And, again, G2 only have an average margin of victory of, like, 6.09 kills this summer. They're playing a lot of these, like, aggressive trade back and forth kind of games, and they're totally content to blow open a massive gold lead, even if the score is, you know, 10 to 10 or something like that. They don't care as long as the gold flows. So I'm going to play the kill spread for Fnatic, plus seven and a half kills at -119, -116 and -116 for one unit each on maps one, two and three respectively. I will probably come back live and play those again. If we get to a four and five, I think it's actually pretty likely that we get to a four, maybe a fifth game here. I think the Fnatic plus two and a half is fine as well. I think it's very likely they're going to get a game here, but after that, it's just like, it's tough to really... G2 just always beat them. It sucks. Like, it's literally like the numbers are always going to be premium, but, you know, that's it is what it is. I'm also going to play the over 12 and a half towers at -121 on maps one, two and three for one unit each. So I'm staking one unit, really six units staked in this game between props and Fnatic kill spreads. I am praying that we don't get a complete G2 shit stomping here. I know I'm kind of breaking my rule going against G2 here, but interestingly, G2 have actually gone to at least a 13th tower and almost 70% of their games this summer. Fnatic have done so in 64% of their games. We're up against the 54.7% implied price with the -121. So just the way these two teams play, I like kill spreads. I like tower total overs. I like neutral overs. I like the Baron overs too, even in the face of the current trend, macro trend across the globe. I do think we're going to get at least two complete slugfest in this one, and hopefully we get two of these. I want to get - we really we're aiming to get two and two home. If you want to split this on maps one and maps two only instead of all three maps, I think that's totally fine too, and just try to hit three out of four. We're trying to hit four out of six, so we'll see how it goes. That's going to be it for me. Hopefully I'm not a sad boy as the LAC continues to take my money over and over and over and over again this summer. So hopefully we get a competitive match tomorrow and not a G2 shit stomping, and I will see you then.
