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 16th, 2024. Quick recap from the E-2 match, L-P-L-Sleeved. We had this morning, Rare Adam vs. E-D-G, Rare Adam picking up the 2-1 win, and yet another one of the more sloppy series we've seen. The first game in this series, oh my god, this league. The first game in this series was just even further confirmation bias, whatever you want to call it, of just how dogshit this bottom conference is, I sound like a broken record at this point, I get it, I know. Rare Adam, especially this team, have a history of throwing games, but Rare Adam throw like a 6k+ lead in this game all the way back to 0, almost lose it, but ended up turning it back around and getting there. The second game was kind of close through the first 20 minutes or so, could have gone either way, but once E-D-G turned it, they, you know, vise grip and took control and did a good job with that. Third game was another roller coaster ride, Rare Adam bust out like, I think it was like 6,500, 7,000-ish lead, they throw most of it back on a barren end up. This game goes on forever and ever and ever, ended up being like, I think it was like a 46-minute game, 45-minute game. They were like 4 barons in this game, I don't know, like, they had a pretty strong scaling composition too, and they just, I don't know, I don't know with this team, man. I really don't, I really don't know, it's like they don't know how to win a game sometimes. Rare Adam is such a bizarre thing because like, there's games where they just completely snowball the game, they blow the game open, it's just over, right, and they look, they look really, really clean. And then they have these complete no-show games, and then they've had like 3 or 4 of the use over the course of the split, like, really over the course of the year, where it's just been like a complete clown fiesta roller coaster ride, heart rate monitor, gold graph kind of game. I mean, those that don't remember, this is a team that won from down like 8K, they threw a 10K gold lead earlier this year, they had like a 10K lead at like 28 minutes and lost a game earlier this year, like, I, just always a roller coaster ride, I guess. Second match, we also had more throws, first match, the first game of this match was really, really close, could have gone either way, it looked like, it kind of looked to me, like with FPX's composition, I thought they were in really, really good shape with the Zari kind of scaled up and ready to go, but it's just hard to pull off, they had like Nidalee NAR, which is extremely difficult to play in like the late late game, so they just kind of ran into ease of execution problems, whereas NIP's comp was just like, oh, press all the damage buttons, they just had 4 damage dealers and that's how they played eventually got there, second game in this series, NIP threw an 11,000 gold lead all the way back and lost, so yeah, that's fun, like, what the fuck is going on in the LPL? Like, seriously, what the fuck is going on in this league? Third game was pretty close, could have gone either way, it kind of turned on the first Baron, and it was one way traffic from there, I believe, I'm pretty sure, I can't remember off top of my head, and I didn't write the note that I'm pretty sure NIP got the first Baron and then got ace or something like that, and it took a second Baron for FPX to close, but like, really once they got that, the gold lead ballooned and it was pretty much over at that point So we got our map to home for FPX plus 118, so we ended up plus 1.18 units on the day, which is good, but man, I know the thing with the LPL is like everybody in the lower conference, I've talked about it at Nozium, right? FPX and NIP, FPX have thrown a lot of games this season, NIP have really, really shit macro, so in some ways that match didn't, like, how those games played out didn't surprise me in the least, but at the same time it's like, I feel like a disappointed parent, where I'm just like, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed, you know, like, that's, I don't understand I would just kill, like, I understand these are entertaining games and everything, but for fucks sake, can we get, like, can we get some, some, like, good League of Legends in the LPL for a change here? Please, hopefully we see some tomorrow. Anyway, let's do that. Jump rate to everyone's favorite league, being a little sarcastic there. Week three, day three in the LPL summer, we have team WE minus 280, and I don't know the money line, minus one and a half, is that plus 122, the plus one and a half is at 944, minus 944 That's thunder talk gaming, TT, plus 214 on the money line, plus one and a half, minus 157, minus one and a half is at plus 539 Uh, wayward, Yanshong, Fofo, Ibel, and Mark, for a team WE, Hoya, the Destroyer, Beishwan, Yukao, One, Extended, Feather, for a thunder talk Uh, model-made, team WE, minus 176, a shorter favorite here Uh, model-like TT sides, which makes a lot of sense, given that, you know, I had that money line price Um, why does the model-like thunder talk so much? Uh, the model-like thunder talk a lot, because their agnostic economy is actually very good They're actually the seventh ranked agnostic economy, they have a positive agnostic gold differential per minute They have a 1700 plus agnostic gold per minute The problem with thunder talk, qualitatively speaking, is that they're in negative game scripts, a vast majority of the time They have a lead at 20 minutes in just 25% of their matches, which is horrific Horrific, that's like worse than Breon, that's like OMG level Even worse than that, they have a significant lead in just 5% of their games Not good, not good Even worse than that, the games they do have a lead They only win 40% of the games they've lead at 20, which is abysmal So, thunder talk are a strange team, because if you just ignore the actual game states that they're in, and you just look at their raw numbers They look like a pretty mediocre team, you know? They don't have massive deficits The games that they just play a lot of games that are close to 0, and by a lot, I mean like 70% of their games are close to 0 And then like the problem is like the other 30%, like they don't have huge leads most of the time And in those 30% or in that, in like half of those games where they're in a deficit, it's a significant deficit So it's like, it creates a really bizarre situation where they don't play in a lot of like truly big positive game scripts They play a lot of coin flip games, the games that aren't coin flips are not close Like they're usually getting whooped But you look like they're agnostic And you look like there's certain teams that play that way, where they're not trying to blow the game open early They're going to pick scaling, they're going to give up a little bit in order to scale late, and that's fine We've seen that work in the past, and especially against bad teams that can work The problem is, and normally with those kind of teams that want to play like, I think LS calls it like control decks Like they want to play scaling, slow control, league of legends, keep minimize losses, keep the game close And then win with scaling and good late game team fighting That's a formula You're not ever going to be an elite team doing that, but you can be a pretty good team doing that If you're very good at it And normally the formula we see with teams that are good at that is good agnostic economy and good keeping games close And they don't have particularly, like you don't have too many games with significant deficit You're gold differentials at 10, 15, and 20 minutes aren't large, etc, right? But TT have the good agnostic economy portion of that Where they can grind games and just grind gold off the map and everything They're good at that part, the problem is they just get blown out in too many games And they've thrown too many games, so in some ways TT I think are probably better than what we've seen I think they can't really be much worse than what we've seen because like Like the foundation agnostic economy is the thing I put the most weight on of anything, right? And the foundation there is actually pretty solid It suggests that they should be one of the best or second best teams in this lower conference But the actual like, they're just in too many bizarre negative game states And like I think there's this weird, they're just a very strange team to handicap Because I see what they're trying to do They have a very clear, what they call it, in music judging We used to call it clarity of intent, right? They have a very clear clarity of, like the clarity of intent is obvious, right? We know what they want to do, they're just not that good at it But at the same time they've been in some bizarre game states And over the past year, with most of this roster intact This is like the worst that this team has been So part of me thinks that like it can't really get much worse than this for TT That like there's some signal there that they should be better than this And they've just been a little bit unlucky But I don't want to say it's all unlucky because part of it's them undoing So here's the thing As good as we are, I think we are the best of this bottom tier But I think it's, I think the price is a little too much here And it makes me sick to back this team This thunder talk team that's been struggling so much But like I think this price is good enough to do it So I'm going to split one unit I'm going to do 0.8 units on the plus one and a half maps at minus 157 I'm going to put 0.2 units on specifically the map two money line at plus 161 Just think the price is a little too big, I could end up looking like a moron here But team WE are on a team that jumps out to huge leads either So if they're going to play coin flip league of legends and they're going to spot TT You know, an even game state, TT, hopefully you can get one of these across the finish line for us Second match in the LPL is an interesting one Team or a Weibo gaming plus 218 on the money line Plus one and a half at minus 145, minus one and a half is at plus 586 Again it's top e-sports minus 295 on the money line, minus one and a half is at plus 113 in the end And the plus one and a half is at minus 1076 Same line ups for these two, model made this plus 265 minus 311 So pretty close to market Handicap with this one is pretty simple, but it's going to be personal to you The catch is, if you use the full summer sample, this is more or less dead on the number And that's the numbers I just read off to you If you look at just the start of the actual summer split and you throw away the summer placement stage Maybe you put a little bit more weight on Weibo finally figuring it out Then this is probably a bet on Weibo That's crazy, but yeah In other words, if you think that they finally figured it out, they finally turn the corner Then this is a big, big value on Weibo Like if I use the numbers just to isolate the summer season It makes Weibo like, I think it was like plus 175 So big difference here I think the fair was 175, I apologize So big percentage difference there And Weibo, you give Weibo a bump per side choice in that It probably gets it closer to, you know, plus or minus 155, 160, 150 Something in that range, right? So if you, like really that's what it boils down to If you think that they've figured it out and they've looked pretty good Then I think you can make a case for backing Weibo What I will caution you about, however, is that top e-sports is a team that lost a single map All summer domestically, they made it to the finals of the e-sports world cup They've lost their last four games in a row So I don't think that's going to necessarily be indicative either Like they lost O2 to LNG and they lost the second two games to BLG There's no shame in losing those, especially the BLG match, right? But you're essentially buying Weibo at the top that we've seen And selling top e-sports at the low, right? So, like, just from a momentum standpoint, I would not want to get involved with Weibo here But if you think that they've truly turned the corner Or that maybe you think top are having bad form or some combination of those things And I could see the case for it Just know that you're selling top at the bottom and you're buying Weibo at the, you know, temporary top Maybe Weibo's top, maybe Weibo just breaks out and goes ballistic And they're actually legitimately good and they deliver on all their expectations But if you're skeptical of that, then I wouldn't play them in this match I'm not playing the side here Model flagged the under one and a half barons and the under one and a half dragons here Both these teams tend to snowball games pretty hard If you think Weibo are going to jump out to a lead They're still kind of showing signs of sloppiness So I wouldn't necessarily go to war with them closing a game out clean So I'm not going to play those personally, but the model did flag those LCK, week five, day one, okay, Breon on savings bank, plus one thousand Plus one and a half maps at plus two forty two Minus one and a half is that plus nineteen hundred against D plus key Minus eighteen hundred on the money line, Minus one and a half is that Minus three oh nine Breon, model made Breon plus four eighty eight So, yeah, there's value here But it's a matter of how much you can stomach, how much risk you can stomach Also qualitatively, like Breon have not really looked all that good Despite being chippy on the kill score, which is actually going to be the way that I play this match These two teams This is like kind of a match made in heaven for a kill total over because Damn one have spiked performances And of late, they've actually been pretty pretty bloody But really the whole thing here is Breon Breon are well above league averaging combined kills per minute and per game Especially in the last three weeks, if you take out the first two weeks They're averaging almost a kill per minute combined Their lowest scoring game in the past three weeks Were both 25 kill losses to FHIRX and T1 They've eclipsed 30 kills six times in that span And had a 41 kill game three against the jet lag T1 I think their opponents have definitely played a role in this Obviously T1 being jet lag, that series was a big part of this But they've had a lot of games and FHIRX, they played FHIRX in this span too But it looks to me like after the first two weeks that there was a pretty clear shift in Breon's identity They went from the EOR depressed rollover and die team To a team that's at least going to send it on every play And they've more or less done that every game in the last three weeks The first two weeks they were averaging below 0.7 combined kills per minute The league averages 0.76 And since then it's been almost a kill per minute Which is leaps and bounds ahead of the entire league So it looks like they're kind of playing with nothing loose qualitatively The iTest matches that as well It's kind of makes it more fun to watch They're still not very good but they're at least making entertaining games that create highlight reels The other side of this equation is D+ You look at their matchups against weaker teams They've played against FHIRX, noxium and DRX Who I'm calling weaker teams for the time being They're averaging 0.92 combined kills per minute in six games against those three teams Abidily FHIRX is a very bloody team as well so keep that in mind But there are bloody games against noxium and DRX as well Again 0.92 combined kills per minute against the weaker teams 0.76 is the league average So both these teams in this scenario Well above league average So I absolutely love kill total overs here You can get even money only over 24 and a half kills I got +102 and +105 on maps 1 and 2 These two teams eclipse that total and more than 60% of their games It's also a correlated way to get some exposure to the underdogs And the model showed value on the underdogs anyway So I am playing both maps in this one Model also flagged brian first blood as a light play They were first blood already 65% D+ have 68.4% But you get a +121 price on something that's essentially a coin flip So if you want to embrace that volatility and play that that's fine But I prefer the kill total overs in this one So I played +1 over 24 and a half +102 for 1 unit Map 2 over 24 and a half +105 for 1 unit Second match in the LCK, Qwandang 3x +326 on the money line +105 -1/2 + 796 against how my life e-sports - 434 on the money line -1/2 + 1/15 + 1/2 - 1321 Model made this +218 - 244 Strongest flag plays were tower totals under 12 and a half Qwandang sides obviously based on the price I just said Kill total overs and dragons were light suggestions I didn't ultimately play those Qwandang have shown a little bit of a fight against the elite teams this season But they're still getting completely blown out of the water And about 2/3 of their games against these top 3 teams Really top 4 if you want to count T+ Hamwa after looking like they were maybe experimenting a little bit In the beginning parts of the season here Have kind of gotten back to their bread and butter Maybe they got scared back into their comfort zone After a couple really shaky series against weaker teams They look more or less back in form They're agnostic economies the elite They've been shit stomping all the bad teams It hasn't been remotely close They look back to their full on gatekeeper status I think if you think combo control these wire to wire like I do The under 12 and a half towers My preferred way to play that If you think Qwandang are feisty I think playing like +7 and a half kills Or like the +1 and a half maps Or even map 1 money line is a way to play this Because you're kind of getting variants in your favor I'm playing the under 12 and a half towers -1.64 for 1 unit The reason being Qwandang lead at 20 minutes And just 31.6% of their games And Hamwa are definitely a boa constructor kind of team If you give them any kind of lead Especially against these non elite teams I like this Qwandang team They have an identity and they know who they are And they're okay seeding the early games As long as they don't give up too many big leads And admittedly, despite only elite Despite giving up elite a lot of the time They've kept their significant deficits There are 21% which isn't good But it's not like terrible either I see what they're trying to do The problem is against Hamwa You just can't spot Hamwa any kind of lead The way to beat Hamwa is to jump out early on them And snowball the game out of their out of control Because they're the same kind of team Like they're willing to see the early game To win the late game But if you just give them anything They're just so fundamentally sound That it's really really tough To want to back anybody that's going to be Giving them a lead And Qwandang are very likely to do that So I actually like playing Hamwa In this one I wouldn't play the map spread But I like the under 12 and a half towers At -1.64 for 1 unit And that was my play for that match That's going to be it for me today, I will see you all tomorrow.
