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 evening, everybody. It's currently about 1.32 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, July 14th. Just a quick podcast here for the LEC. I said I was going to get this out in the morning, getting it out a little bit before the Eastern sleep here, getting kicked off at 2 a.m. Eastern. So we have two more playoff matches in the LEC tomorrow. Give me one second. I misplaced my bookmark here. Alright, first up we have SK Gaming - 131 on the money line, -1 hit maps at +218, +1/2 is at -395 against Fnatic, +108 on the money line, +1/2 is at -275 and the Fnatic sweep would be 3-1. Model made this pretty close to market, actually made SK a very slightly bigger favorite. Also flag the over 1.5 barons as a strong play and time total overs as a strong play, obviously those are correlated. This might be a little bit surprising to some people, it's a little odd seeing Fnatic as underdogs, to anybody that is named G2, but I actually think based on what we've seen this season and really in the playoffs so far as well, that this is pretty close to fair. You know, SK Gaming has kind of put together an old-school roster, they play like old-man, old-school League of Legends in a way, where they are perfectly content to play like Ben but don't break defense, right? There's a team that has not given up a significant deficit at 20 minutes, the entire Summer Split, which is impressive. They haven't lost a lot of games this Summer Split, but it's not like they've had to come back by huge deficits in those games either to pick up some of their wins. They're extraordinarily good at minimizing losses, keeping control of the game and not really taking massive losing trades. They will sometimes take a losing trade from time to time, but it's a small loss, like it's not ultimately going to affect things too much. They tend to draft for a late game and they have very good mid and late game decision making, which lets them play in a way that really emphasizes their strengths, they have good in-game leadership here as well. So, you know, SK Gaming, it's not the sexiest looking team, but if you look at like this, not just the roster, I'm talking about like how they play the game, but they're just, they're very, very fundamentally sound and you know, they have an incredible agnostic economy, they create a great agnostic gold differential per minute despite sometimes seeding portions of your early game or taking trades, they almost always trade up. They're becoming like a less violent version of G2, if that makes sense. It's very, very cool to see it's kind of a different evolution, like we saw flashes of this in winter and spring, and it seems like it's finally all come together and they've been a legitimate elite team this season. And, you know, at first it just looks a little funky seeing Fnatic as a dog against anybody, really. I'm not ruling Fnatic out in this contest at all, by any means, but I actually think this is a pretty fair price, and that might be a little surprising. You know, SK, the knock here is both these teams are exceptionally good with the lead, SK have 100% closing rate. They only have a lead in 54.5% of their games at 20 minutes, and I mean they have a good percentage of their games, statistically significant leads, but the main thing with them is that they almost never trail by any kind of meaningful amount. They're very, very rarely behind, and a lot of times they're just up at 20 minutes and they're totally cool playing close games as well. Fnatic, they have a lead in more of their games, and they have a statistically significant lead in a similar amount of their games, about a quarter of them. Also a very high closing rate, 87.5% is incredible as well. So this game to me feels like it could be like Knife's Edge all the way through it for a while, and there's going to be like one big fight that turns things. Whether that's the first Baron, second Baron, maybe a sole fight for dragons. I don't think either of these teams is... Well, Fnatic is definitely more dominant in the early game. The games that they do have explosive starts are incredible. Fnatic did beat SK the first time around during the regular season handed SK their first loss at the time, but since then, you know, we've seen a couple hiccups from Fnatic. They looked a little sketched out yesterday, did eventually get across the finish line, but I think SK are just in better form right now, and I doubt Fnatic are really going to be able to blow a game open against the team the way they've been playing. They're playing very, very cool, con-collected League of Legends, and I think this is actually a pretty fair price. So I didn't have a play on the side. What I did end up playing here is the over 1.5 Barons. I'm going to play that on both maps here. Over 1.5 Barons on map 1 and map 2 for +108 on each, for 1 unit on each. 63.6% of SK's games have gone to a second Baron, half of Fnatic's games have gone to a second Baron, and you're getting +108 on that, so less than a coin flip implied. I think it's possible Fnatic probably jump out in one of these, but I think there's actually a very, very strong possibility that we get both, you know, 2, maybe 3, you know, really, really close games to the first 20, 25 minutes or so, and then this does end up going the distance. As a matter of fact, a lot of the LPL or LEC play-offs so far have had games landing in that 34 to 38 minute range, just had a couple of 40+ games already. The average game time is like almost 34.5 minutes right now. You could alternatively play time total overs in this if you want, but the Baron overplayed a bigger edge. Obviously those two things are correlated, but I prefer the Baron angle as well, especially because SK 10 not to completely steamroll games, they're very, very textbook and methodical about how they win games, so they're totally cool not forcing the issue and trying to speedrun people. So, yeah, I think this is a pretty interesting angle, and this one is kind of an interesting way to play the fact that I think this should be a very competitive and captivating series. I'm looking forward to watching this one. This should be an awesome series. Really, another awesome series. Both these matches in the LEC tomorrow look like they're going to be excellent matches. We have Team BDS+284 on the money line, plus one ahead maps it minus 118, minus one halves that plus 707 against G2E sports plus or minus 371 on the money line, minus one halves that minus 102, and the plus one and half is minus 1129. Model made this much closer to a coin flip, made G2 about 127, 130-ish in that range. So, obviously, the model thinks BDS is going to be the play here. I think, in general, you have to kind of give the benefit of the doubt for a team like G2 who's seen it all. I think they're a world-class team. I think they're incredibly good. I think you have to give a certain amount of respect and give like a manual bump to them when they're in big matches like this. So, okay, yeah, that makes a little sense. Maybe I move my model price from like a minus 130 out to like a minus 160, a minus 175, something like that. The thing is, though, BDS have been legitimately good this season. They have basically the same numbers as G2 across the board. They have a similar amount of, they have a very similar closing rate. They lead in a similar amount of games. They lead significantly into similar amount of games. They trail significantly in a similar amount of games. They have basically the same agnostic economy numbers, both ways. There's not really like a whole lot that differentiates these two. It's essentially like a mirror match in the stats. It's a mirror match. I think, you know, qualitatively, I think G2 have more tools in their arsenal. The trade-off is BDS have the weird curveballs they can throw as well. So, I think G2 are probably going to be, they're like one of the worst match-ups for BDS stylistically. But even when you make all these adjustments, like, if I'm super, super generous to G2 with adjustments, I still can't get this north of minus 200. This price just seems really disrespectful of BDS to me. Like, I know, you know, G2 have had other things on their mind and everything like that, but like, BDS have assembled a legitimately incredible season. Like, these are world-class numbers. These are better than like T1, better than Hama Life, esports numbers. Obviously, the level of competition is different. But, I mean, we're talking about like G2, like, SK and BDS and G2 are putting together like world-class economic seasons. And I know that doesn't always translate directly, and I know G2 are a stylistically kind of a rough match-up, not a nightmare match-up, but maybe the team that's best equipped to deal with BDS's shenanigans. But I just think this number is way too disrespectful. Like, it's giving too much credit to, you know, what we've seen in the past and not what we're seeing right now. BDS also beat G2 when they played them this earlier this season. It kind of smoked G2. It wasn't a particularly close game either. It ended up like being kind of a throw and then a recapture of the thrown ball, like the fumble, and then they ended up winning that way. Ended up being a real bonanza of a game, but like they were up like 2,500 gold in the first 20 minutes or so of that game. Not like game over level, but, you know, a decent amount. Like, the point I'm trying to make here is like, BDS are not, like, they're not a fraudulent team. I don't, like, sure, I think G2 should be favored here. I think it would be lunacy not to make G2 a favorite. You know, they're popular, they take money. They, all of that, right? It would be absolutely lunacy not to make them a favor, but like, even if you look at, like, win adjusted because BDS have only dropped like two games this summer. Even if you look at, like, win adjusted numbers. They're like just as good as G2. So, like, if you want to make a qualitative call and say this is like a 6633, like a two thirds one third, sure. 6633 would be a two minus 200 fairer. This is minus 371. This is stupid. This is downright disrespectful to me. Like, are we really saying, are we really saying G2 or almost 80% to win this game? Because that's what this is saying. It's what, like, 78 and change 79, something like that. The minus 400 is 80%. So, like, are we really saying that? It's a best of three. This isn't a best of five. BDS are more than capable of beating you straight up. They're more than capable of cooking up some really feisty stuff as well. It's just, this number seems out of control to me. And I know I've gotten my ass kicked this season trying too many times, taking too many shots against the elite teams. But I think, like, if you're taking a shot against an elite team with another elite team, I think it's fine. And I can't believe I'm saying this because you guys know that I was super skeptical of this BDS team, but they've done nothing but proved me wrong over and over and over since the end of spring. They, winter, they looked like a one trick pony. I had all these criticisms of whether they could stand up in a best of five once Adam's champion pool got attacked and people started actually prepping for them. Okay, they fixed that problem. They can actually hang with the best teams straight up now. They don't even need any of the shenanigans. They just have them in their back pocket. And over and over and over, every time I doubt them, they fix the problem that they have. All they've done is get better. The team has just ramped into an absolute monster of a team. And even if you want to say G2, kind of in sandbagging summer, sure, whatever, I don't care. Like, this is still too much. This is way too big a price for what BDS have shown you this summer. I hate fading big teams. I'm not going to go too nuts on this, but there's just no way I'm not taking BDS here. So I play BDS plus one and a half maps at minus 118. I'm going to do a net one and a half x stake on this because I think the edge is just too big. This is a bad number. Like G2 might win this match. They might too owe this match, but this is a bad, bad price. I play BDS plus one and a half maps at minus 118 for 1.18 units. And I'm going to put the other 0.32 units to make it a 1.5 unit stake on the money line at plus 290. It's just like that. This is too big a price. It's a bad, bad, bad price. And I think BDS, I might end up coming back and adding a tenth of a unit on the sweep too. I think BDS could shock the world. This is a good team we're talking about here, guys. This isn't BDS from spring or winter. They're not a one-trick pony. They're legitimately good now. They've fixed so many other issues. G2 is a world-class elite team. Of course they are, but you look under the hood right now and you know who else is? It's BDS and SK. So unlike SK, BDS don't spot leads either. BDS are taking control of games. They have a lead in 75% of their games. They have almost a 90% closing rate as well. They have a significant lead, similar rate to G2. If BDS jump out to a lead on this, they could just happen to flip heads in their early game twice and win this series 2-0. They are capable of doing that against the team like G2. So I think this is a bad price. So give me the dogs here and you know what, if G2 end up taking my money again, then so be it. I can live with it. This is a bad, bad price. That's gonna be it for me. I'll be back tomorrow with the Monday Help Y'all Slate.
