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 afternoon, everybody. It's currently about 4.50 pm Eastern on Thursday, June 27th, 2024. Quick recap from this morning. We had a pretty good day. The LCS is just getting started. Well, actually, we're kind of in the middle of the first game here. But I'll have a recap. I'll mention that on tomorrow's show. I had to kind of like blitz to get this done. I've been kind of like racing in between plays to get my article on this podcast done for that. Before the LCS happens, we are plus 3.263 units on the day. Very, very nice day for us. We'll get started in the LPL with the recap here, working in reverse order. LGD. We played map 1, LGD kill spread, LGD win map 1 outright. Kind of came close to throwing this. That first Baron didn't and ended up getting across the finish line. Some discussion about maybe Billy Billy cooking a little too much with this draft. But the Lucian Mid is something that we've seen quite a bit of. I don't personally think it's bad. I don't like it that much because of the amount of range you're dealing with. And the only really short range mid lane as you're seeing right now is Corky and Corky can kind of punish low range by himself. I get it. You want to play the 80 mids with all the AP junglers being so good. I totally get it, but you have Lucian, Nidalee, late game. If you catch someone in a seed situation, you can hit spear into ult and it's kind of good. But typically Nidalee wants CC set up and she wants prior in a lane, really in 2 or 3 lanes. Billy Billy kind of trapped themselves in this one. They didn't really have priority in top or mid. Kind of neutral lane, so it's kind of dangerous to play Nidalee in that kind of situation. Nidalee you want to play in a situation where you have very, very strong advantage in 1 lane or 2 winning lanes and play in that side of the jungle and the opponent encounter a jungle and try to take the other jungle out of the game or disrupt them. Billy Billy do you end up getting game 2? Got to see the Zara jungle from Shun, Knight, and with the Yona in Knight. Kalista Renata is still a good lane. I'm tripping over my thoughts here folks. I like wrote my notes and just realized my notes were really poorly written for this. Anyway, Billy Billy do win game 2. It was a pretty lopsided stomp in this one. It was one way traffic the whole time. Game 3, Billy Billy just straight up threw. This game was over more or less. It wasn't like 100%, but they were like 90% to win this game. They were up like 6,000 gold. But LGD did stack the first 3 drakes and ended up picking an ocean drake up. I think it was around like 25, 26 minute mark. And you know like BLG had more than enough damage to win this game with like against an ocean soul. I mean like LGD did have frontline LGD. Like Ocean soul did help them. There's a lot of compositions where ocean souls kind of useless, but like Billy Billy had way more than enough damage to actually like get this done even against an ocean soul. Ocean soul is not the death sentence that it used to be and in certain meta's that it can be. They had more than enough damage to get this done and simply just bungled it. They didn't get a ton done with the Baron, the first Baron. It ended up turning into an elder fight. It was honestly looking like a really good setup at this elder fight too. They got a bunch of poke down before the dragons, like right before the dragons spawned. They had really good vision control over the river. They had really choked LGD out of any options that they could have had. It was going to force LGD to flush around the bottom side of the map or to just take a fight. BLG just kept fishing for picks, which is exactly what you're supposed to do. Like Billy Billy played this out like more or less exactly the way you're supposed to. I think they maybe debatably dilated a little bit too long and probably could have like backed out and like tried to flush out LGD like going toward the bot side. It was very obvious that LGD were trying to walk the long way around the dragon like to get to the dragon. That was very very obvious and then LGD just kind of let them do it. Took the fight straight up as a 5v5 like right when the dragon started and LGD just won the fight. And like I don't think this was like necessarily poorly played as much as it was like suboptimal. If that makes sense and it was one of those situations that probably should have been like a 90-10 situation if they played it like optimally. But they kind of just let LGD. Like you're supposed to choke vision out. The other team is supposed to like coordinate their approach from the opposite side. And that's what you're supposed to do in a situation like this. Like you're quite literally supposed to if you're going to force them into one spot. You have to take advantage of that. So I think like BLG probably was fishing for picks in like trying to take advantage of their vision a little bit too long. Probably could have backed out to the river, started the dragon sooner to force LGD to really rush to get there. But instead they just kind of like hung around and waited and then LGD walked all the way around and then it just ended up being a true 5v5 and kind of a coin flip situation when it didn't have to be. So like a little tiny bit of a hiccup. LGD or BLG had the right idea. They just were a little bit slow in execution, maybe asleep at the wheel here. And LGD took advantage of it, won the fight straight up and then got elder and won the game off of it. So kind of a big upset. They were, I forget, what was the price on them? They were, LGD were plus 789 dogs in this match, like almost 8 to 1. So kind of a big upset win for them. RNG, speaking of upsets, we also had RNG win. RNG cashing bets for us. This game won was an absolute panic attack. They tried so hard to throw this game. They were up like 7000 gold, tried so hard. I was waiting for Tang Wan to teleport into the fight instead of trying to win the game, but he did the smart thing and actually ended the game. This was an absolute panic attack of a game, but they got there. Game 2 was kind of like a super low. I think there was only like 10 kills in this game too. W.E. grinded out of win like W.E. does. And then RNG, kind of one-way traffic, one-game three. Got to see the J.S. mid from Fofo, which was interesting. Typically like Ari in that matchup personally, but it was kind of a weird situation there. Yeah, double dog day in the LPL. The last double dog day we had, I don't even want to know how long ago it was. It was a long time ago. It's probably like week seven of Summer, Earth, Spring, but anyway. LCK, KT Rolster, Breon. Breon probably should have two of this match. It was looking like they'd kind of turn the corner in the first game. They kind of just, they couldn't deal with the chem tech trick, which is weird to say, but like their comp was pretty lacking in damage and set up. So the second game they did win, this was a complete clown fiesta of a game as well. They kind of, KT kind of blew out a small lead. Breon really just played fights better. Like KT are terrible around their objective set up still. And then Game 3 was a one-way traffic shit stomping. I think KT had like 26 kills or something. So yeah, this was a really badly played series. Like it kind of, you know, even though KT ended up winning, we got our Breon plus one and a half map zone. And perhaps more importantly, we kind of got a little bit of confirmation on my thesis that KT Rolster might legitimately not be good. This was by far the easiest matchup that they've had so far this season. By far, this is the first softball that they've had all season and they struggled. Like they easily could have lost this match 2-0. And I think it more or less confirms that KT might just be terrible. Like my thesis going into yesterday was like, you know, their underlines aren't great. Sometimes you see specific, if a game state happens a specific way, sometimes you'll see a team that's decent against good teams look really, really bad in the underlines. But part of why I do like agnostic economy and win and loss adjusted numbers is to try to see through the noise of how a game state is to see if the underlines are good and that there's good fundamentals there that you can build on. KT have not had that. They've had abysmal underlines like worse than all the LCS teams. So like I don't think it was just that they were facing good teams. Some of it is that, but I don't think it was just that. I think they might be legitimately bad in this series. I mean, it's only one series, but if they struggle against Breon, what does that say? Right? The other match in the LCK was D+ Key against Nogsham Redforce. D+ Pick up a pretty easy 2-0. G-Woo had a couple really, really sick plays in this match. I tweeted out, "We got to get that kid a team." Honestly, Sylvie had a really, really slick outplay on the Viego to kind of sole-read the Lee Sin Flash kick in the first game, which was kind of cool too. But Nogsham never really had a shot in either of these games. Those two players, I think, are very, very good. They've been the core of this team. I think they're strong players, and I kind of would like to see them on a good team and see how they do. But yeah, not much to say. I didn't have a position in that one either, so. Yeah, LCS is pending, but we'll know more about how that goes tomorrow, but let's get into tomorrow's slates. LPO, week 4, day 5, fun plus Phoenix, minus 194 on the Money Line, minus 1, I had massive plus 162. The plus 1 and 1/2 is at minus 567 against Thunder Talk. Gaming plus 158 on the Money Line, plus 1/2 is at minus 199, minus 1/2 is at plus 408. Shalihu, Milky Way, Cara Doctor, I'm in Life. Hoya, the Destroyer. Bejuan, Yukal, 1XN, and Feather are getting the start for TT again. Feather's been good this season so far. FPX have been a really, really tough team to pin down. They're drastic underperformers, but we have seen a couple individual games that kind of harken back to the plucky upstarts that they were in spring and legitimately a good team. I thought they were legitimately the fourth best team in the LPL. Over the course of the spring split. I'm not going to, so here's the thing with this group. It's what's made this group kind of tricky to handicap. I think all four of these teams are competent. JDG are obviously an elite team. They go without saying. But FPX, Thunder Talk, and EDG have been competent so far this year. Probably all three of them were top half teams. I know EDG really, really pissed me off the other day with that loss, but all these teams look good. Their underlines are good. Well, maybe fun pluses underlines are not that good, but more on that in a bit. All these teams are competent. All these teams have good upside and specifically Thunder Talk are really consistent. I think you can't really hold losses against these teams in this group because I think this is probably the most competitive group in terms of overall quality. If you had to aggregate a rating for the group, this would probably be the strongest one. That said, the interesting thing here is, and it makes sense, actually, but this group isn't decided yet. JDG have clinched. JDG have nothing to play for. We'll talk about that in the next match, but this match is basically everything for fun plus and Thunder Talk, who are trying to get into the upper bracket. Presumably trying to get into the upper bracket. It's an issue I have with this format too, but we'll talk about that at a different time as well. TT isn't an easy out, man. Like, my model made this minus 158 plus 143. I think a lot of people would look at this and be like, "Oh, yeah, fun plus." But fun plus haven't been that good this season. TT is underlying. You look at Agnostic Economy and all that. Thunder Talk had been a better team. That's the only thing that they really haven't edge in, but the interesting thing with fun plus is they've had a couple leads in this split so far that they've just thrown. They have a sub 50% closing rate, 44.4% of their games will lead at 20 have been wins. And they've had a couple significant leads at 20 minutes as well. So it's not like we're seeing some good from them, but ultimately fun plus have dramatically fallen off. And, you know, we've seen flashes. You know, it's anyone's guess when those flashes are going to happen. FPX do have side choice in this series, which I think you have to kind of add some win percentage for. Like, when I first looked at this match, my thought was like, "Make the case against TT rather than make the case for fun plus." If that makes sense. Like, in other words, like, my initial instinct was to take Thunder Talk at price, because I thought these teams were like the way they've been playing this season, basically, like a lot closer to even. You'd give a little bit of an edge to FPX for side choice, but I still think this is like, I can't make a case, a strong enough case for fun plus. I just can't. Not the way they've been playing this season. Like, the case for fun plus is they get back to what they were in spring. And if you believe they can do that, then you should bet fun plus here. If you don't believe they can do that, then you should back TT here. I'm kind of splitting the difference. I'm going to play map two, Thunder Talk have side choice on map two. I'm going to play map two, Thunder Talk money line at plus 133 for one unit instead of the series money line. Alternatively, you could play the plus one and a half maps at minus, you don't know what it is, minus 200. I don't hate that either. But I make their individual map win percentage higher on their side choice map. So I'm going to play map two. There's a case to be made for playing them series money line two. Yeah, I don't know. Models should have small hours and over 12 and a half towers as well for those interested in playing props, but that's going to be it. This should be a really interesting competitive series. It should be informative for the motivations and overall quality of these teams moving forward as well. Second match in the LPL JDG minus 644 on the money line. Minus one to have maps at minus 147 against EDG, Edward gaming plus 452 on the money line. Plus one to have a plus 121 minus one to have a plus 1045. JDG have dropped just a single game this season. And that's against a pretty competitive group too. The thesis on them going into the season was they didn't have to worry about MSI and coming back and adjusting to the patch. They had the whole off season. That's more or less. Bared out. Sheer is getting the start and top lane, but other than that, we're having the same starters on both teams. A model made this a little bit shorter, but pretty much close to price. Billy Billy obviously got stunned this morning by a Compton LGD team. I think EDG or Compton. I know they had that weird series where I backed them and they lost. That two unit play, but like the underlines for EDG suggest that they're actually good. I think they might actually be good. I lean toward the EDG side in this, especially because they need this win. And JDG have nothing to play for. I don't like to get all narrative street. I am definitely not the mayor of narrativeville at all. But, you know, there's a little added oomph to the team that cares versus the team that doesn't. I'm going to try to play that a different way here. I'm going to go. So JDG have been kind of slow starters. Their game ones have been a little sluggish at times. So there's a case to be made for like taking them game one, especially because if I'm not mistaken, I think EDG, depending on the result of the first match, EDG might need a 2-0 or they might be eliminated. I don't know for sure. I haven't done all the iterations. But there's a case to be made for like first map is a better place to play them. But they do have side choice on map two. So if you want to play map one, I think that's fine too. I went with map two, just, you know, process more than anything. But I think situationally map one, there's a case here. I'm going to play map two, EDG plus eight and a half kills at minus 106 for one unit. I'm also going to play the over one and a half barons at plus 132 for .5 units. The reason I'm playing the over one and a half barons, JDG have gone to a second baron. In more than 45% of their games this season. And then EDG have gone to a second one and almost in more than 63% of their games this season. You're getting plus 132. If you average those two numbers out, you know, run a simulation on how many times this game is played out. You're going to get over, you're going to get to a second baron in more games than not. And like just in general, like more than half the time and you're getting plus 132. So that's a pretty large edge on market. For DFS players, I mentioned this in the Patreon post, but for DFS players. JDG have been scoring incredibly well in a lot of their wins. They've landed over the 20 kill mark and six out of their 11 games this season. That's kind of what you're looking for. They don't have the greatest participation rates compared to like some of the LCK teams and some other ones. But, you know, you want to be involved in the game where there's lots of action. I think in a game where EDG are full sending it to try to try to get in, there's a chance this match gets really, really chippy. I like EDG. If you made me pick a side here, I want to probably take EDG plus one and a half maps, maybe sprinkle money line. But just know when you're going against the elite teams that it happens few and far between just because we saw it this morning. It doesn't mean it's going to happen again. But again, JDG very little motivation to really show anything in this match. So you never know what can happen. Moving on to the LCK for Friday morning, week three, day three, B&K fear X plus two 20 on the money line plus one and a half is at minus one forty five minus one and a half is at plus five fifty six. Against Kuangdang freaks minus two seventy eight on the money line and the minus one and a half is at plus one twenty. Kuangdang have looked pretty good this season. They've had a really, really soft schedule. So far they've really only had one difficult test and it was the most recent match against T1 where they took game one and a huge comeback. And then probably should have won game two, but through it. But T1 are obviously a much more difficult test than fear X are. For the most part against the lower half teams, Kuangdang have been taking care of business. My initial take on this match was this felt about right. I had not digested and looked at just the summer data set yet, but I started doing that a little bit of that today. If you use the full season sample model made this plus one forty eight minus one sixty four. If you summer only it was plus three twenty eight minus three seventy seven. So if you split the difference, you're going to end up somewhere in the middle like where the market is. And I think that's reasonable to expect, you know, Kuangdang have had a very easy schedule. But fear X are, you know, probably considered a relatively easy match up for them. I think fear X are probably like your seventh best team. I think they're probably better than, than Breone and Nongxim and maybe even KT at this point. And DRX, maybe not DRX, I don't know possibly. But I do think they're in that bottom half. So Kuangdang should have an easy time with this. But I think this is a relatively fair price just because like if you use just summer, yeah, it's going to be show value on Kuangdang. But again, they've had an easy schedule. But, you know, if you consider fear X another easy out, then why shouldn't they? So if you forced me to pick a side here, I'd actually probably take just Kuangdang on the money line. But I'm not playing a side here instead. And I wrote a lot more detail on this and I actually put my kill analysis chart up on the Patreon post. I'll be trying to do those moving forward as we collect more data and it becomes a little bit more reliable. I did play an over, kill total over in this match. And I think, again, I'm not entirely trying to cater to the DFS crab because it's been brought up on Twitter a couple of times recently. But I think this is a pretty obvious spot and it might actually just be too obvious. I think the field knows this already. Fear X are averaging like 0.941 kills per minute in their games. Almost 32 kills per game combined. I do think there's probably going to be a regression to that. But fear X have been a bloody team all of 2024. They were a bloody team all of 2023. They're a scrappy team. They prefer to scrap. Like they prefer to, you know, drag you into the mud and fight with them. They're a very old kind of old school LPL team, like hands testing and hands diffing every situation. They love doing that. This is also a team that kind of struggles to close games out sometimes. So sometimes they get ahead of themselves, throw a lead and then you end up with these games that have two or three extra team fights in them. On either side of this, this is absolutely a game I'd want to get involved with in DFS. And I will probably play this slate and play a little of both sides of this match. But I did play an ult over an ult kill total over in this one. I played, you can either pick a map and play it or you can split stake it. I played map one and map two over 26 and a half kills at +110 each for half a unit each. You could also, if you have access to somewhere with like ult ladders or extended ults, you could play like an over 29.5 or 30 at like two or three to one and kind of try to get a bigger hit there. But enough of fear X's games turning into complete blood baths that I want to be involved with them in situations like this. Or like kill totals and DFS purposes. The next match is decidedly less interesting. Genji - 4900 on the winning line -1 to heaven -637. Against DRX 20 to one on the money line +1.5 is that +448 and the -1.5 is that almost 45 to one. DRX have been chippy. They've covered the map spread two out of three times this season, but it has not been against good teams. And, you know, no matter how you slice it, the model is going to make it shorter than -4900 or whatever in this match. Someone eventually is going to catch Genji sleeping, but right now they look like the best team in the world and they look dialed in and they look like they're trying hard and Chovie looks like a man possessed at the moment. Really this entire year, he's just been like a cyborg. And just like the way Genji are as a fundamentally sound team, they're a lot less likely to random upset game losses than a team like T1 or Hanwah or even like BLG who sometimes play a little arrogantly. They are the most stable commodity in League of Legends and that's why they're priced this way. Now, I was looking just because of how obscene the price is. This is Dogger Pass. I was looking for reasons and ways to back DRX. You could play kill spreads. You could take a shot on like the plus one and a half maps if you think Genji beat themselves in a game or something or mess around and draft a little too much. I'm going to bust out an old special. I haven't been playing these too much because it's kind of just a tough market to forward predict. You just basically can't. It's first blood. First blood naturally is going to be compressed and forced toward a 50/50. There's a lot of times where it doesn't really actually have that strong of a correlation to winning the game and it usually doesn't end up mattering that much. So like everyone is kind of hovering between the 45/55. There's a huge cluster of data there. Every once in a while you will have a team that is particularly adept at getting first blood. Usually what ends up happening is they're specifically selling out to get it. But like the very, very, very best first blood teams of all time are in like that 65 to 70% rate which is absurd. Sometimes you have teams like I can't remember exactly who I think it might have been like TSM a couple years ago. Had like an 80% first blood rate over two splits or something. It wasn't TSM. I don't think TSM was the tower team. I forget who the first blood team might have been energy. But anyways, an LCS team. Once in a while you will see and then your eyes can confirm it like with the tape that they are full on selling out to get first blood in every game. And they pick their drafts a certain way and they pick their jungle path in a certain way to do it. Most times teams are a lot more fluid and thus everybody kind of falls around that 50/50 mark. Something I used to play a ton and something that wasn't edge over time and over a pretty big sample was when you get obscene money line prices. All of the props are tethered to it. Just like in a real sport. Everything is tethered to the pregame spread or the pregame money line. When you get into these absurd prices you start to see first blood prices like 66/33 implied. Or like something like that sometimes. So when that's the case it's still first blood. Like anybody can get first blood and it doesn't mean they're good or going to likely win the game. Again it's not a super strong correlation. So you can play when first blood rates start getting to like +130 range or more. First blood is usually worth a look just because like it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality of the team. Unless they're specifically bad at getting first blood or specifically good at getting first blood. Everyone's kind of blended in the same. In this specific instance DRX have a 58% first blood rate this season and you know Genji are at 50%. That's not the only that is not enough alone to play a coin flip situation. But at +141. Yeah. You know it's one of my favorite ways and I haven't done these a lot. I don't like playing first blood because it's just super volatile. But I'm going to play map one and map two. DRX first blood +141 for half a unit each in this case. They have been getting good starts in games pretty frequently. And it's not like Genji or like this god like first blood team that are selling out or defending against it perfectly. So I like this one quite a bit. Split stake or you could just pick a map and go with it. Last but not least the LCS and holy shit I just realized what time it is. I'm going to blitz through this Shopfire Rebellion +919 on the Moneyline. +1/2, +1/97, the underdog sweep is at +21/56 against Cloud9 - 1600 on the Moneyline -1/2 and -247. I've talked to ad nauseam about how I don't think any of the LCS teams should be laying this kind of number. And the best of three none of them are consistent enough. I think the only candidate that could eventually be consistent enough to do that is Cloud9. The other thing in this match Shopify has shown you absolutely nothing so far this season. I don't like this is dog or pass. I would lean Shopify kill spreads but I didn't play anything in this one. Second match, Dignitas +200 on the Moneyline +1/2 and -175. -1/2 + 580 against Flyquest -270 on the Moneyline -1/2 is at +128. Model made this pretty close to market, slight value for Flyquest but not really enough to get involved with it. Dignitas have looked pretty good this summer. I would lean toward them. My initial gut intuition here was to take some Dignitas. They've looked pretty good and I think Flyquest are probably a little bit overrated. But I think, and again, I still don't think any of these LCS teams should be huge favorites against each other. Except maybe the bottom teams against the top teams. Dignitas have shown that they might just be pretty good. And they're competent enough. They shouldn't be 33% win a series. Digger pass for me. I didn't end up playing this one. I might end up coming back and playing this tomorrow. If I do, I'll make an update to the Patreon post. That's going to be it for me. Best of luck and I will see you tomorrow.
