The League of Legends betting podcast is brought to you by my patrons at patreon.com/jilladellol. 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/jilladell that's G-E-L-A-T-I-L-L. Good evening everybody. I'm currently a little bit after 5 p.m. eastern on Wednesday, my dudes June 26th, 2024. I'm going to be just real brief with the recap because I am very short on time right now. I've got a little bit of a late start today. I had to run some errands and then I was having internet issues. Anyway, real quick, we ended up just down for the day. Wasn't pretty. Didn't like it. LNG, OMG went way over in the first game, didn't like that play, and rare atom were competitive in actually both of their games against top esports but couldn't get across the finish line in either, which was a bummer, but the fact that it was live was interesting. DRX covered their kill spread, which was in game 1, which was the only win I had yesterday. Hanhua had a chance in game 2, they were probably like 60/40 to win game 2, and just couldn't get that one across the finish line, so it wasn't really a good day. We had chances with both the dogs, but when you're backing almost all underdogs in a day, especially a couple of really big underdogs, you can't really expect to win those. You're just trying to, over the long term, get more of those right than the markets implying, and that's ultimately all we're trying to do here is assess risk rewards. Yeah, short recap today, I'm going to go right into the games though. First of all, LPL Thursday morning, week 4, day 4, again, keep in mind some of these matches are meaningless, some of them aren't. If that's something that you draw interest from the motivational spot, I don't usually put too much weight on it unless it's very clear and obvious, but just wanted to mention that. All right, RNG plus 375 on the money line, we're all gonna give up, plus 1 and 1/2 maps at plus 108, minus 1/2 is a plus 908 against Team WE, minus 513 on the money line, minus 1 and 1/2, minus 130, plus 1 and 1/2, minus 1575. Team WE are notably starting ABLE here. They picked ABLE up in the few days off that they had, and they're gonna be starting ABLE at AD Carry. They apparently just were not happy with their AD Carry performance in this season, which is just bizarre to me. I talked about this a little bit in the esports department discord, but ABLE is not really a stylistic fit for this team. I think he might be better. I don't think his ceiling games are better than either of the two AD Carrys to be started this season, but his floor games are just as bad or worse. ABLE is a bit of a specialist, he plays his most famous pick is his pocket pick Samira, but he plays really, really aggressive picks, lane dominant picks. If he's not playing those and not getting ahead in games, he's kind of worse than most AD Carry players are in the LPL, I think he's a below average carry if that's the case. When he's on his pocket picks, I think he's good, but I don't think he's an elite tier AD Carry or anything like that on his pocket picks. This is kind of a strange move, and the reason I say it's a strange move is because, yeah, while none of the AD Carrys on WE have really been good this season, this is a team that wants to play like a more methodical controlled game, and he's not the kind of player that you would want for that kind of situation, he's the kind of player you want on like a snowball team, like a team like Rare Adam probably wants somebody like him that can introduce some volatility of the game and just really try to snowball games early. He would be a good fit on something like that, maybe on like Invictus or something like that that wants to introduce volatility of the game, not on a team like WE, but the reason I bring this up is because there's maybe two things to consider, there's two paths this could go. One, I think it's possible that this is just a paradigm shift or is like guys change or philosophical change to the game, like a character shift for Team WE, where they want to be a different team than what we've seen so far, which I think is a little bit weird because it's kind of been working for them, but if they're identifying that maybe they don't think it's going to work for like going forward, then I could see making a change. The other path this goes is that they're just trying to play someone different that's not very good and not built for the role that they're going to be putting them in and they're just going to try to square a peg round hold this and it's a bad fit. For what it's worth, like a real sports comparison here, like Sequan Barkley, Sequan Barkley and the Eagles, right? On one hand, it's like we've never seen Sequan Barkley on like with a good offensive line. On the other hand, it's like, you know, this is a player that is very feast or famine, but does not always get positive yards and the Eagles are a team that want positive yards on every play just by design because they're going to go forward on fourth most often. So, not exactly a perfect comparison because I think Sequan Barkley is like an immensely talented person. I don't think Abel is an immensely talented person necessarily, like relative to the league he's in. But kind of, I don't know, I just try to draw some kind of comparison or you could maybe point to like Dame Lillard on the box versus like Drew Holliday, you know, Dame brings you ISO offense that's really, really good, but he doesn't bring you like the two way defense. And we saw that the Bucks had just an abysmal two way defense once he was gone. So anyway, I digress, model made RNG plus 204 W minus 228, much shorter than the market price. W E have preyed on teams like RNG. The way we are playing is like that diet. There's like a handful of teams in the LPL that are playing this way, like W E L G D T T E D G have all kind of been playing this coin flip parody league of legends where they just want to keep games within striking distance and then see if they can close them. A lot of them have struggled to close. But W E have actually of that, that group of probably had the best macro of those four. They generally make good decisions in the mid and late game and this is where they get their edge. Like that's the, that's what they think that their strength is. That's why I think this change is really bizarre. But I don't know, it's, it's, it's a strange, strange call and I don't want to, I don't usually put too much stock into changes, especially at 80 carats. The most replaceable position, it's the running back of League of Legends. It ultimately doesn't change all that much unless you're going from someone that's like a negative 10 to a positive 10 or unless you are doing like this and doing something that's a complete stylistic mix up. This might end up not being a big deal. I don't know, but I'm kind of skeptical on this and this move kind of screams desperation to me from W E and I don't really know why. I think what they were doing is fine, but they don't apparently think that and they have higher aspirations. This might end up being a good thing for them long term. I think fearless drafts, you know, if you're one dimensional fearless drafts going to eat you alive and just having able on the roster and getting them into some games could give you options to like bring them in in a best off series, which is kind of cool. If you can like get teams to like start with your other 80 carry and then like bring him in for game two and all of a sudden, Samira is on the table and they have to waste a ban on Samira. You could really jack up, you know, a lot of drafts for certain teams and stuff like that. You could really mess it up when, you know, the calculus of figuring out what's going to be open and fearless. So from that perspective, strategically, I like it, but short term. I don't know if it's going to be a good thing. It's weird. W E have lost five, they've lost six in a row, right, but early, they've lost five in a row now, but four of those were against BLG and then they got swept by LGD. All of these games were close, besides that first, they're that second game against BLG. They actually beat BLG in game one, but all of these games have been pretty close. Like they haven't had a bigger like deficit or lead than, you know, 2000 gold, 1700 gold, I think is what it was. So like they're keeping games close, they're really good at playing this coin flip kind of game. RNG are exactly the kind of team that we want to see. So you would think I liked W E in this spot, but RNG have side choice. And this is a bizarre lineup change, I think from W E and RNG probably should have won game two the first time around against the scene. Now that game two against them is like one of the two half decent games they've had this entire season. RNG have had two individual games where they've looked good. It was that game two against RNG on day one and the game one that they got against LGD and they've been utterly trounced in every single other game. So it makes me sick to do this, but this is a hold your nose special. I think this price for a team that's changing up, I think it's a little heavy handed for off side. I like RNG here. It's gross, but I think with side choice, I think they're likely to get one here. I think they're better than a coin flip to get one. So I played RNG plus one and a half mass of plus 108 for one unit, I played RNG series money line plus 375 for 14 units and I played RNG to sweep it plus 908 for 0.1 units. I just think that there's like a long tail out of the downside for W E like incorporating. I think long term this could be a good move for them, but short term I just have questions and I think this is a bit too heavy handed a price even if they were starting their regular AD carry. So LGD plus 936 on the money line plus one has a plus two seventeen minus one has a plus 1932 against Billy Billy gaming minus 1600 on the money line minus one has a minus two seventy four. Billy Billy obviously world class LGD are very, very good at playing coin flip games, but haven't gotten across the finish line that often are coming off to a win over W E LGD are good enough to punish and get a win if you screw up. My models tend to make this closer, but when you're dealing with outlier teams like second standard deviation level teams, like we're seeing from like Billy Billy and top e sports and Gen G and stuff tends to have a little bit more of a tough time quantifying that or quantifying the gap between those teams. So I think you do have to give a manual bump. I think it's obvious that Billy Billy are likely to to owe this, but LGD do have side choice for the series. It's tougher to sweep off side. I'm not playing LGD sides like to win a map here. I think that's an edge via the model, but I, you know, I have a Billy Billy or one of the tougher teams in the world to close out a game against. I think it's unrealistic to expect LGD to, you know, get across the finish line, even if they do end up having a lead in some of these games. They're not exactly the most reliable closers, although they're okay. It's mostly just that like I don't see LGD blowing out a huge lead in any of these games, and you basically need a huge game if you're not elite team because Billy Billy are very tough to close a game again. So for these like lower table teams, if I'm going to take shots against Billy Billy, I want teams that can keep it close and occasionally blow a game open early with a big lead that's insurmountable, because that's kind of what these bad teams or mediocre teams need against Billy Billy and the like, so I'm not going to, I'm not playing the side, but I am playing the kill spread here. Map one LGD plus nine and a half kills at minus one twenty. LGD are eight and three against kill spread this season. Billy Billy have been favorites every single game this season, obviously. They've gone just three and eight against the kill spread with an average spread of minus eight point nine kills, taking the plus nine and a half here. They have just three double digit margins of victory this summer, admittedly one of them was the first time out against LGD, but LGD, or actually, no, it wasn't the first time against LGD. The first time against LGD, they won by one and they won by six. It was like that weird 11 to 10 game, and then the other one was pretty close. LGD were able to actually kind of keep the, keep the kills close despite the gold not being close in both those games. Moving on to the LCK week three, day two, no action, red force plus six to nine on the money line, plus one and a half maps of plus one fifty five, minus one and a half is that plus twelve ninety two against D plus key and minus nine thirty two on the money line, minus one and a half is that minus one ninety, model made this plus two eighty, minus three or eight, obviously significantly shorter, but again, you know, sometimes you have to give a qualitative bump here when you have clear tier difference, D plus have looked good this season. It's a bit of an odd handicap, but like sprint during the spring split, D plus had a handful of really, really bad individual game performances against the lower table teams. They still managed to win most of those, but it was like a severe sweat. If you were backing like no action to sweep below series, this match up the last time these two faced off, D plus were minus five eighty one favorites during the spring split. I think D plus have played up, they've been good this season so far. I think they've looked a lot better showmaker and and Lucid have been in good form. Lucid's added some champions to his pool to kind of cut away at that issue. The other thing here at play is that this is an onshim team that's been somewhat chippy as underdogs, but against the good teams, they've just kind of been blasted besides that one game against T one, you know, D plus have enough holes in their macro and that this is a big enough adjustment to price that like I'm not really all that interested in overpaying for D plus to sweep here. If you forced me to take a play in this, I would just play nonshim plus one and a half maps and hold my nose. I'm not playing any derivatives in the sea of the kill spreads on all that interesting to me either. So no, no action in this match. Second match Katie Rolster minus four forty four on the money line minus one half minus one seventeen plus one and a half of minus thirteen fifty four against okay, Brione savings bank plus three thirty one on the money line plus one eight mass at minus one oh four minus one eight plus eight eleven model made this Katie minus one seventy. What's our Katie rule? We backed them as big dogs. We fade them as big favorites. I'm just going to straight up read my my patreon post for this one just verbatim. Brione absolutely sucks. Make no mistake about it, but Katie have miraculously been the worst statistical team in the LCK of this split. That's right. Model grades and out is currently worse than Brione using just the summer season sample. Now there's a huge caveat here. Katie have only faced good teams so far. Kwang Dung D plus Gen G and Hama life. It's no surprise that their statistical profile hasn't been a complete barren wasteland. They have a single map win against D plus outside of that game win and their first two games of the season against Kwang Dung. They haven't held any kind of meaningful lead in a game whatsoever. The reason I mention this is that you have to kind of manually adjust for that in some way because Brione are a significant step down a competition from what Katie have seen so far this summer. The thing is typically if a team is average or like good and just in the middle of a rough spot in the schedule, they'll at least have decent underlines or be competitive in games even in losses. Katie have not. In fact, Katie are currently boasting the worst agnostic economy in the world of the five regions I track, besides the very bottom of the PCS. They are currently boasting the worst agnostic economy than the bottom three LCS teams. Let that sink in. I don't care if you're playing against the best teams in your league. If you're not good, or if you're a good team, you'll at least have a pulse against those teams. Katie are in the dumpster right now. Every bone in my body is telling me that this is a get right spot and just what the doctor ordered in what's been a completely nightmare start of the summer for Katie Rolster, but they've straight up been playing terrible League of Legends and I think we need to keep on the table the possibility that maybe this team just sucks. It's kind of hard to believe with all the name brain value on this roster, but when a team isn't working, it isn't working. You know, we're seeing that with Weibo in the LPL right now too. During the spring split, Katie had the highest game grade volatility score in the five majors. They were a truly two-faced team. You never knew what you were going to get and that was why they were great as big dogs and fades as big favorites, but what if we just stopped getting those ceiling and upper upper percentile performance games? We haven't seen any of them. What have we just stopped getting them? If we don't get any of the good games in there, all of a sudden this team's a complete dumpster fire. There's not really much of a foundation, like fundamentally speaking, for them to build on here. So if they're not getting good starts in games, they're not good, period. I cannot believe I'm doing this, but I'm taking some Breon in this match. I think Breon are terrible. I think they're probably the worst team, but right now they might not be. I think Katie might be like on a similar tier to them if we're not getting the ceiling games anymore. There's not going to be many times that I back Breon this summer at all. I just think this team's a complete dumpster fire as well, but I'm going to go against my instincts here, which we're telling me that this is a right spot for Katie, and I'm going to leave on the table the possibility that it's not just been a tough schedule and that they might actually just be bad. You know, we're not going to know that for a bit. They play T1 later this week. They play Nong Shim later this week. I think it's possible that like that Nong Shim match next week might be close to a pick them. If they don't look good in this match, I can't believe I'm doing this. I hate Breon, but Katie have shown me absolutely nothing to warrant being this big a favorite against anybody, even against Breon. So I'm going to play some Breon. I'm going to try not to vomit Breon plus one and a half mass minus one oh four for one point oh four units Breon money line plus three thirty one for point two units and the minus one and a half maps at plus eight eleven for point one units. Try not to puke. Last up, we've got the LCS Thursday night and Friday night this week. They changed the schedule around week three day one 100 these plus three twelve and the money line plus one and a half and minus one seventeen minus one they have a plus eight thirty two against team liquid minus four thirteen on the money line minus one and a half is at minus one oh four model made this plus two eleven minus two thirty six I mentioned on last week's show and it kind of came true in the one series but I don't think any of these LCS teams as currently performing should be laying this kind of price to anybody like I just don't think so like I think if if you have teams hit their ceiling performance like if liquid can play like they were playing at MSI which they haven't been or like maybe like a team like cloud nine can can realize all the the expectation then I think maybe once we have have it proven to us that they can do that that they could warrant this kind of favoritism but until then I've seen nothing so far from any of these teams to to make me trust any of them is like an eighty plus percent favorite there's no way so I don't like hundred thieves I think hundred these have a lot of macro issues I still have questions about them but like I like I said I don't think any of these LCS teams should be laying this kind of price so this is a hold your nose special take hundred thieves here I'm playing hundred these plus one and a half maps minus one seventeen for one point one seven units the hundred these series money line plus three twelve for point four units and the one hundred these minus one and a half massive plus eight thirty two for point one units I just think this is too big a number liquid or a better team liquid deserved to be favorites I have more questions about hundred thieves than I do about liquid but the liquid haven't done anything to warrant being this big a favorite they just don't like yeah they whooped on shop file last week big deal what does that mean I said the same thing I back shop fine that for the same premise like they know but none of these teams are that consistent in that fundamentally sound that they should be this big a favorite against anybody not yet by the end of the season maybe I'll be convinced but right now I'm not immortals plus one zero five on the money line plus one a half maps at minus one three oh nine minus one half is that plus three oh six against energy minus one twenty seven on the money line minus one a plus two forty two plus one a half is that minus four oh four model made this made of mortals actually a slight favorite in this contest but it's still pretty close to a pick them if you told me to make a market on this series before like just blind without any info in front of me I'd probably just make it a pick them minus one ten both ways and just see where it goes I know people are higher on energy I I think people understand that if you consume my content that I'm lower on energy I've been ahead of the curve on that immortals aren't good energy aren't good this is a toilet bowl there's a case to be made for just taking the plus money and just you know whatever happens happens but I don't I don't really like I don't think you're getting paid off enough for that if this was like plus one ten I'd probably take some immortals but plus one oh five it's like risk of you know risk of capital and all that you know included I just I don't you could make a case to just take plus money and hold your nose but I'm just passing on this one no derivative plays I would lean kill total overs in this I think both these teams could get sloppy and closing games out energy tend to be an over team in general anyway no action for me in this one that's going to be it for me today I will see you all tomorrow.
