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-L-O-L. Good evening, everybody. It's currently about 10 after 4 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, June 25th, 2024. Quick recap from this morning's LPL matches. We got our one position home, which was on Invictus. We had the Invictus Money Line at +130 in the Invictus -1.5 maps at... I forget the number... +363. Ended up with a win there as Invictus picked up a relatively clean 2.0 against Ultra Prime. Ended up making +2.026 units on the day. Nice win. Didn't have anything in the second match. I didn't really have much to say about the Ultra Prime Invictus match. There were moments in this match that were pretty close, but one of the things I've seen on tape ended up kind of like bearing out, and in this case, bearing fruit, was Ultra Prime haven't looked like a clean team. Their objective setup's been pretty bad. I described them yesterday as a team that's had insanely good turnover luck, and a lot of teams have more or less fumbled the bag against them. They've been the beneficiaries of a lot of unforced errors, and in this case, Invictus didn't make too many errors, and Ultra Prime's suspect macro kind of came into play here, and Invictus punished them for it. You should know me had a great showing. Pick up... I don't remember if you got it in the second game, but I actually played Invictus in DFS. I'll admit, guys, I did that show with Sheets last week, and I'm kind of dipping my toe back in the water in the DFS streets. I haven't been playing it on this year, but I've been trying to... I just have limited time, and I've been trying to concentrate all my efforts into the thing that I know I'm good at and better at, but I've been kind of dipping my toe back in the DFS streets mostly for fun. I'm putting like one or two lineups in the main just for shits and giggles, but yeah. Anyway, I ended up getting that one home. I didn't have any positions in the Weibo, anyone's legend series. I forget where I lean for that match, but this was a relatively clean win for anyone's legend. It was wasn't 100% one-way traffic, but it's mostly one-way traffic for both games. It wasn't particularly close. Yeah, the expert thing didn't really make a difference. Weibo are still a struggle bus. Anyone's legend, we ended up talking a lot in the esports department discord last night about, you know, is this team actually good, or is it just that this group sucks so bad that we don't really know? Like, ultimately, this could be like a Patriot situation where like all we can do is ask them to beat up on a bad division for how many years. And that's all I mean, ultimately, like it'd be more concerning if they weren't beating up on these teams, but that's all we can really ask of them for now. We don't really know if that's like, I still don't know how good this team actually is. Like, I think they're obviously better than the garbage because they've been mostly handling the garbage. It's just a matter of like, are they even close to the elite teams? Or are they just in that hodgepodge with like NIP and maybe LNG and FPX and that crew? Where like the true, like what I would call like the B+ tier because I don't even know if there's an A tier in the LPL anymore because there's such a gap between the elite teams and not, but you know, time will tell with that. I don't want to go into too much of that conversation because I've talked about it quite a bit. Anyway, that was all for today. A good day, hit on a nice underdog, needed that, been on a really, really, been running extremely, extremely cold. I did do a little bit of diving into the LEC. I'll talk more about that this over the weekend because I did actually do kind of an autopsy. I'm like, what's been going wrong for me there? Like, yeah, I don't know, I found parts like stuff that I can attribute a lot of the losses to and other stuff that I think is actually just running bad, but it was, you know, I'm not without blame. There's mistakes that I've made as well. So, I'll discuss that more this weekend, but you know, take a good day, we can get it. I don't want to rant on my own parade here. We have a four match slate in the LPL and the LCK for Wednesday morning. Again, just another housekeeping note. I may or may not be called for jury duty. I will know in a few hours from now if that's going to happen. I'm trying to get a little bit ahead on my Patreon post. We also have a weird schedule change here with the LCS happening on Thursday and Friday, which is exactly what I didn't need the week in a call for jury duty. But, you know, we'll figure that out as we go. Quickly, let's run through these. We have week four, day three in the LPL. Again, you have to keep in mind matches that matter and don't hear. Some of these lines might be a little stale. I'm just reading from my Patreon post for these lines, but current lines might be a little bit different since I did most of this, the LPL portion of this this morning. Top esports minus 1800. Minus 1 to head mass at minus 325 against rare Adam plus one thousand eleven. Plus one to head mass at plus two fifty three minus one to have a plus twenty two seventy seven, almost twenty three to one on the underdog sweep there. We do have lineups for this. Let me pull that up real fast. I actually need to edit the Patreon post once I do that. But I will read them on this podcast right now. We have three six nine, T.N., cream, Jackie, love, and make go. The same starters for top esports. Rare Adam are studying Xiaozhu, Xiaohao, Vickla, Asman, Joy, same starters there. And so it's pretty obvious that the gap between the elite three and the rest of the LPL is pretty big at this point, but so is the payoff you're getting for your risk here with rare Adam. They might not be a particularly good team, but they at least have a pulse and they know how to close a game out if you give them an advantage of some kind. You know, like realistically, top esports are probably going to win this. Probably going to be a 2-0. You have to keep in mind like when you're playing with numbers like this, you can't ever expect to win. You just need to try to quantify like how likely it actually is versus the market implied price. That's especially with big priced underdogs like this. Like you need to keep in mind like you're not entitled to a win on these. Like it's not like these are big big prices. I think it's very, very rare that I want to go against the elite three in the LPL this season. It's very, very rare, but the model did make this a little bit shorter. I do think rare Adam have a pulse and I think if you're going to go to war with one of these non like good teams against an elite team, I think like rare Adam and Thunder Talk are probably the two horses you want to hit your wagon to. They've just like shown them the most like I guess I keep saying pulse, but like they've shown the most life like they have something going on that's challenging and you know rare Adam like Zhao Xu and Zhao Hao are good variants players that you want on your side as big underdogs like they can take over games by themselves. So I don't know. I think the other aspect of play here is like a situational one where top e-sports have already clinched the upper bracket. They're essentially playing for nothing but pride here. They really don't. They quite literally have nothing to play for. They've already clinched. They can't change any seating anything. They can kind of just like mess with their opponents. Meanwhile, rare Adam are trying to fend off LNG for seeding into the top conference. I think what's weird about this? I think if rare Adam kind of intentionally lost this, I don't want to talk about that, but like maybe it could happen. If rare Adam intentionally lost this, I think they'd have a pretty good shot at winning the lower conference if they played it out. Like they look like the best team of the, like them and Thunder Talk like I said, look like the best of the rest. But it still obviously makes sense to try to get into the upper bracket. So I'm still giving a motivational edge to rare Adam here. Top e-sports once again, nothing to play for. So I'm going to try to play a little split stake. Thread the needle angle on this one. This might be getting a little too cute. You might just want to stake this fully on the +1.5 maps. But I'm going to split stake this. I'm going to play rare Adam +1.5 maps on +2.53 for .4 units. I'm going to play specifically rare Adam map two money line +4.88 for .1 units. And I'm going to play rare Adam series money at money line at +1,011 for .1 units. The reason I'm trying to split the difference here is like, I think the most likely map that they get is map two when they have side choice. Maybe top e-sports go a little too far off the deep end, experimenting and fearless draft and doing something goofy since they have nothing to lose and rare Adam punch him in the mouth. It's also the map that rare Adam have side choice. So yeah, not likely, but I think more likely than the odds implies. So hold your nose special there. Second match in the LPO. We have LNG e-sports minus 685 on the money line. The minus 1/2 that minus 157 against OMG plus 476 on the money line. The plus 1/2 that plus 129. The minus 1/2 is a plus 1,070. So LNG, Zika, Wayway, Scout, Gala and Hong. Same lineup we've been seeing. OMG you're running Harry Shaffang, Linfong, Starry and PP God. Linfong getting the start for Angel here. That's the only switch up that we're getting. Keep that in mind. I have to change the Patreon post like I just said. Model made this close to the minus 326 plus 287. So a big, big, heavy handed push for LNG here. I do think qualitatively I get it. Like it makes some sense. OMG have looked like pure dog shit, but I do think the market is probably overrating LNG a little bit just because of who they are. LNG have not covered a kill spread yet this season as favorites. They are 0 and 7. Average spread of plus of minus 7.83. They haven't been particularly good as favorites. Under the hood numbers are okay and respectable. OMG's on the other hand are right now the league worst. This team is terrible. And perhaps more concerning is OMG have actually led in a few games and have not been able to shut the door on anybody. They've had a couple significant leads as well. And they just can't seem to do anything with it. OMG are bad. OMG look like the worst team in the league right now are one of them. Especially if Invictus is actually going to start playing. You should know me again. I think OMG is possible. They might be the worst team in the league right now. OMG, nothing to lose here. LNG, all the pressures on them. We saw that effect kind of work in reverse today where ultra prime kind of choked it away. Although I think that was more just them being overrated as a team in general. As bad, you know, I think OMG are generally overrated. Like the market, the market's really, really becoming very binary within these tiers in the LPL. I do think OMG is not as good as the market thinks they are. But I don't think this is the spot to try to fade them. OMG have been just completely abysmal. And even when they get leads in games which sometimes OMG will spot a team. OMG is late. You know, mid and late game decision making is a lot better than a lot of teams. And it's like the one thing that they do very, very well. And they have good players and they're experienced. So OMG tend to give up the ghosts early sometimes and then just close games out when teams make a mistake. Kind of like a diet version of Hanwha a little bit. I think there's a good chance that that's exactly how this game plays out. Like even, like, I don't even know if I trust OMG to get any kind of significant lead against this team. But, you know, this is probably an OMG 2.0. I think OMG are just not the team to go to war with to pick up an upset here. And I try to avoid derivative plays during, like, meaningless matches, especially when it's meaningless for one team and the other one's trying because sometimes weird stuff happens in those unless you can, like, specifically pin down who a team is and how they're going to play. But I like to kill Total Unders in this one quite a bit. And, you know, kind of related to that, correlated to that. I also like the OMG plus 9.5 kills to a lesser extent. I think you look at both these teams. They're both well under the league average and combined kills per minute and combined kills per game. OMG have been kind of winning ugly games, which is why they've been abysmal against the kill spread. I wouldn't fault you for taking the kill spread here, but OMG are awful. So, like, just know what you're getting in bed with with that. Like, I, you know, like I said, OMG, I haven't covered a spread. OMG have gone 4 and 4 against kill spread. Like, if you really want to get involved with that, I don't blame you. These two teams are averaging around 22 kills a game, less than 0.8 combined kills per minute. Even if you think these are lopsided LNG stompings, there's a good chance that they don't cover 9.5. So, if you prefer, I don't hate taking a stab on the 9.5. I think it's very, very close. I just slightly prefer the under 25.5 kills, which is what I'm going to play. I don't think it's the under. Total set at 26.5, but I'm playing an ult under 25.5 at +107 for one unit. I just think there's a, I'm only playing map one, by the way. So, I don't think this is because the data is not a fully developed set yet. Like, I don't really trust the numbers enough to go both maps here. But I do think LNG probably control the game that they have side choice, the game that can prep for in map one pretty much under a wire. I don't know if there's a whole lot of OMG can do to really blow out a significant lead in this one. And even if they do, LNG are a super controlled team. And, you know, there's a case to be made like that the kill spread is just a better fundamental that here. I don't hate that. But I showed a bit of a bigger edge on the under 25.5. So, I'm playing that instead. If I wasn't playing the under 25.5, I would play the plus nine and a half on map two for OMG where they have side choice. So, I don't hate that position either. Alright, moving on to the LCK. We have two very, very big favorites tomorrow. One of them I have questions about. The other one, I'm going against, but I don't really have questions about. Just so you know, any projected lines or data that I use is now using the last two seasons of Spring Split plus the playoffs if four teams that were in the playoffs plus the current split. It's not a perfect data set. It's a little lopsided. It's going to ding the good teams because the good teams are playing against other good teams in more of their games because I'm including the playoffs. But a lot of the week nine match ups in the LCK were like good teams against bad teams. So, I'm leaving some of the, like, for teams like D.R.A. X and Nongxim and the N.Bryon, it's leaving some of their matches against the good teams. They are still so that I have, like, kind of a balanced portfolio, but it's a more recent portfolio. I like to kind of smooth the transition between, like, current and using full season priors because full season priors, especially with some of the teams, like the first one we're going to talk about here in D.R.A.X. I don't think tell the full story at all. I think you need to treat them as different commodities. The main teams that this impacts are T1 who get a slight downgrade, KT who get a huge downgrade because they play terribly against good teams and they've been dogshit this summer. And then D.R.A.X who get an upgrade because they've looked excellently this summer. So, or they've looked excellent this summer. So, those are the ones that the main people that impacts everyone else that's more or less awash. It doesn't change too much. So, I'll probably be switching to a full, a full summer sample after next week, maybe after the week after that. We'll see. Anyway, T1 minus 21.65, minus one and a half minutes. T5 minus one and a half maps at minus 322 against D.R.A.X. plus 11.45 on the money line, plus one and a half is a plus 251. The minus one and a half is at almost 23 to one. D.R.A.X. 2-0 against the maps where it has dogs this season, albeit against significantly weaker competition. Although they did get one off and found more life. So, depending on where you want to put them. Until that last match, D.R.A.X. were looking like a completely new commodity, a brand new team, a completely reinvigorated team, a team that I think you need to treat differently, like a completely new entity. And then they kind of just beat themselves with two pretty bad drafts in that series. I think that was the main reason they lost that series. They just put themselves, dug themselves a hole and that was that. I don't usually like to pick and choose a draft if he and use that as evidence, but this one was pretty clear and obvious to me, that I don't know. And Nogshim didn't even really dominate that series either. D.R.A.X. was one with bad drafts. I think they kind of just beat themselves twice when they lost Nogshim. But nonetheless, it was still a knock on them and still something to really criticize. Other than that, they've looked really, really good. The only other knock against them is that they haven't faced anybody good besides how in my life, esports. Now they were competitive in that series, but other than that, they faced what? Nogshim and Breon. I think they beat F.E.R.A.X. was the other match. They haven't faced any of the really good teams. So this is only the second match against a good team that they've played. Meanwhile, T1 have played against Gen G, D+ and Kwongdong and their only real softball was against Nogshim in week one. Model made this minus 329 plus 298, obviously much closer than the ridiculous 2100. I think you have to give some kind of qualitative bump to T1 because they're an elite team. Even though they've been a little up and down at moments in this season, they are still T1. They are still a world-class team. And D.R.A.X. are still a bottom half team in the LCK. So make your adjustments manually however you want. This price is about 2% cheaper. I think it was like 1.8% cheaper than the implied price in the last time we saw these two, which was in I think week eight or week seven of spring. I think this is kind of a situational handicap if that makes sense, or not a situational. Do you count D.R.A.X as a new commodity or is this the same team? I think they've looked better enough this season. They've fixed two of their, really they fixed their main problem, which is that they couldn't close games out in spring. And they've looked very, very good in closure, albeit against weaker teams so far this season. They've looked a lot better when they have a lead. They haven't had a lead in as many games, which is a little concerning, but you know they've been pretty nails when they do have one. So I think T1 are a little bit more vulnerable to early game screw-ups than a team like Genji is just by nature. T1 tend to swing for the fences and sometimes miss. Genji are a lot more like methodical grind you out. They're still both elite teams, still both world-class teams. You look at all the numbers, T1 are still world-class. They're ridiculous. The only thing they've done wrong is playing the same region as Genji. But I think if you, if you, if you, like me, believe that D.R.A.X truly look a lot better, then there's no way that this price can be right. Like if you, if you think D.R.A.X. are even 10% a better team than they were in spring, then this price is, then you should probably just take a chance on D.R.A.X. Now, I don't, it's still, this is again, another big underdog, another, another situation where you need to not expect to win because you're, you know, like, look, this team, we're talking about a money line at +11.45, which is what, like 8% implied odds. I think it's like 8%. Yeah, it's like 8.03%, right? So we're talking about like an 8% implied odds chance to win here. I think it's probably more like 15, you know, something like that. I think D.R.A.X. are alive enough to steal one here. You know, the, the +250 we're talking about, you know, 28.5% for them to get a game. I think that's, that's closer to, you know, 35. So I'm going to play map one, D.R.A.X. I, I basically picked a map. I'm going to play either map one or two. I'm playing map one. D.R.A.X. +10.5 kills at -123 for 0.8 units. And then I'm going to take the D.R.A.X. +1.5 maps at +251 for 0.2. I'm not going to play the outright money line because even though D.R.A.X. have been a better closing team recently, T1 are still a devilishly difficult team to close games out against. And I don't know if they're going to get across the finish line twice. I think it's possible, but I'm going to end up just taking the +1 of 1.5 maps as my, my side stake in this one. And then I think they cover the 10.5, 10.5 is a big kill spread to cover. And like I said, I think D.R.A.X. have actually looked, you know, quite a bit better this season. So I'm, I'm trying to capture some of that. Last but not least, we have homo life esports +375 on the money line +1.5 maps at +107 -1.5 +9.02 against Gen G -5.13 on the money line -1.5 maps at -129. The +1.5 is at -15.60. Not that anyone is playing that. This will be the first time homo life or 100 dogs this season. Gen G are a perfect 4.0 is favorites, 4.0 against the map spread. Having dropped a game, team's really good. Probably the best team in the world right now. So the catch here. Model made this minus 8, while 182, homo +165. Obviously it's going to make this closer. Homo's under the hood numbers are still elite. They're still excellent. They're still very, very strong. The caveat as always with homo against Gen G or T1, specifically against Gen G, is that they're stylistically always going to have trouble with these teams because they don't engineer advantages. They just kind of wait for mistakes to happen and then punish the mistakes. Gen G just don't make a lot of mistakes. So I've talked about this ad nauseam. I sound like a broken record, I know. But it's a structural issue. Why they struggle with Gen G? They do a little bit better against T1. They actually got T1 twice in spring, but T1 are also more prone to mistakes. Like I said earlier, just a few minutes ago, they tend to swing for the fences and Gen G are a lot more methodically controlled about things. Gen G, obviously, they look like the best team in the world right now. There's not much to say about them. Homo have looked a little bit shaky when they're getting outside of their comfort zone, but otherwise they've looked pretty much the same. They've maintained a pretty more or less the same level from spring. They're underlying is great. Their wind adjusted numbers are great. The handicap here is essentially what I just mentioned though. Like do we think we're getting to a point where the price is actually worth taking a stab against Gen G? Homo are good enough. They are talented enough to take games off of Gen G. They are very good at punishing mistakes. Gen G aren't completely flawless. They don't make a lot of mistakes, but they do make them still. I think it's possible that they get them. I think the other thing to look at here is the implied market, how this has moved. So, you know, week seven of the regular season, it was minus -- or week five price on the -- I'm all mixed up. I'm going to cross my words if you're sorry. The most recent matchup we have between these two is the best of five playoff series from spring where Gen G were minus 186 plus 152, which is more or less right in line with what my model had this series for this match today. Before that was week seven of the regular season, Gen G was minus 319 plus 249. Week four was minus 210 to plus 170. I ask, has anything really materially changed in this matchup? Like, qualitatively, Homo have looked a little bit shakier because they're trying things for a change and they've lost to a couple of bad teams, and maybe you could ding them for that. I think that's why the markets expanded on this because, you know, any kind of ELO system is going to see it. They dropped a game to DRX and have a panic attack. They also dropped a series to D plus, and they were higher reload rating than D plus. So, has anything really actually changed, though, with this team, because I don't think it has. This handicap hasn't really changed, but the number has. You know, we're talking about a 7.5% implied win rate, like implied probability adjustment from the week seven price from the playoff series to the implied price for now, if you just extrapolate from the map prices for that. And then if you go all the way back to the week seven price, we've made an 18.65% adjustment move since that. Right across that is up. It's a 7.5% implied move since the week seven price and 18.65% implied price move since the playoff match. That's ridiculous. Like, almost in, almost on principle, like the contrarian Amy wants to just take the other side of this just because of that. Like, that's a huge, huge move, folks. Like, I'll give you, I'll give you a real sports example that just happened, actually. Stanley Cup game, game five of the Stanley Cup, the Panthers were, there was an adjustment from between game five and game seven from the Panthers as a, as an at-home price of like, it was like 9% move in the market. Obviously, you know, a major sport finals market is going to be a lot more efficient than an esports market for a given regular season game. But like, you see what happens in these, right? Like, like, things get ahead of themselves. Markets get ahead of themselves. Genji absolutely deserve to be favorites here. They deserve to be big favorites. Tom will haven't gotten a game off of them in a long time. But an 18.65% move since the playoff match. Like, come on, guys. Like, that's too much. That's too much. I, you guys know how much I can't stand this Hamaw life team, but I'm playing Hamaw here. It's like, I don't like to take shots against the good team, the elite teams. And I especially don't like to do it with Hamaw, but I think, like, this is, we're getting to a point now where the price is, is too, it's too good not to. It's just too good not to. So, I'm going to play Hamaw +1.5 maps at +107 or for one unit. I'm going to play the Hamaw series money line at +375 for 0.2 units. Alternatively, you could play the kill spread for Hamaw. I think it's +8.5 or 7.5. I also like kill total overs in series where you think the good, like the good teams are playing against each other, where it's not going to be lopsided stomps. I know T1 Genji turned into lopsided stomps because there were two extremely high leverage plays early in both those games. But if that's a more even matchup, those kill totals are going to soar over. I think in most situations, the long term, when the top teams in the LCK play each other, long term kill total overs have been a winner. It's a long term trend. It dates back. It's almost patch agnostic for the most part. So, that's the other angle which you could play here. But I think the price is right. It's good enough to play some Hamaw straight up. So, that's where I play. That's going to be it for me today. I'll probably have another show out sometime tomorrow morning. I don't know. It's just going to depend on if I actually get called for this or not. There's a chance my schedule is going to be all wacked out this week, but I will try to keep you updated and release and update when I know more. Until then, best of luck, and I will see you when I see you.
