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'll also get to support your creators more directly. patreon.com/jilladell. That's G-E-L-A-T-I-L-O-L. Good evening everybody, it's currently about 4.45pm on Monday, June 24th, 2024. Quick recap of the two LPL games from this morning. Actually, I guess I should touch on the LCS because I didn't get a chance to recap those last night. Team Liquid kind of handled Chopper Firebellion. We picked the wrong dog. I kind of liked both underdogs yesterday just because I didn't think LCS teams should be laying that big of a number. Dignitales get the 2.0 outright victory over Flyquest as a +300 dog. Two very, very scrappy games in that series that maybe could have gone either way. Liquid vs Shopify was one-way traffic for Liquid in both games. I kind of knew that I didn't expect to win. Just thought that the expected value for the actual position was better than what the odds were implying. So we took a shot there, picked the wrong dog is what it is. I still think that thesis is probably going to be correct moving forward. We're going to get some fat, fat prices against Liquid and I think they're probably going to just be overrated because of the MSI run and because of how they've done so far. We're going to have some nice opportunities to fade that team. Not that I think they're bad or anything, just that they're going to be overvalued by the market. LPL, Monday morning, EDG vs Thunder Talk, Gaming Thunder Talk, get the outright win home. 2.0 cast our +1.5 maps and Moneyline bets for that one. This was... it was weird. So the first game in this series, it was pretty even. TT had like a momentum advantage but the gold was always pretty close. EDG ended up selling out getting a Baron to kind of stall out the game a little bit. And then EDG ended up, at some point in this game, EDG ended up picking off Leave in Leave's top side blue jungle. And it looked like it was just going to be a game, it was a 4v5 with the 80 carry dead. So EDG are marching into the base, they're sieging up the Nexus, the Nexus turrets. When they're doing so, they kind of don't have any kind of target selection. They're just kind of like assuming they won the game and kind of playing it out. Like all the damage was split up, some people were on towers, some people were on champions. Not a very methodical close, they weren't calling targets and Thunder Talk actually just win this fight 4v5 outright. They get a ton of damage down. They want finishes death caps shortly before this fight happened on the jungle kartis which is a massive power spike. Almost doubles his AP with one item. And they end up taking a fight losing Tristan is able to teleport to top lane and they actually ended the game off of this. EDG were literally on the Nexus, this is like the fourth time this week we've had like a Nexus failed siege. Teams just really, really sloppy closing. So absolutely without a doubt lucky to get that one home. Like the gold was never really that big of a gap. So it's not like I thought TT were out of this game but once leave got picked off, that should have been the game. If EDG just were more methodical about things and they weren't. Game 2 was not like a complete stomping but it was mostly one way traffic for Thunder Talk in Game 2. But that Game 1 absolutely lucky to get that home. I could not believe that happened. That was a good break for a change. It was nice to get a good break or our way especially with the cold streak I've been on the last week or two. FPX, JDG, Game 1, insanely sloppy, insanely bloody right away, a lot of skirmishing. Care gave up a really stupid solo kill like it was like a level 3 solo kill to Tristan. Come on dude. Like you're better than this. It was really dumb. So the Tristan is now off to the races. Corky is going to struggle to keep up. You know, Shallow, like Kanavi picked up a couple as well. What ended up happening was there's this goofy extended 3v3 skirmish. It wasn't 3v3 right away. But as Kanavi and Yagao trying to push their advantage, Shallow who ended up on the roam in this situation picking up 3 kills on NAR in this weird extended skirmish. The problem was like Yagao already had first blood gold, already had a huge CS lead. It was only going to snowball. They had no real answer to the Tristan and Kanavi ended up getting a pretty early lich pain in this game and it was just off to the races. And you know, this was one of those games where it was like scrappy and action-packed. But much like a G2 game, JDG just traded up in every engagement. And shortly after the 20-minute mark the kills were even. And FPX had a couple dragons but there was like a 6k gold lead for JDG. And you look up and you're like oh well, yeah, this team's good. You know, gold in pocket, gold spent matters a lot. It can matter, especially in the first 25 minutes of a game. It can matter a lot. It starts to trail off pretty hard after that. But yeah, you can be scrappy and keep the game even. But if the gold's not there then you're actually behind quite a bit and that's what happened. In the second game FPX had a huge lead. They were up a couple thousand gold, 15 ballooned this to over 6,000 gold by the 20-minute mark. At this point there was this really, really weird skirmish that happened for... I don't want to see seemingly no reason but like they were strong, they were up huge, they knew they were up huge. They set up like a 4-man bush gank. They were fishing for a pick to flip it into Baron around 21.5 minutes, 22 minutes. They were camping behind the red buff in J.D.G.'s red side top jungle. But what ended up happening is J.D.G spotted them going in with Azaira plant from Kanavi. FPX didn't have any forward wards to see where... I mean they assumed J.D.G. was there and that somebody would have to face check, but they don't have to face check with Azaira. And Zha'ala, who was on botside, had his teleport but they had no teleport wards. They had no forward vision so they were operating completely blind just hoping somebody would face check. J.D.G. didn't have to face check again because Zha'ala, J.D.G. spotted them going in, understand that their 4v5 are essentially full sending this play, making them have a good teleport ward. Identify their window, said this is our shot back into the game because we're losing this game otherwise. They full send this engage. FPX completely panic, don't know what to do, have this weird staggered retreat split call where they literally looked like they were just shocked. Because they were not on the same page with what to do from here. Zha'ala, who did not have a good thing to teleport to, so this turned into a 4v5 pretty quickly once the TP from 3.69 from... Flandre came in and they ended up picking up a triple kill. It turns out Zha'ala in a confined space with the ultimate and the root and all the A, we root and all that. And then, you know, J.G.G.I. was actually able to use the A0 to pick off somebody on the escape. They ended up picking up a triple kill, getting ash really, really low, so FPX couldn't contest. They flipped this into a baron out of nowhere. The gold lead was completely deleted. And, like, all right, so statistically speaking, not factoring in comps or anything, just looking purely at results and everything. Actually, I think compositionally, like, FPX still were an advantage in this game with, you know, like, it was fine. They were massively outscaled or anything like that. FPX were, if you look at just the year 2024, FPX were probably about 97% to win this game too and lost it. Now, I didn't get to watch this live. I had to catch the VOD you about an hour or two ago. But, um, holding front-plus-plus-one-half-maps tickets, I would have been absolutely fuming at that. I think it was kind of overly cute. I understand what they were going for. I think it was not a bad idea. It was just a bad process. And this is, like, again, like, more nuanced opinion, but, like, you can make a play like that when you can afford to make a play like that when you're up 6,000 gold. But you have to understand, like, the context of, like, in probably 95-plus percent of situations, you can make that play because somebody is going to have to face-check that bush and you're going to get the pick off and then you're going to pick off and you flip into a baron. And it works out most of the time in your favor. But they had a Zyra. If there's someone like a Zyra, or a Lee Sin, or a Hawkshot from Ash, like, something that can fit, like, that can check that without them having to take a risk, then that play is no longer good. And I think FPX just failed to realize that it's obviously a lot harder to do that in the moment than it is, like, in hindsight, like, thinking about that. But, you know, at this level, you need to have a better understanding of what's going on that way. And, you know, against a lot of teams, a lot of teams could suss that out and still lose that fight, but JDG you're not going to lose that fight once they suss it out. And that's what ended up happening here. You know, if that sequence goes any differently at all, it's probably just an FPX baron clean close into game three, but they caught them. They caught them trying to be cute, and they punished them. And, you know, I don't want to take away from JDG here because JDG appropriately identified that, like, this is a mistake. This was their window back into the game, and they full-cented. They were insanely decisive on that play, and that was it. They spent everything that they had to, and they paid off for them. They took their proposition and got there. So, very, very upsetting for FPX plus one and a half maps bets, but, you know, it is what it is. They were, they should have won this game, and they just got a little tiny bit too cute. And that's how good these elite teams are. You just can't make any mistakes against them. It was a very, very small mistake. In fact, that's not a mistake in probably 95% of situations, but specifically with the Zyra and specifically not it. Like I said, the process was wrong. They had forward vision to, like, start a fight off and then have a Shallahu teleport behind them. They probably win that fight, but they didn't, and, you know, that's the game. All right, ended up with a wash for the day, basically. It was because that FPX bet lost, even with TT winning, we ended up basically at zero. We were, I think, we were down a couple cents, like, you know, unit cents. It was much more than that, but anyway, moving on to Tuesday morning, just a little bit of housekeeping here. I'm probably going to end up releasing Wednesday's show a little bit early, probably tomorrow morning, very early before the LPL slate starts up. I'm going to be getting a little bit ahead of the curve this week, not only because we have LCS on Thursday and Friday this week, which is a schedule change, but also because I've potentially got jury duty this week on Wednesday. So, and because of my work schedule, I might also have work as well. So, I might just straight up not have time for something this week, but I'm going to try to get ahead of it and try to have everything out, hopefully, for just logistics sake. I don't get selected, but, you know, if I have to perform my duty, then I will do so. So, I'm going to try to get a little bit ahead of this. I'll keep everyone updated on that, but the schedule, I'm basically saying this because the schedule, the release schedule for Patreon post and for the podcast might just get a little wonky this week. I might just kind of have to jam everything in, you know, when I have time to, and stuff might be abbreviated. Hopefully, it won't be, but we'll see. I just want to give a heads up on that. Anyway, week two, or week four, day two, we are getting toward the end of the placement stage. There's a lot of meaningless games here. Team's playing just for pride. The first match, however, is not meaningless. We have Invictus plus 130 on the winning line, plus one I have Mass at minus 205, minus one I have is a plus 363. It's ultra prime, minus 158 on the winning line, minus one I have is that plus 166. Ultra prime have only been favored once. They have all these wins, they've only been favored once. They did not cover the maps spread against it, and it was actually against Invictus the first time around. Before I go into anything more on this, I should note we do have a lineup change here. So, ultra prime are running the same lineup, Ching-Tian, Hacker, U.A.K., Dogo, and Nikkep. But, IG are finally, finally bringing in Yushinomi, YSKM. So, YSKM, Yushinomi, GLFS, Nanyan, and Vampire. Yushinomi is by far the best player on the Invictus roster. It's not close. I think he probably was bench because of, I would guess it was probably an attitude thing. There were some reports about this at the end of last season. It was probably an attitude thing. Maybe he just wasn't jiving. They kind of screwed him because this roster sucks really bad, and he's really good. It wouldn't shock me to find out that he's going to end up somewhere else. He's by far the best player on this roster. It's not close. He's one of the rare, true, game-breaking top laners that plays a little bit of everything. So, you have to keep in mind, like, most of the time with 80 carries and top laners, a swap-out doesn't make that huge of a difference because just the nature of those roles. But, uh, he's a massive individual upgrade. We're talking, like, from, like, a negative 7 to, like, a positive 8 or something like that. He's a huge upgrade. And he's just, he's, like, a true game-breaking player, and there's not very many of those. So, I think you do actually need to change, you know, your outlook on Invictus to something more optimistic. I don't think he magically makes this team good or anything like that. They still have a lot of problems, but he is capable of taking over a game by himself, and you have to keep that in mind here. So, these two were the first match-up for each other this season. This is not a meaningless match. Both these teams- Invictus is actually not mathematically eliminated. Ultra Prime are still battling to get into the upper bracket. I don't know if that's something that they're interested in, but they are still fighting for that. Invictus won the first game of the first match of this series, and they were up about 5,000 gold, a 20-minute working game, too. Probably, like, again, like, 95% plus to win that game. And through it. And, and Ultra Prime ended up winning that game, and then the third game to make it a 2-1 series. In general, I'm still calling bullshit on Ultra Prime. I still don't think this team is very good. Their numbers are not bad. They actually have decent, you know, underlying economy metrics, and that suggests they're probably okay. But this is a team that's won a lot of games that they... I don't want to say it didn't deserve to win, but that they didn't engineer organic advantages in. It was more just a lot of unfortunate. They've been the beneficiary of a ton of unforced errors this season. I don't want to say they've luck-sacked entirely, but they kind of have. This is a team. Like, the way you need to look at Ultra Prime would be, like, a picture like an NFL team, like a mid-table NFL team that's just had insanely good turnover luck. I think of, like, the, I think it was the 2018 Chicago Bears, where they had, like, a pretty good defense. Their offense was pretty good. Like, they were, like, a decent team, right? Probably, like, a, you know, 10 to 15th ranked, you know, power-rated team. But they had such ridiculously good turnover luck that they kind of were frauds. Like, they got overrated because of that, and it wasn't, like, you know, people have gone back and studied that season, and they've gone back and found out, like, just, like, watching the tapes. Like, a lot of these were unforced errors. Like, it's different if you're getting pressure on the quarterback or in League of Legends terms. It's different if you were, like, you know, playing aggressive, getting forward vision, setting picks up. Like, or abusing vision and forcing the enemy to make a mistaken face check or something. Like, that's, that's part of the game. Like, that's a forced error. That's engineering your own advantage. Unforced errors are, like, stupid solo kills given up. A team, you know, deciding to take a level one against Bromash, you know, just a team making a terrible call. To go for a Baron when they're too far behind. And it's known they didn't clear the vision out. Like, there's unforced errors in this game that can make a team, like, that can affect the results. And I don't do a ton of granularity on this because most of the time it ends up bouncing out both ways. But ultra prime have been the beneficiaries of so many unforced errors from their opponents that it's really, really tough to gauge how good this team actually is. And that's, like, ultimately what I'm getting at here. By the numbers, the model actually made this pretty dead on the price. But I think with you should know me coming back and being kind of a game-breaking presence. I don't think it fixes their problems, but he is a game-breaking presence. Me, just generically, generally calling bullshit on ultra prime's success and that they're actually good. And then the fact that Invictus have side choice and, I mean, are we looking at this price differently if Invictus two owe them in the first week? Probably. But, you know, not that, you know, you can use that for a predictor or whatever. But, like, I think the combination that they have side choice, you should know me stepping back in that I don't think ultra prime is actually that good. I think this is, like, if the models made this by the numbers we've seen so far with the stuff we have so far dead on the number, and all these general headwinds are working in favor of Invictus, I think that's enough to push me over the edge to an Invictus play. So I played Invictus on the Moneyline, plus 130 for one unit. Invictus minus one and a half maps at plus 363 for 0.2 units. Again, this is not, IG are not mathematically eliminated, and ultra prime have not clenched the upper bracket yet either. So this is a match that has, you know, these games should be meaningful. I haven't done all the calculus on whether or not, like, IG are done if they lose one game. I think they might be, but don't quote me on that. But, yeah, this is a meaningful match, and I assume we're going to get a game effort from both. Next up, we have Weibo Gaming plus 247 on the Moneyline, plus one and a half maps at minus 125, minus one and a half at plus 592 against anyone's legend, minus 317 on the Moneyline, minus one and a half, plus 103, plus one and a half at minus 900. Anyone's legend are, oh, do line up, sirs. AL starting, Ali Krakashank's hoping Kyle, same lineup we've been seeing. Weibo have made a change, though. Brief Tarzan's xiaohu lights, and instead of Chris, they're starting X-Bear. You know, Weibo, very obviously, something's going bad with this team. I said after their last match that this is the kind of situation where the management just needs to step in and be like, listen, someone's getting benched. You guys got to wake the fuck up. And as we're, like, Chris is like a perennially good player. He's one of the best players in his position in the league. I don't think he is the best, but he's one of the best at his position in the league and has been for many years. It's kind of weird to bench him, of all people. I think Xiaohu might be a better candidate to bench in this specific instance, but it's pretty clear that something had to be done just like shake things up and snap this team out of the funk they've been in. So it's whatever. Like, I almost think it doesn't matter who it was just to change things up and get somebody that's going to give a shit because, you know, Weibo kind of just looks like an Eeyore. I call them Eeyore. They look like a depressed team. They're just like, yeah, whatever. They just kind of like mosey around the map and hope the other team is going to roll over and die for them. Like, once the game gets out of lane phase, they just look completely disinterested in progressing the game forward and they're just playing the game. So change had to be made. Anyone's legend, statistically, they've been a legitimate monster. The model raised them out as the fourth best team in the LPL right now. They've dropped just four games this summer outside of the end. Two of those were in that really, really bizarre showing against Weibo the first time around in that 2-0 sweep for Weibo. Looking back on that now, it's still just baffling how odd that showing was from anyone's legend. But they've looked pretty good. They're doing their job. They're handing out beatdowns to all the bad teams in this group. And I kind of want to take a second to talk about that. I went into this a little more detail on the Patreon post. But going into summer, it was looking like this group was going to be super interesting. Weibo made a ton of big upgrades. NIP were actually pretty good, but high ceiling, low floor, high volatility team. AL brought in ALA, which was going to be a big upgrade, and we were optimistic about... Well, I should probably even evict this. I didn't really have a whole lot of hope for, but this was going to be an interesting match up between three teams. So it was looking like it was going to be a really, really intriguing group. But it just didn't end up being that way. Or it did just in a completely different way, I guess, is about to put it. But weibo have been drastic, severe underperformers. NIP and their terrible, terrible macro has been their bugaboo this season. And then, you know, Invictus haven't started Yushinomi, so that wasn't even interesting for a while. They've just been terrible. Anyways, legends have done their part. They've delivered. They're mostly just cleaning up house. Ultra Prime are in really... I still don't think Ultra Prime are very good, but they're kind of doing the same thing just picking up the pieces of everybody else throwing games because they're bad. So, like, the reason I'm bringing all of this up is because it's really, really tough to tell how good anyone's legend actually are. Like, they haven't really been tested, is what I'm saying. So, like, I think AL... And even, like, one of their losses, one of their other two losses, not to Weibo, was kind of their own fault. Like, it wasn't, like, the other team just outplaying them. So, it's tough to figure out how good this team actually is, is like what I'm getting at here. I don't know if they're just, like, they could be a pretty good team that's just benefiting from a, like, a shockingly somehow dogshit group. Or they might actually be good. I don't know, it might be both. But, um, it's tough to make, like, make sense of all of it with how bad and how weird this group has been. I don't know. I don't know what to make of the crisp substitution for Weibo, but, like I said, any change is probably a good thing for them. Doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna fix anything. You know, generally, this team's just been, like, lethargic as hell. But maybe it will. Maybe you have somebody with a fire under their ass and they just wakes this team up out of nowhere. Um, regardless, I don't trust anybody in this group. AL have looked to the part of a good team. They're laying down beatdowns on all these bad teams and underperformers. Their underlying numbers suggest that they're actually a top 14. Their adjusted numbers suggest that they're a top 14. I'm still just skeptical and, frankly, I wouldn't be called dead laying this kind of number offside with them in this match. I think Weibo have the talent to shock them, but I just don't trust them either. Like, swapping a support doesn't necessarily mean this team's gonna wake up either. So, I would lean Weibo plus one and a half maps in this series or map one money line. If they're gonna get them, if they're gonna come out and shock, I think it's probably gonna be in game one. Weibo have side choice for game one. I think map one money line, map one kill spread, map one or just like plus one and a half maps series money line. I think all these are in play if you have the stomach for it. I personally don't. You know, I'm kind of talking myself into this, but like the models made AL a bigger favor than this, which makes sense. If you make some adjustments for the fact that they're changing up and that they have side choice, I still can't quite get it to plus two forty seven. I was hoping we'd get a bigger payoff, but if you want to play map one money line, I think that's not a bad decision. Like, I don't think that's a terrible angle. The thing is like, Weibo, I mean, you're gonna know right away. If Weibo just are still shit, then we'll know. And unfortunately, I don't mean a game one loss. So, I don't know. I think you can maybe look to play this live or just play Weibo map one. I'm not playing anything in this one. I just, I don't know if it's enough. Like, I don't think you're getting paid off enough to take the risk on it. So, no play for me. That's gonna be it for me today. I'll be back tomorrow morning with the post for Wednesday LPL and LCK. And then, you know, again, the schedule will be a little bit weird this week, but I will see you then. Best of luck and enjoy the rest of your day.
