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. Alright, good evening everybody, it's currently about 1.23pm on Sunday, August 4th, I'm coming to you here late Saturday night into Sunday morning just before the LCK starts. Got a little bit of rough schedule news for me, so I'm not going to be able to record this at my normal time, so I'm actually going to be including Monday's LP, I'll play off match in this post as well as Sunday's LCS, so a bit of a weird schedule here, but this is going to be Sunday LCS and Monday's LP I'll match as part 2 here, a little bit strange I know, but bear with me folks, I don't know how much to say about the 100 Thieves and Mortals game, I can't believe they lost that game 1 and they just got their shit kicked in in game 2, 100 Thieves are not good, don't be fooled by this shit, none of those bottom 5 teams are good, so anyway, let's get into the LCS for Sunday, alright, first up, maybe my favorite position of the entire weekend is in this match here, I think a lot of you know where this is going, we have a marquee match up between probably the two best teams, team liquid are -171 on the money line, -1/2 maps at +191, against cloud 9 + 140 on the money line, plus 1/2, -238 on the -1/2 is at +389, my model actually made cloud 9 a favorite, a -150 favorite, and they are a +140 dog, that's a massive, massive delta here, keep that in mind, that's you know, makes a lot of sense given a lot of the sentiment that I've expressed to you guys over the course of this LCS season, also flagged the under 4 and 1/2 dragons and under 1 and 1/2, Baron's is very strong, plays add a lot of the correlated to the time total under 32 minutes plays, but you have to keep in mind these two teams tend to play pretty quickly, so sometimes when you have two up tempo teams they can match each other and it ends up stalling out, other times you have two up tempo teams and just all the games are going to be up tempo games, but keep in mind that their numbers are being kind of skewed because they steamroll a lot of teams in the early game that aren't very good early game teams, so sometimes you get a little bit of an interesting match up there, I think you all know where I'm going in this match, I've made the K-Skins Cloud 9, I'm going to make the K-Skins Cloud 9 in just a minute here, but I wanted to kind of talk over a couple of things here, so I took that big Cloud 9 pre-season position on them to win the split because the underlying numbers for this team were just so much better than everyone else and they just happened to lose at the wrong time to get themselves eliminated in spring, really really disappointing exit, that could just as easily happen again, but so far they've actually dramatically improved their underlines and they were already by far the best team in the LCS, they improved their roster, they fixed a lot of their things, the eye test matches, they look really really good, they are for all intents and purposes taking care of business, they haven't dropped a game since their first game of the summer split, the knock on Cloud 9 is that they haven't played anybody good, now they're going to play Liquid tomorrow and they're going to play Flyquest next week, that's going to be their two real tests for the season, so you have to keep in mind that their numbers are definitely inflated a little bit because they haven't faced any of the good teams, you have to keep that in mind when looking at this. The thing is though, even if you look at their win-adjusted numbers, they're still the best team in the league, their win-adjusted numbers are the best, their agnostic economy isn't totally resilient to a soft schedule, but part of the reason I look at agnostic economy is that it does a much better job of cutting noise out against bad teams than a combination of that and win-adjusted does a really really good job of showing you what elite teams are actually doing. Elite teams will consistently have a strong foundation, a strong agnostic economy, a strong differential per minute as well, they will always have that because they are good fundamental foundational things, they don't leave a lot of gold on the map, that's essentially what you're looking at doing here, they're hoovering up all the gold on the map and they're converting with it, right, that's what you're looking for. Teams that are a little bit shaky, there's a lot of times where you can get teams that end up with a pretty good record that don't have a good foundation and it's a house of cards and it's just a matter of it falling over, right, we've seen that with energy, we've seen that with NIP, we've seen it with a couple teams across the globe here, right, so Cloud9 right now, obviously they've won a lot of games and has some impact on how good their agnostic economy numbers look, but we've seen teams with great records have fractions of this amount. This is a world-class number, they're approaching 1800 agnostic gold per minute, obviously they've only lost a single game which is contributing to that, but they have a more than a plus 200 gold, they're agnostic differential per minute as well, their wind adjusted numbers are excellent, they're a lot better than team liquids are, this is not just because they're stomping people, they have 70% of their wins is graded as quality wins, they've had a blowout win, they close with a lead, both these teams actually have a great closing rate with a lead at 20 minutes or more than 90% for both teams here. The interesting thing with this, actually Cloud9 have 100% I forgot to mention that, both these teams have leads early in all but like one game this season, that's a unanimous factor with the two of them, both from match significant leads very often. For all intents and purposes, this is like a coin flip match, my model made Cloud9 a bigger favorite, even if you are not as optimistic about Cloud9 as I am, and I'm a little bit bearish in skeptical of liquid, even still, even if you don't feel the same way I do, and you think liquid are the best team, I think it's tough to make a case for the price being this heavy handed for team liquid in this contest, even if you aren't as bullish on Cloud9 and are more bullish on liquid than I am, this should probably be like at most minus 130 for liquid or like a pick them, and minus 170 is just right out to me, this team is not more than 60 something percent to win this match. Cloud9 have shown you, Cloud9 have done everything that you could ask them to do, they've utterly steamrolled in most of their games, they have an average gold differential 20 minutes of more than like almost 4600 gold, that's ridiculous, that's utterly ridiculous. So look, I know they haven't played any but that's the counterpoint here is that Cloud9 haven't played anybody and that liquid have kind of like actually improved since spring and looked pretty good internationally against good teams. So there's a case to be made that this is the first real test for Cloud9, you don't know how they're going to behave in their first real test, right? Totally get that, but realistically that's the only counterpoint that you can make, because the eye test fits, I like Cloud9 a little bit more, I think Cloud9 have way more explosive individual players that can take over a game than liquid do, and I think liquid as soon as they're a team that's not going to be tested in the early game, or like I think as soon as liquid's going to be tested in the early game, they're not going to be able to be as comfortable, and I question how good this team looks when they're uncomfortable. So I think this is going to be two very explosive early game teams, more often than not when you get those cases, they are just steamroll games, and it's just whoever gets the better of the early game wins, which kind of leans toward a coin flip angle. And then when it's not, sometimes they clash out and you end up getting two, you know, two teams that butt heads early and then they kind of have to figure out problem solve their way through a game. Maybe you give a slight edge to liquid in those instances, just because of experience and roster continuity, but I don't think it's very much. I just like, look, the models extremely bullish on Cloud9, the models been extremely bullish on Cloud9. It's a part of why it took that big preseason position on them. I think this number is just off. This should be closer to a pick. I love Cloud9 here. I think I actually think Cloud9 should be favored, even though they haven't faced any tests, but at worst, this is like a pick them to me. So I love Cloud9. I'm staking up on this contest. I'm playing Cloud9 Moneyline plus 140 for 1.5 units. And then I'm going to play a half unit on the Cloud9 sweep at plus 389 for obviously a half unit there. So double stake here, upstaking a little bit. I just think it's a very, very bad price. So trying to take advantage of that. This is probably my favorite play in the last like two weeks. And I should just mention, I kind of talked a little bit about this on the Patreon post. There's kind of like a bit of an opportunity cost angle here and why I'm a little bit okay staking up. There's a really good chance that if Cloud9 end up winning this match and winning against FlyQuest next week, they're going to become the prohibitive favorites. And that you're going to start seeing them priced as prohibitive favorites. And right now, if you do like a rough, you know, derivation of like power numbers for like book based on book prices that we're seeing, it's still grading liquid and FlyQuest as the best teams in the LCS. And I don't think that's the case anymore. I think these teams at worst are like all three of them are even. I personally think Cloud9 are a little bit better than both of them. But if you do that process, like right now, like it doesn't have Cloud9 as good as those two, and I just think that's wrong. So if they end up beating these two, you're going to see a dramatic flip in odds to the point where like they might end up becoming an overpriced favorite for playoffs. But you know, ideally that's what we want so that we can either, you know, so that we'll have options to maybe, you know, take some risk off of our future if that's possible. But the real reason I'm mentioning this is I think there's a really good chance that this is the last cheap price that we're ever going to see on Cloud9 for the rest of the LCS season, not that there's much of the LCS season left. But, you know, if you want to get on board, you know, don't let the train leave the station is all I'm saying. I'm not trying to induce FOMO here by any stretch, but like realistically, if they win these next two matches this week and next week, then they're going to be favorites to win the whole thing. You're going to see them as like minus a thousand every week. So just keep that in mind as well. I think this is about as good this is about as good a time as any to take your shot with them. And that's that next up. We've got fly quest minus 8 30 on the money line. You might as one half maps at minus 166 second shop fire rebellion, plus 556 on the money line, the plus one half set plus 136, the minus one half is a plus 1364 model made this dead on the number of fly quest minus 833 flag the under one and a half barons is a, you know, very light edge on market price. I don't really have a whole lot to say about this. You guys know I don't think any of these LCK or LCS teams are this much better than anybody, but Shopify have looked pretty bad. Their early game has looked a lot better since returning from EWC. I'll give them credit there. Their early games have actually looked like coherent and functional and they just kind of fumble the bag once they like they look like they don't know what to do once they get, you know, get ahead. So I think it's possible that you can maybe try to play that angle. If you think fly quest have a bit of a shaky start here, you want to play like Shopify kill spreads or maybe like neutral objective overs as a way to kind of play toward, you know, maybe Shopify getting a lead and then throwing or something like that. But realistically, I do think the top three teams are like significantly better than the bottom five teams. Like there's a huge gap between those two. It's a huge like, you know, full tier at full tier at least jump between all those. So I do actually think this price is probably like a little closer to reasonable than it seems. Yeah, that's the way I would look at it. So no place for me in this one. I've played. If you forced me to, I'd play Shopfire billion kill spreads, maybe on map one. All right, moving on to Monday's third LPL knockout stage playoff match, we have OMG minus 107 on the money line, the plus one and a half maps at minus 234 plus two and a half minus 872. The minus one half is at plus 195 in the underdog sweep is that plus 559 against Thunder Talk gaming minus 120 on the money line, the minus one half maps at plus 170 70 minus two and a half is at plus 508. So this is an interesting one. If you use the full summer sample, the model made this a minus 400 fare for Thunder Talk, which seems insane. But Thunder Talk actually performs really, really well, even outside of the Nirvana group and even, you know, pretty well against good teams as well. If you use just the Nirvana sample set, it made this a minus 191 fare for the series. So both models, both iterations of the model showing very strong value on Thunder Talk gaming in this instance. You know, this is not a surprise to anyone that's been kind of following along with this. I do think, you know, it's interesting with the Nirvana group, our, you know, rule of thumb, our shorthand was everybody sucks and no one's that much better than one another. But it becomes a lot more interesting trying to delineate between essentially coin flips. You can kind of take some stances when the price allows you to. So, you know, it's a better environment for taking a stance on something as opposed to just oh man, it's a plus 160 dog, just take the dog and you know, this sucks, but it's whatever, right? In this case, where it's basically a coin flip, you can kind of voice your opinion a little bit more. There's a little more leeway for you to do that. In this case, we saw this series on July 26, like, you know, we a little more than a week ago, Thunder Talk, where a minus 116 to minus 111 favored against OMG, they won this 20. And the games were not really close at all. Going into that match, I backed Thunder Talk, the idea being that, you know, OMG were five and oh, at that point, but it was a pretty fraudulent five and oh, like the underlying numbers were not good. It wasn't really particularly things that they were doing. It was more just their, you know, them being there to catch the fumble of their opponents. As with a lot of teams in this Nirvana group, one of the things I kept preaching over and over again was not to pay attention to the records because, you know, a team could, you know, flip heads five times in a row. That's not likely, but it's, you know, it can happen. You know, whatever it is, it's, you know, 50, 25, 12 and a half, 6.25, you know, there was a reasonable chance that there was going to be a one standard deviation team, right? And OMG happened to be that for this. And then that came crashing down to reality pretty shortly after that. I do think Thunder Talk were the class of the Nirvana group. I think there's a reasonable case to be made that maybe they are better than NIP and LGD that they probably should have been in this upper group, unfortunately for them. They were just in a very, very difficult group in the group state or the placement stage. I mean, look, guys, all encompassing. If you look at the entire summer season, Thunder Talk are surprisingly like a top 17, like they're legitimately good. They were by far, like numbers wise, they were by far the best team in their not Nirvana group, and they didn't even have the best record. Their underlines in just the Nirvana group were excellent. They were ahead of OMG who had the second best numbers in the Nirvana group, and they were pretty clearly ahead of them. So, you know, I backed Thunder Talk then. I'm going to be backing them again here. I know this is a little weird to kind of plan a flag on. I'm going to upstate a little bit. I don't, I don't normally like doing that with these teams. I don't like trusting big teams, but I think, I think Thunder Talk are, they have significantly better underlines, and you know, better underlying teams, stronger foundation. You have a better chance of that bearing out over a five game sample than a three game sample. So, you have that working in your favor. The other thing here is, I just think that this price is a little bit generous. Maybe that's a strong opinion. I don't know. So, I'm going to upstate a little bit. I'm going to upstate to 1.2 units on Thunder Talk Money Line minus 120 here. I just think, I think through the side, they've been a clearly better team. They just don't have a better record. That's the old, the record is the only reason that we're getting, we're getting even remotely close to this price. Because if it was looking at performance data, Thunder Talk should be north of minus 150. So, I like Thunder Talk quite a bit in this Monday match. I'm not playing any derivatives in this one because I think this could end up turning into a bit of a weird series. The one knock on Thunder Talk is that they don't put themselves in advantageous positions all that much, even though their underlines are pretty good. So, they end up in a lot of coin flip games that probably shouldn't be coin flip games because they don't blow out and balloon their advantages early. But, they're under the hood metrics like their agnostic economy and everything. They grind out games very, very well, and their mid and late game decision making is a lot better than most of the bad teams. Their mid and late game decision making is honestly better than LGD and Ninjas and Pajamas. And I would argue even like Weibo too. So, I think in that aspect, there's a case to be made that Thunder Talk are actually like a top six or seven or eight team. And they just kind of got a little bit unlucky with their placement and, you know, had kind of some disappointing games in the Ivana group, I'll admit. But, I do think this team is a lot better than people seem to think it is. They are kind of a better as darling. They've been very, very good from a betting perspective. I've had a pretty good pulse on this team in general. So, yeah, we're going to go Thunder Talk money line. Nope, not playing any derivatives, just because I think these games could be kind of all over the place. They could be anything from a steam rolling to, you know, these two team staring at each other for 25 minutes and then a coin flip fight happens. So, I don't really have a good read on how the games are going to go. Neither of these teams have a significant advantage early very, very often. So, could very well end up looking like Nirvana group games. This is, in fact, another Nirvana group matchup. So, you know, keep that in mind. But, I do like Thunder Talk to get home probably three to one in this series. So, Thunder Talk money line minus 121.2 units. That's going to be it for me. I'm not going to have a show for tomorrow. I'm getting this, obviously, I'm doing the Monday show now with this group. I'll have another show for Tuesday's matches. Until then, best of luck.
