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 afternoon everybody, it's currently about 3.45 p.m. eastern on Tuesday, August 6th. We've got a two-match slate in the LCK, tomorrow starting week 8, the final two weeks coming up here in the regular season in the LCK. Those of you on the Patreon, I put the model power ratings for both correlated model and the custom way to model on the Patreon post, as well as a couple of betting trends, charts, just to take a look at. In general, the main takeaway there has been the favorites as usual and the LCK have been dominating. They've actually been well exceeding the market implied win rate in general, but you can take a look at that for patreon subscribers. Quick recap, we ended up plus one unit for Monday, Thunder Talk, absolute no doubt. They dominated this series against OMG, three separate, I think they were sub 30-minute wins. Actually, these games weren't even close. You had a 26-minute win, a 23-minute win, and a 25-minute win for the Thunder Talk. These were no doubt wins, and by the way, the 26-minute win was with a fucking smolder. So, yeah, this was an absolute no-douter series, not a question. Yu-Kao went absolutely ballistic in this match. I know the first two games, he had 20 kills on Lucian altogether. I don't know if he even died in the first two games, I think he might have died once. Like, this was an absolute shell-lacking, not much else to say. I liked TT quite a bit in that match, and I bet them for that reason. I did not see a 3-0 beatdown coming, but you know, I guess the models were right on that one. The models made them much bigger favorites in that contest, and you know, that's where it is. Let's get into the LCK for Wednesday morning. All right, first up, we have DRX plus 2,107 on the Moneyline, 2,107, plus 1/2 maps is at plus 444, minus 1/2 plus 4424, 44-1 on the sweep against Gen-G, minus 5279 on the Moneyline, minus 1/2 maps is at a whopping minus 629. So, yeah, this is what you're going to see on Gen-G here the rest of the way. For what it's worth, the model made this minus like 3,000 to plus 1,700. A custom weighted model actually made this pretty dead on the number, which is kind of crazy. Flagged DRX first blood as a play, and had a light edge on time total unders. DRX do have side choice for this series. So, here's the catch with this. Gen-G are obviously, I mean, possibly the best team we've ever seen. I think we've talked ad nauseam about this, I'm not going to beat a dead horse on that. DRX have been struggle-busting quite a bit, really, all of 2024. But what I will say is sometimes when you get, I mean, Gen-G, a little context here, Gen-G are within grasp of a perfect season. It wouldn't be the first perfect season in LCK history. But if they could get there losing just a single game, that would be absolutely bananas, and we've never seen anything like that before. The SK Telecom teams that went undefeated, I believe, I think the best record we have from any of them was like 27 and 4 or something like that, I forget. But Gen-G, it was more than 27, I apologize, it's not possible, it's got to be like 30 something, but Gen-G are within striking distance of doing something truly historic here. Like if they end up, if they just, if they just 2-0 the rest of the season, they'll end the season 36 and 1 in game score. That's fucking ridiculous, I've never seen anything like that before. So, and the thing is, they're well within striking distance of doing that now because all of their tough outs are done, like they've already, like all their tough matches are over. Like, the hardest match they have left is the final day of the regular season against Hamla. That's the toughest match that they have left, and I believe, I'm going to double check right now. Yeah, Hamla are going to have side choice for that match, so that's probably the toughest out that they have left, but they have, you know, Nongxim in week 9 is their first match. They have KT later this week who they should absolutely destroy, but it's KT so you never know. And they're obviously huge favorites here. The reason I bring all of this up is because sometimes when you get a ridiculously big favorite, an incredible team like this, that's, you know, on the precipice of doing something historic, you know, they just came off of maybe, I would argue their hardest match because I think stylistically that like Hamla, they just should beat the shit out of Hamla. I think, I actually think T1 and D+ are tougher outs for Gen G just because of how Hamla plays and how Gen G plays. So I think that's like, there's a chance that we get like a big exhale here. They just came off of that win last week. This is their first match this week. It's DRX. It would be really easy for them to look past DRX and just like, yeah, whatever. Maybe they clown around a little too much for feeling themselves. This team hasn't done a whole lot of that. Like very, very little. Like I can count on one hand to the amount of like four fun games that this team has had in the entire 2024 season. Really, it's only been like two games. So I don't expect that. But I think there's a bit of an exhale that happens when, you know, you get these kind of situations and there's a chance that DRX could be a stunner here. I mean, you're getting +444 on them to take a map. The map money lines are like eight to one, nine to one range. So like, I don't blame you if you want to take a shot on DRX here. The problem is DRX just don't have a lead often enough and they just have, they've only really had like one truly dominant game and it was like their second game of the season or something. So this is a team that hasn't had a gold, you know, they haven't had a gold lead at 20 since I can remember. I'm going to look that up right now. DRX's last gold lead at 20 minutes. They had a 500 gold lead at 20 minutes against Breon in game two. They had a 56 gold lead in game one against Breon and they had a 300 gold lead against T1 in game one. And that's before that you got to go back a couple weeks. So I guess no action, they did too. But like the point being like, this is a team that's usually down and usually down big. They only have a lead at 20 minutes in 41% of their games and they've only, you know, closed out half the games that they've had any size lead at 20 minutes and closing out games against Genji is a tall, you know, task as we've seen T1 T1 and D plus like teams that are good closers have struggled closing games out against Genji. They might be the toughest team to ever, they might be the toughest team to close the game out against that I've ever seen. So maybe like them, I always think like Griffin was kind of like that too back when they were a thing. A lot of parallels between those teams, by the way. So 2021 EDG was a very tough team to close games out against just the way they played. But I think Genji might be the best we ever seen at that. I don't trust DRX to close the game out. So if you're, if you want to get involved with the underdogs, I would play the kill spread. But I'm going to get involved in a different market, a somewhat non correlated market. I'm going to play first blood, something that I've talked about quite a bit on this show, not quite a bit, but I've mentioned a few times. I like when you have these obscene money line prices, you know, minus 3000, you know, to minus 10,000, etc. The way the derivatives markets are often priced, not always, but often are priced for a lot of the derivatives is, you know, it's derivative of the money line price. Like we see this in traditional sports all the time, right? You know, in like a football game, the spread is derived from the team total or the team totals are derived from the total on the point spread. And, you know, alternatives are derived from that, right? But a lot of times, like there's advantages to be had in those derivative markets because they're not, like, if there's an a certain amount of game states that are, you know, one way traffic for a certain team or one way traffic for another team, or like, you know, there's a long tail to the upper downside in a lot of those situations. So like there's edges to be had in betting, you know, things like underdog money lines or like, you know, alt's kill, you know, alt spreads for favorites and stuff like that a lot of the time, because like if they win the way they're supposed to win, it's going to be more than the kill spread. There's certain teams that are just more volatile that don't play close games, etc, right? I'm using that as an example, because first blood is derived from the money line price most of the time. And admittedly, it's a pretty volatile, like difficult to predict to market. So like, I don't play it very often because, you know, it's juiced up and it's not very predictive of anything. It's just kind of, there's a little bit of a, you know, I test like, is this team actually like making a concerted effort to do this in a lot of games? And then you can just kind of like, you know, split differences over the percentage at a bunch of VIG and, you know, up your threshold for what's worthy of a play, that's kind of what I do. I had a little bit of both. I like playing first blood on the underdogs in these games, because first blood is not that correlated to winning games of League of Legends. Like, there's just not that strong of a correlation there. So a lot of times you get bad teams with very high first blood rates. And, you know, sometimes it doesn't have anything to do with anything. It's just a thing that happens, right? It's basically like a coin flip, right? A lot of times, not always. In this case, DRX of 51.7% first blood rate for this season, Gen G have a 56 or 58.6, which is good, but not incredible. You know, there's teams with, you know, north of 60, you know, close to 70%, which is toward the high end. 58.6% is a very good first blood rate. It's just not like staggering, right? Right now, the first blood market for this game is like minus 190 plus 140 for Gen G. Like, that's a 65.4% implied for Gen G to get first blood. There's very, very, very few situations where any team is 65.4, like north of 60% to get first blood. So yeah, you know, DRX aren't a particularly great first blood team, but at a, you know, at a plus, you know, 140, which is about a, you know, a 41.6% implied. You're getting or 46.6 repeating, of course, if you know, you know, you know, for a team that's got better than a 50% first blood rate, and it's not that correlated. Like, I could see DRX having a good game plan to like jump out on them in game one, especially because they have map choice in game one. They could do, you know, they can, you know, more coherently construct a set play. And yeah, it's Gen G and Gen G is very, very good, but this is not as correlated. This is not correlated to the Moneyline price. You're playing a non-correlated thing. So I, and, you know, these are very, very low limits, usually. So it takes a little bit of work to get down on these, but I'm going to play DRX first blood on map one at plus 140 for a net of one unit. I think you can take a stab at the plus 10 and a half kills. The plus 10 and a half kills that like plus 102, by the way. So I don't hate that either, although Gen G have been Gen G have an average margin of victory of eight and a half and DRX have an average margin defeat of just under 10 at 9.91. So like, you know, model, I actually got to write that in this in the report, but the model did flag that as a light option too. I would play that map one if that's your preference, but since you're getting plus money, you could conceivably play that on both. If you think DRX are going to be particularly chippy today or if Gen G are going to be sloppy. So yeah, DRX first blood plus 140, one unit, map one. Second and next tomorrow is an interesting one with a lot of playoff implications. So crawling down freaks plus 204 on the Moneyline, the plus one a half maps at minus 152 and the minus one a half is a plus 535 against Katie Rolster, minus 256 on the Moneyline, minus one a half is at plus 125. Kwang down, I'm going to have side choice for this. My model made this plus 140 minus 154. So I'll probably be playing Kwang down. Let's talk that through in just a second. The under four and a half dragons was tagged as a very strong play. I'm also going to be playing that. I guess we'll talk about that first and I'll talk about all the implications of this, right? These two teams go to a fifth dragon in just 34.3 and 39.4 percent of their gains respectively, and you can get a plus 114 on it, which is just a pretty huge edge on market price. So yeah, I like that one quite a bit. I don't normally like playing these in more high pressure series, but both of these teams don't really play particularly good defensive league of legends, meaning like when they get hit, they get knocked out, you know, and they both have pretty good closing rates. Katie have a 69.6 percent and Kwang down a 75 percent closing rate with a lead at 20, which isn't incredible, but is is quite good. So typically these two teams tend to play snowball league games and win when they do so. So well, they win and lose that way. All right, breaking this down a little bit further on the side here. This is specifically the timing for this series. It's really, really interesting for playoff implications. There's this huge clump in the middle, especially now with T1 kind of losing a bunch of games. There's this huge clump in the middle of the table between four and seven. One of the one of these four teams between T1, Katie, Ferex and Kwang Dung is going to get left out of playoffs. There's only two matches separating those four teams right now. You have KT and Ferex at seven and seven, T1 or at eight and six and Kwang Dung are at six and eight. So any matches that happen between these teams for the next two weeks are very, very high leverage because they essentially are double swing matches. We're going to see a couple of those we're going to see. So we have tomorrow we have Kwang Dung KT Thursday. We have or a rather Saturday, we have Ferex and Kwang Dung. That could be a very consequential series as well. And then next week, I'm looking at next week's schedule, we have Ferex versus T1 on the second to last day of the season. That could be very consequential as well. And then we have Kwang Dung T1 to open week nine as well. So there's a few matches in the next two weeks that are going to be very, very consequential for the playoff picture. Kwang Dung and KT, like this match is critically important for both of these teams because having the tiebreakers and having the advantage over like any wins that you get, even game wins in these matches against these good against these teams that are competing have almost like a double swing value, almost like a magic number double swing like in traditional sports. Like if you can beat your divisional opponent kind of deal. So a lot of these matchups are critically important for the playoff picture. Right now, Kwang Dung won the first meeting between these two teams. So if Kwang Dung win this match, that's going to do a lot of work for them toward making playoffs. And you know, same for KT role, so KT could bring the head to head to a one to one. So we'll go down to game score, which probably helps them. But we'll see, we'll talk about that. These two teams have the exact same game differential. And they're only, you know, one match differential apart. So critically important match, I think it goes without saying, we're going to see a bunch of these. So just all these are kitchen sink series for these teams is what I'm saying this for. You could maybe for that qualitative reason, there's a case to be made for kill total unders, because the teams are a little tight, there's a case to be made for kill total overs, because these teams are going to be full sending it. I don't normally like playing like neutral unders and stuff like that in these series because of the tension. But I am going to play the under one under four and half dragons, a plus 114 on maps one and two, which I just kind of mentioned, I forgot to actually just read the price though. I'm also going to play Kwang Dung. What's our rule here with KT Rolster? We fade them as big favorites back them as big underdog. Now obviously they're not as big a favorite as they were against Breon the other day. But the last week was such a perfect encapsulation of KT Rolster as a team in 2024. We didn't have the roller coaster games that we used to see in like, you know, previous iterations of this team from previous years, but in 2024, this team has been Feaster famine the team. And you know, we saw it last week, they pulled the upset, went over Hama life, turned right around and get too owed by the worst team in the in the LCK. So, you know, that's what I'm saying, like, there's a, you know, a real Feaster famine nature to this team. And if you look at their underlying numbers, like this is still a team with a negative 50 ish, agnostic old differential per minute, they've maintained that minus 50 agnostic old different minute, like around that ballpark, the entire season, regardless of how well or how poorly they're doing. So, despite incredibly volatile game to game results and game to game performance, their average, like, their average performance is like underlying numbers is still showing that this team isn't that good. Like, they're pretty clearly better than okay, Breon, DRX, and, and Nongxim from an underlying numbers perspective. Like, they're a tier above those teams, but they're the worst team in the LCK besides that. The records don't say that. But like, if you look at all the underlying numbers, they're the worst team, they're, they're the next worst team in the LCK. Like, they're your number seven team for pretty much every other measurable. Recently, they've been doing better because they've had pretty good early games lately, and that's why. But this is not a team that's particularly good, guys. And I need to, like, drive this point home because just because they like, it's really, really easy to get distracted by wins, like, like marquee wins. They beat T1 both times. That's huge for them, right? They caught T1 the day before they left free WC in their home venue. They did the reverse sweep. They caught T1 again when, you know, in those two weeks where they were particularly bad and struggling, you know, I'm not making excuses or anything like that. I'm just saying like, they kind of caught T1 at the best possible timing. And then Homwa, they legitimately won that series. But, you know, that was, we saw two sealant. We saw literally the two best games the KT have played in 2024 or two of the three best games they've played in 2024 or in the summer season in that series. And then they turned right around and lose to Breon. So I have absolutely no faith in this team is even a moderate favorite like this. Kwongbong haven't exactly been, you know, impressive themselves, but like their underlines are a lot better. And I think with side choice, like that's an added bump as well. My model made this like a minus 154 plus 140 series. So I already like Kwongbong and then they get side choice bump as well. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stake up a tiny bit on this. I'm gonna do a net 1.25 unit stake. I'm gonna play a full unit on the plus one and a half maps for Kwongbong at minus 152. And then I'm gonna play a quarter unit plus 204 on the series money line. If you want to just play the map spread, that's totally fine too. But I want to sprinkle on the series money line as well because they do have side choice in this match. I severely doubt we see a KT-20, but, oh, it's KT Rollster. Nothing would really surprise me. Like, I just don't trust KT as a big favorite. And, you know, Kwongdon got them the first time around. I think Kwongdon are a better team. Maybe don't have quite the ceiling. The KT do, but Kwongdon are a lot steadier. Like, they're a known quantity. We know what we're gonna get with them. I don't like that their defense hasn't been particularly good in summer. But, you know, they're a team that can close with a goal. Really, that's another thing I wanted to mention. Both these teams are really, really good for mid table teams. They have, they actually have really good closing rates. KT have almost a 70% closing rate with a lead to 20. And Kwongdon actually have a 75% closing rate. KT lead much more often. But as we've seen with them, you know, they've had a couple huge throws as well. And I just don't trust them all. Like, they actually have a pretty poor offside performance as well. So, I just don't trust KT as this big a favorite. And I think that you're getting a good enough price on Kwongdon with side choice that I think that's the angle to play in this series, especially because this is a critically important series. And we've seen, you know, yet, KT got to be kicking themselves coming off that wind too, just like psychologically, not that I get into that kind of handicapping, but really important series. I'm expecting a kitchen sink from both teams. You know, they, this should be, this should be a competitive and close series. I don't normally like playing those dragon unders in these kind of games, but I think we'll get one of those home because these two teams tend to steam roll when they win. So that's going to be it for me today. I'll be back tomorrow with LCK for Thursday.
