Tuesday, June 9th Recap
LNG Esports vs FunPlus Phoenix (Net: -3.84 units)
It’s not very often you see a -3333 favorite lose outright in any activity but it does happen. In Spring, RNG lost as -1136 favorites to Rogue Warriors and FunPlus lost in week one to eStar at -1900 favorites although admittedly eStar were significantly better than that number. It does happen. Did I expect to happen in this spot? Absolutely not. So what happened…
FunPlus were dominating game one and likely could have ended it in under 25 or so minutes but got overzealous with their huge lead and overdove mid tier two tower to allow LNG a path back into the game. With two poke compositions and limited hard engage, once they botched that push and opted to play a slow game our under was cooked. Eventually FPX did win that game. Game two and three were just poor execution on so many levels by FPX.
I’ll give credit to LNG for actually making some proactive plays in this series but similar to Victory Five vs Dominus it’s tough to give them too much credit when the opponent makes so many errors. FunPlus were the ones making plays happen most of the time in this series and they just messed up their execution on a few dives and gank plays. It happens to the best of us. I’m not holding this against FunPlus or in favor of LNG this was just a bizarre series.
It’s rough that the first time I stick my proverbial neck out for a blue chip stock like FunPlus and it’s one of these once a season upsets but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Numbers and process said to make the play, made the play, and it didn’t work out. That’s all there is to it.
Rogue Warriors vs TOP Esports (Net: -1.96 units)
This match was infuriating. Rogue Warriors had game one in the bag and punted in absolutely spectacular fashion on so many different levels. Rogue Warriors do have somewhat of a history of punting leads but still this one hurt. Game two they were just tilted and you could tell immediately from the draft which went in a completely different direction. They even had a lead in game two and if one big fight in the mid game went a little differently, suddenly this would have gone to a third game.
Rogue Warriors were the play and I’d do it again in a second. Hell, I’d play them again if JackeyLove was playing at the number we got.
Daily Total Net: -5.8 units
The universe has comic timing. As if FunPlus losing wasn’t enough, Rogue Warriors punting a game win that would have guaranteed us a profit on that series and then dropping it for the sweep (as well as costing me some lucrative DFS positions) just reminds you that sometimes these awful days happen and it’s why bankroll management is important. You need to be able to absorb these bad runs from time to time. You can do everything right and lose. Never forget that. It’s why you have to have a long term approach if you want to be profitable as a bettor.
That’s enough whining about bad beats. Back to work.
LPL Summer 2020
Week 2 – Day 3
Vici Gaming +113 (+1.5 maps @ -270, -1.5 maps @ +304) vs
Royal Never Give Up -141 (-1.5 maps @ +199)
Kill Total: 24.5 (over -103 / under -127)
Team Kill Totals: 11.5 / 12.5
Kill Spread: +2.5 @ -110 / -3.5 @ -109
Time Total: 33:00 (over -123 / under -105)
VG – Cube, Aix, Forge, iBoy, Hang
RNG – New, XLB, Xiaohu, Betty, Ming
Trends:
RNG are 6-7 (4-9 ATS) as favorites in 2020 (Spring+Summer so far)
Vici Gaming are 3-5 (7-1 ATS) as underdogs in 2020
Vici won the first meeting 2-0 on March 20th as +345 underdogs
Underdogs are 5-5 (6-4 ATS) so far in LPL Summer
Kill Totals have gone over 13 out of 25 games so far in LPL Summer
Time Totals have gone under in 18 out of 25 games so far in LPL Summer
I had RNG and Vici right near each other separated by only half a tier in my pre-season rankings. Vici dominated BiliBili in their first match and RNG dominated OMG in their first match. With BiliBili’s substitutions in place, it’s fair to say neither team played anybody difficult so we shouldn’t treat those results as anything more than good teams taking care of business.
Overall I have these two very similarly rated but feel that Vici are currently a little bit better equipped to handle the current metagame so I’d give them a slight edge there while RNG hold a very slight edge in player quality that could become larger should 705 provide an upgrade when he arrives.
Early in the season you have to put just a lot more weight on film evaluation and instinct when new look teams have a limited sample size. This should be a competitive series that I have close to a 50-50. In this case, the underdog presents some value.
Other markets:
My Composite Combined Kills per Game (cCKPG) has this kill total at 24.5 kills. My odds-weighted projection, which is an odds-weighted blend of kills per win (KPW) and kills per loss (KPL) composite averages has this total at 25.1 kills. Time-total implied kills (avg of both teams CKPM*implied time total) is 24.99 kills. In a projected underdog win, in this case Vici, 24.33 kills. Both teams were under the league average in kills per win last season and while I expect that to be the case again due to cleanliness, I also think the metagame so far has been a higher kill endeavour as indicated by the 27 average kill score per game across the league. 25 game is a small sample size but it lines up with the champion selections and overall step up in quality and confidence overall during the Spring-to-Summer transition that I’ve mentioned a few times. I like the over 24.5 here for a half stake.
The league average game time is 32:02 but as mentioned above, time total unders are 18-7 so far this season. The books are beginning to adjust as the numbers creep down from the frequent 34:00’s we saw early so this should correct but we’ve got a 33:00 here and I’d expect these two teams to push the pace and close.
My Picks:
Spread: Vici +1.5 maps @ -270 (2.7 units)
Moneyline: Vici +113 (0.5 units)
Spread: Vici -1.5 maps @ +301 (0.25 units)
Time Total: Map 1 UNDER 33:00 @ -105 (0.525 units)
Time Total: Map 2 UNDER 33:00 @ -110 (0.55 units)
Kill Total: Map 1 OVER 24.5 @ -103 (0.515 units)
Kill Total: Map 2 OVER 24.5 @ -102 (0.51 units)
Suning +318 (+1.5 maps @ -109, -1.5 maps @ +689) vs
JD Gaming -455 (-1.5 maps @ -118)
Kill Total: 24.5 (over -118 / under -111)
Kill Spread: +6.5 @ -111 / -6.5 @ -118
Team Kill Totals: 9.5 / 14.5
Time Total: 32:00 (over -147 / under +113)
SN – Bin, SofM, Angel, Huanfeng, SwordArt
JDG – Zoom, Kanavi, Yagao, LokeN, LvMao
Trends:
JDG were 11-3 (9-5 ATS) as favorites in Spring
Suning are 6-5 (8-3 ATS) as underdogs in 2020
JDG won the first meeting 2-1 on March 30th with 705 in the lineup
Underdogs are 5-5 (6-4 ATS) so far in LPL Summer
Kill Totals have gone over 13 out of 25 games so far in LPL Summer
Time Totals have gone under in 18 out of 25 games so far in LPL Summer
Suning are getting results so far this season and look more like what I, and their metrics, expected them to in Spring. We haven’t seen JDG since the Mid-Season Cup. The majority of how you handicap this series is how you evaluate JDG coming off of the MSC. TOP Esports and FunPlus Phoenix struggled in their returns with FPX sloppily winning a game one before executing horribly and losing outrigh in games two and three against a poor LNG team. TOP Esports were one nexus hit away from losing game one to Rogue Warriors and it required a string of massive mistakes by Rogue Warriors for that to even happen. Don’t be deceived by their 2-0 victory, they should have dropped game one.
It boils down to this. If you think there is going to be rust or some kind of film advantage that the non-MSC teams will have by seeing their opponents two weeks in advance on the patch then you can play this as a Suning “underdog special.” If you think JDG looked at the performances that FPX and TOP just put in against bottom half teams and it was a wake-up call then JDG smash here. I like the former. While JDG were one of the best ATS favorites last season, Suning were also tremendous as an underdog including a competitive series against JDG in very non-Suning fashion last season. Underdogs have been performing well thus far and over the course of last season as well hitting at over a 60% clip. I’ll take Suning in this spot.
Other Markets:
My Composite Combined Kills per Game (cCKPG) has this kill total at 26.3 kills. My odds-weighted projection, which is an odds-weighted blend of kills per win (KPW) and kills per loss (KPL) composite averages has this total at 26.6 kills. Time-total implied kills (avg of both teams CKPM*implied time total) is 28.73 kills. In a projected underdog win, in this case Suning, 24.95 kills. The first time these teams faced off the under hit in all three games and there was only a shade over 17 kills per game for the series but I think we’ll see a slightly bloodier affair this time around. Suning look improved and if the other teams that attended the Mid-Season Cup are any indication, there’s been a bit of a hangover with some sloppy performances by TOP (game one) and FPX (all three). That series was not indicative of Suning typical looking series last season, as the numbers suggest, and I expect we’ll see some regression to the mean here. I like the over for a half stake.
Through five games, Suning have averaged 33:56 game duration and we have yet to see JDG in Summer but they averaged a 32:44. The under has hit a lot but the books continue to adjust downward and 32:00 is right about the sweet spot so we’ll be passing on this total. I’d still lean under however.
I looked into the kill spreads but they’re just out of range in this spot. The average margin of defeat this season has been 9.8 on the backs of a few absolute blowout victories over 15 kills. The rest have been somewhat competitive. Looking at the AMOV and AMOD averages for these teams last season the Suning kill spread isn’t a bad look. JDG only won by single digits in 8 of their last 12 games in LPL Summer (includes playoffs) but had a season long AMOV of 10.06 kills.
Suning hit double digit kills in 11 out of 22 losses last season giving them the highest kill per loss number in the LPL at 10.09 kills. While JDG tend to play fairly clean when they do win, I actually like the Suning team total over 9.5 kills in this spot if you can find even money on it. The best I could find was a -109. Of note, the league average KPL currently is 8.73 and last season was 8.28.
My Picks:
Spread: Suning +1.5 maps @ -102 (1.02 units)
Moneyline: Suning +321 (0.5 units)
Spread: Suning -1.5 maps @ +697 (0.25 units)
Kill Total: Map 1 OVER 24.5 @ -118 (0.59 units)
Kill Total: Map 2 OVER 24.5 @ -123 (0.615 units)
I should have an LEC preview up later tonight or tomorrow. See you then!
