6/12 Recap (with twitter live bets): 2-8 -9.25u
Opening days of the season are tough. It is very difficult to know what to take from SK and Vitality’s big upsets in the LEC. It is very difficult to know what to make of all but one of the LEC matchups going under and both the LCS matches going over. Everything at this stage of the season is “educated” guesswork. That’s something to consider going forward. The implied edges on lines felt smaller than I thought yesterday, so today we’re going to scale back our sizing until we have some more solid ideas about who these teams are.
The Picks:
S04 ML vs. SK (-140) 0.5u, Under 23.5 Kills (-115) 0.5u
Schalke looked terrible yesterday. SK played out of their minds yesterday. We have 18 games of evidence from the spring split that says Schalke is a better team than SK. Granted, they made a change in the mid lane and Zazee looked like an upgrade. They came in with a great gameplan against OG and took away a lot of OG’s style in a one-off. Did they prepare to this level for S04? I have my doubts. Schalke, on the other side, looked completely unprepared for Vitality. That is partially understandable against a team of rookies. It would not be understandable here. Schalke have to be better prepared today and we’re going to count on yesterday being a fluke. The under came in on 4 of 5 totals for the LEC yesterday. This is a pretty high total for what we saw yesterday: tanks, poking, and late game teamfights.
Misfits ML vs. Rogue (-115) 1u
Misfits completely outplayed FNATIC for most of their game yesterday. Kobbe looked great in his return to the LEC and Febi was doing Febi things. Then, they took a terrible 50-50 baron after not quite being able to land the poke necessary to take the base and FNC pounced. Rogue destroyed Excel. I think we’re going to see a lot of “____ destroyed Excel” this season, but credit to Rogue. They won in every lane and did their low risk plays to end the game. I don’t think that will work against Misfits. They have a completely different class of player in all lanes than Excel. If Rogue does not just slowly win in every lane, I want to see how they react.
MAD vs. XL Under 26.5 Kills (-115) 0.5u, MAD -6.5 Kills (-105) 1u
MAD’s bot lane is their biggest strength. Excel’s bot lane is their biggest weakness. I smell a mismatch. When MAD wins, they win big with an AMOV of nearly 10. I think they win big here after being embarrassed by G2 yesterday. Big totals are tough to cover in blowouts.
Vitality ML vs Fnatic (+290) 0.25u
Vitality shocked me yesterday. They looked improved in every facet of the game. It could be that they are actually just a playoff team now. We’ve seen rookies come in and be instantly good in the LEC. If that’s the case, this money line will be more like +190 later in the season. We’ll take a little shot on Vitality to surprise a historically bad week 1 Fnatic.
G2 vs. Origen Under 29.5 Kills (-115) 1u
As previously mentioned, the conditions of the game lean towards the under right now. G2 played a full poke composition yesterday and still almost went over this number. They were not playing Origen though. Origen looked like the same old “wait and scale” Origen yesterday. They will be eager to slow the game down against G2 and wait for late game teamfights, meaning less kills overall. In a previous meta, they might have still gone over. In this one? 30 kills is a lot.
TSM ML vs. Team Liquid (-110) 0.5u
Doublelift rarely loses in revenge spots. I have no idea why Doublelift would feel slighted by Team Liquid, a team that tried to form their entire brand around him, but he does. That’s bad news for Liquid. Tactical looked like an LCS talent in his few games with the team last split. He stood out in Academy too. I doubt that matters today. When Doublelift has wanted to smash someone in lane, he pretty much always has in LCS.
Flyquest -5.5 Kills vs. Immortals (-115) 1u
Flyquest put up a nice fight yesterday against C9. They mostly did that through the play of jungler, Santorin. Santorin has long been underrated. In the opposing jungle is a completely untested player in Potluck. He showed some promise in the Academy, but in no way looked ready for the bump up. Combine that with the fact that jungle is one of the toughest roles to plug into because of its heavy reliance on communication and team play and I think Immortals are in for a disaster. Say nothing of Mid and Bot where Immortals are also completely outclassed. Jungle Gap!
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