“I am at a place where I would take them against any team in the world at -250 or better, so that has to include G2. “ was the concluding sentence to my breakdown yesterday. I’m ready to bump that to -300. Damwon just does not have any weaknesses. Initially, there were questions about what happens when they play great teamfighters, beat them. There were questions about what happens when they play teams that can contest them in the early game, beat them. Questions about will they crush under the pressure again? That was an emphatic “hell no” today. If I get Damwon under -200 against whoever wins tonight, I will be making a sizable wager.
Let’s try and figure out who’s going to be meeting (and losing to) Damwon:
Top Esports (-235) vs. Suning (+170)
- Top- TES 369 vs. SNG Bin The Edge: Even
- Jungle- TES Karsa vs. SNG SofM The Edge: SNG
- Mid- TES Knight vs. SNG Angel The Edge: TES
- Bot- TES JackeyLove and yuyuanjia vs. SNG Swordart and Huanfeng The Edge: SNG
If you listened to the Gold Card Podcast this week, the guys over there framed this matchup perfectly: either you believe in the current form of the teams and you should favor Suning or you believe Top Esports have innate talent edges over Suning evidenced by their 5-0 record over them in the Summer Split. I’m going with Suning.
So rather than re-hash what they already said and do a written form of what we talked about on The Infinity Edge (TL;DR Suning has gotten better, their stats are better, I like their bot lane more), let’s go through a few things I think Suning can do to win this time around.
Punish JackeyLove
JackeyLove is indisputably a great player, but I think his split has been massively overrated by TES’ team success. He is rarely THE reason they win, but is often THE reason they lose. In a meta with mostly immmobile carries, his tendency to overstay for the last minion, try to outplay 2v1s, and just plain get caught out has made him a liability at times. In their two wins, Fnatic was able to punish him and yuyanjia over and over. Suning’s bot lane resembles Fnatic’s in a lot of ways: there is the safe and solid ADC mixed with the aggressive, roaming support. To me, that’s the best two ways to play those roles right now.
Give SofM Farming Junglers
In the Summer Playoffs, SofM only played one of the Kindred, Nidalee, Graves power trio once. Part of that was because of bans, but even still I would rather see him move into the Hecarim or Olaf tier of that style of champions over moving on to the Lee Sin or Volibear. He is uniquely great when he can get around clearing the camps ahead of the other jungler. That can’t happen when he’s playing Volibear. It also directly counters Karsa’s preferred playstlye of supporting his laners over getting farm. He has been able to play the farmers at this tournament better than in Summer, but you can still see it’s not natural for him.
Bin plays better
This one’s simple: Bin can’t play like he did in the playoffs or they will lose. Bin was generally very good and dominated lanes many times this year, but against 369 he got his ass kicked even in supposedly “winning” matchups. If that happens again, they lose. I think Bin will be able to hang on this time around even from behind like he did against Zoom.
Finally, the odds are just too big here. I genuinely have Suning slightly favored in my own handicapping, but even if I didn’t, they only have to win 37% of the time to beat the the +170. I don’t know how anyone could have watched the two teams at this tournament and think that Suning only wins 37% of the time. Suning has had the tougher road and won more convincingly, I’m going big on the dogs.
The other spot that has some value is the total of 27.5. It’s set there because the two teams are from the LPL and that is a historically high kill total region. It has nothing to do with how the game is being played right now or how the teams have played at the tournament. These teams despite their reputations have both been middle of the pack with kills per game and I have them projected for about 25 kills per game. I will be going under the total on maps 1,2, and 3
The Picks: SNG +1.5 (-130) 3u, SNG ML (+170) 2u, SNG 3-1 (+700) 0.5u, SNG 3-0 (+800) 0.5u, Under 27.5 on Maps 1,2, and 3 (-115) 1u each
Major LoL Soccer blog 