Notes for Tonight’s 4/30 4am ET LCK Promotion / LPL Slate
These are both the finals for their respective tournaments so that means both of these series will be Best of 5. The LPL final is on Saturday morning/late night so it will take a few days to see results from this slate. Another two game slate so the best way to approach these types of slates is to play both sides when there are live dogs on the slate. (Which there are). Both dogs are in play so make sure to have multiple outcomes covered.
SRB (+210) vs SB (-300)
SRB got destroyed last night by DYN. It was a bit of a surprise as I expected a 3 game series, but neither game was close at all. SRB got steamrolled quickly and there was little resistance from them. To me SRB had decent drafts for their own champion picks, but they were very poor in regard to banning out DYN’s best picks. Rich got his famous Aatrox for both games, and he dumpstered Thal in both those games on it. The bigger issue was Feiz on Aphelios. Feiz looks fantastic with the Aphelios and while SRB did do the right thing in terms of drafting champions that would dive the back line to get to him, they weren’t able to execute. The safest move would have just been to remove it. This does not discount their impressive win over Griffin and their impressive run through the Challenger League in Korea however, prior to that last series SRB had been a big threat all season long. They do have weaknesses that were shown last night. DanChung and Nova are not the best players in my opinion, they were heavily outclassed in both games and made it hard for their team to win. Thal did not have a great series either, as I mentioned he seems to struggle in big games; and that continued last night. SRB are the underdogs in this spot but despite all of this I do think they have a decent chance to win.
Sandbox 2-0’d a Griffin team that looked completely checked out. GRF are called “Greatly Reluctant Fighters” for a reason. They did not fight for any objectives in either game, and just let Sandbox rack up Dragons until it was too late to recover. The worst part is they would start fighting after every single dragon had been taken, they would just give up their lives in a meaningless fight after avoiding one all game. Something was clearly wrong with that Griffin team, and I hope some of the more talented players from that roster find their way back into the LCK Summer Split. SB did well to take advantage of this but they still had their same issues as well. Coming into that series I had a big question mark regarding their drafting skills and that continued vs GRF. In both games I would say Griffin had the draft edge and SB were behind from the start. Despite this, Griffin still lost both games handily and clearly showed their team was just toast. Against better teams SB will have trouble if this continues. They are still rightfully the favourites since they played a clean game yesterday and SB got swept, but there is serious upset potential here. This will be the first game of the slate so we will have starting lineups for it, so keep an eye out for any potential SB subs even though they probably won’t do anything drastic because of their win yesterday. Both teams are in play, but I think I like SB a little more due to the massive weaknesses in SRB’s mid and support.
Players to watch (SRB): KaKAO (JNG), Sangyoon (ADC), Thal (TOP)
Players to watch (SB): Route (ADC), OnFleek (JNG), Gorilla (SUP)
TES (+115) vs JDG (-155)
No matter who you decide to roster from the first game, this LPL finals match will still most likely be the ideal target for Fantasy point scoring. This is a battle of two very good teams, but the FPX vs IG game yesterday provides a bit of context into what may happen in this final game. Once again before I say anything, it is smart to attack both sides and both these teams are elite targets. I favour JDG slightly but TES are a top GPP option.
I wrote most of my thoughts about this game on the cheat sheet from yesterday but I will re-post that here.
| JDG look like the most complete team in the LPL right now. They are a very well balanced team that have all been super consistent all year and know their roles. Zoom is still undefeated since coming in, and while I do not think will remain after this series, his impact cannot be understated. Kanavi puts a lot of early game focus top lane and it has paid off big for JDG. TES defeated IG almost solely off of Karsa being much better than Leyan. JackeyLove honestly did not have a great series until the final game and Knight was the one holding it together until that final game. 369 put up a top tier performance against TheShy but that was mainly due to TheShy making many mistakes without a jungler to back him up. Kanavi will not get outjungled that hard in this game and I think JDG have a big advantage there. Karsa has been mediocre all season until that last series against an even weaker jungler. Yagao showed he can hang with Doinb, and Knight is in the same boat of top tier midlaners. TES still ahve some flaws to them that are overshadowed by the skill of Knight and JL, but they weren’t really brought up against IG. I think JDG are better as a team and this series can go 5 games, but I give the edge to JDG. |
Lastly all I want to add is a bit of context from the FPX/IG third place game yesterday. FPX demolished IG 3-0 in a very one sided series besides Game 2. TheShy was still feeding and Ning was just as bad as Leyan if not worse. FPX with Khan looked very good and if they had him for the JDG series I believe it would have been much closer. The important thing to note is the fact that JDG were able to deliver a 3-0 smack down onto FPX who still managed to look incredibly good against IG. This scares me a bit with how good they could really be. I do think JDG are the best team in the LPL this split, but TES are still very mechanically gifted and can win games off of individual plays. Knight and JackeyLove are the prime targets that can take over the game which helps make TES a great GPP option.
Players to watch (TES): Knight (TES), JackeyLove (ADC), Karsa (JNG)
Players to watch (JDG): Zoom (TOP), Kanavi (JNG), Loken (ADC)