League of Legends World Championships Semifinals: SKT vs RNG & SSG vs WE
The much-anticipated semifinals are upon us, and the hometown crowd cannot have asked for much better. Two matchups featuring Chinese vs. Korean teams are set to begin Saturday and Sunday. The first of which are the reigning champions SKTelecom (SKT) against the Chinese number 1 seed Royal Never Give Up (RNG). The second, a less hyped match features last year’s runner-up Samsung (SSG) and the Chinese number 3 seed World Elite (WE).
Semifinal 1: SKT vs. Royal Never Give Up – SKT -270, RNG +195
The match everyone’s been waiting for in the entire tournament. SKT come into this one as pretty decent favorites. Higher than expected seeing as their tournament run has raised questions about their current strength. Faker, SKT’s mid-laner, himself was quoted saying that Misfits were the team that wanted it more during their five-game quarterfinal win. There have been two significant points of interest leading up to this match. SKT has struggled early game, relying on their late game team fighting and ability to stretch the game out to over 30 minutes. RNG, on the other hand, has dismantled every opponent they’ve faced using their stellar early game and keen ability to close games. This is very worrying for SKT who cannot even rely on their starting jungler Peanut to beat the EU number 2 seed. They were forced to use Blank in a grueling set that went the distance.
Now, regarding betting, SKT are the favorites due to the dynasty that they have created of never losing a world championship best of 5, but to say that they will win it 3-0 is far-fetched. A solid bet would be on RNG taking 1 or 2 of the first three games in this series and then falling due to overconfidence or fatigue. This series will definitely last five games, and there is a substantial chance RNG takes it from the reigning world champions.
RNG only needs to win 34% of the time for bettors to break even on their wager. And, based on SKT’s current play – I think that is likely. If there was a time for the dynasty to end this is it. I’d go RNG +195 all day.
Another LoL Bet You Can Place: Individual Map Wins – SKT -189 for each game and RNG +140.
Semifinal 2: Samsung Galaxy vs. Team WE – SSG -323, WE +166
This game has gotten a bit less fanfare due to the slow and controlled nature of SSG’s play style and the fact that WE struggled to beat Cloud 9 in the quarterfinals. WE relied on their ad carry Mystic to play Kog’maw, a very immobile hypercarry and highly prioritized the pick early. Doing this against SSG is sure to be a death wish. SSG will make sure a team comp is built to counter it and now allow the Kog’maw to snowball. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like WE have much of a choice in other comps since their default playstyle even in the Chinese LPL regular season was to stall out games and wait for the opponent to make a mistake.
SSG has perfected this playstyle and knows precisely what their composition needs to succeed. They steamrolled past the number 1 seed Korean team Longzhu 3-0 much to everyone’s surprise. It’s easy to say that SSG will continue that rampage and 3-0 World Elite here. Even a bet on WE taking one match is unlikely to succeed since World Elite does not have the elite early game needed to pressure the controlled play style of SSG. Take SSG at -323 and watch the first semifinal for an actual competition.
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