The best-of-one group stage is over and now we are on to Chicago for the Quarterfinals. The Quarterfinals will feature a best-of-five format with the winner moving on to Madison Square Garden for the Semi-finals. Thursday night will feature one of the top teams from Korea, Samsung Galaxy, facing off against the only North American team left, Cloud9.
eSports League of Legends World Championships at BookMaker.eu
Samsung Galaxy -660
Cloud9 +410
HOW THEY GOT HERE
Samsung Galaxy finished as the third best team in Korea, but as we’ve seen in the past, the third-best team in Korea is still a threat to win it all due to the depth of the region. Samsung was considered somewhat of a risky bet to advance after being placed in the Group of Death alongside Splyce, TSM, and Royal Never Give Up, but looked absolutely dominant in the second weekend of action. They cruised through all three sides en route to a 5-1 record and earned a top spot as well as a spot on the easier side of the bracket.
Cloud9 salvaged what would have been a disastrous Worlds for North America if none of the home sides had made it to the knockout rounds, but had to wait until the last match of the day in order to get a win and move on. Cloud9 was thoroughly outplayed by defending champions SKT, but picked up two wins off of I May and split the series with an erratic Flash Wolves side to earn the second spot in Group B.
MATCHUP TO WATCH
The mid-lane battle between Samsung’s Crown and Cloud9’s Jensen is going to be the key to the match. Crown relied on the champion Viktor an overwhelming amount of time during LCK play and it was somewhat of a surprise that Samsung’s competition didn’t ban Viktor in the selection phase. Crown played Viktor three times and completely dominated the action with 20 kills, 5 deaths, and 17 assists in three easy wins. He will be almost certainly banned by Cloud9 in every game of the series, but Crown has been very effective on Ryze as well. Ryze has been one of the favored champions of the tournament and Crown will try to snare him if able.
Ryze is the champion that Jensen has used the most thus far at Worlds, but Jensen has been diverse with his selections, choosing four other champions as well. Jensen’s play has been up-and-down this tournament, he got destroyed in both matches against Faker, but had a great final performance on Ryze against IMay in order to lead Cloud9 to this point. He’ll have to be able to perform on other champions though in order to win this best-of-five.
THE PICK
Samsung should definitely be the favorite here after a strong opening week, especially when contrasted against Cloud9’s tepid performance. However, SSG might be too big of a favorite.
Although the best-of-five balances out fluky wins, Cloud9 has some solid players who have performed well this season and this team has come together as the season has gone along. Sneaky has been a solid AD Carry thus far and Meteos has been an alright Jungler and this team will have support from the home crowd. This line is just a bit too high and is inflated by Samsung’s performance in the group stage. Cloud9 is a nice little value play in this situation.
ESports League of Legends Odds: Cloud9 +410
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