The biggest moment of the year in eSports is upon us. After over a month of action in four former Olympic venues around China, the League of Legends World Championship is set to take place at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing early Saturday morning. SK Telecom T1 is looking to put a hard stamp on its title of best team of all-time, while Samsung Galaxy is aiming to keep their Korean rivals from becoming the first team to ever threepeat. This is sure to be an exciting finale and there will be plenty of hype in the buildup to the final.
At BookMaker Sportsbook, our team of writers breaks down every betting matchup on the wagering board. eSports are exploding in popularity and we at BookMaker have you covered for all of your betting needs. From League of Legends to CS:GO, BookMaker has all of the eSports betting lines you can hope for. Open an account and get in on the action today!
Opening League of Legends 2017 Worlds Semifinals SSG vs. SKT Betting Odds at BookMaker.eu
Samsung Galaxy +144 SK Telecom T1 -172
SKT has won three of the last four championships thanks to Faker and kkOma with a big assist from Bang and Wolf. These four have been together for four years now and there’s no denying how talented they all are. They defeated Samsung Galaxy in an epic five-game final series last year and are the favorites coming into this one based off of their unblemished record in elimination games.
Samsung is an underdog, but they have looked better than SKT over the last two weeks of play. While SKT has needed the full five games to beat both Misfits and Royal Never Give Up, Samsung only dropped one game in its series against Longzhu Gaming and Team World Elite. This organization was the last team other than SKT to claim a World Championship when arguably the greatest collection of talent in history steamrolled its way to the crown in 2014.
Matchup to Watch
For Samsung to pull off the upset against SKT, Samsung’s mid laner Crown will have to at least hold his own against Faker. While he was able to do that to some degree at last year’s World Championship, he got demolished when these teams met in the LCK Summer Split Playoffs just a few months ago.
This matchup was never close. Faker continually outplayed Crown and his ability to get solo kills and land ultimates on him time and time again proved to be Samsung’s undoing. Crown was being counted upon to be one of the team’s primary damage dealers, but Faker would not be denied.
Such a big defeat left Crown emotionally devastated and you could tell that he was shell-shocked by what had just occurred. He has to put that performance out of his mind.
Player to Watch
SKT made a huge splash when it signed the best jungler in the world in Peanut last offseason and it was thought that he would be one of the team’s main carries throughout the year. That proved to be the case through the first part of the season, but he was unable to adapt to the new meta as well as he had in prior versions and SKT subbed him out for the veteran Blank often in summer.
Peanut and Blank have shared the jungle role throughout Worlds, but for the first time all summer Blank actually got the start ahead of Peanut in the semifinals against RNGU. Typically, Peanut would start a series only to be replaced by Blank after the first loss, so this was a change of strategy for SKT.
After Blank struggled and SKT found itself in a 2-1 hole against RNGU, the team subbed in Peanut for the final two games. He was alright in Game 4, but proved to be the difference maker in Game 5 and helped SKT snowball itself to an insurmountable lead. That performance should lead to him starting the series against SSG.
Prediction
The only dominant team we have seen in the knockout stage has been Samsung. While all the other semifinalists had to at least sweat out victories at some point, Samsung has looked great these last two weeks. They are only an underdog against SKT due to past performance, but look more suited to this meta. At these odds, Samsung is definitely worth a gamble.
At BookMaker Sportsbook, our team of writers breaks down every betting matchup on the wagering board. eSports are exploding in popularity and we at BookMaker have you covered for all of your betting needs. From League of Legends to CS:GO, BookMaker has all of the eSports betting lines you can hope for. Open an account and get in on the action today!
