NBA Postseason Best Bets (5/17)
Alex Christenson
Happy FTN Launch Day! Now the moment we’ve all been waiting for … League of Legends! Hopefully that wasn’t too anti-climactic, but I’m excited to be sharing the goods with all of you. If you haven’t had a chance, please, please read up on the Esports 101 article.
This takes a deep dive into what I do and lineup construction advice. Wednesday is a big day, and I’ll be running 18 lineups. When building fewer than 30-40 lineups, I hand-build them all. How do I build them? That’s addressed in the piece linked above.
My focus for this article will be around my favorite stacks and my current plan up to this point. Feel free to reach out with any questions if you have them.
As I write this, I’ve built 13 lineups without starting lineups being announced, but this won’t affect the stacks I’m focusing on. My favorite stacks are as follows. I have listed them from favorite to least favorite:
- Victory Five — V5
- DRX
- Bilibili Gaming — BLG
- SANDBOX Gaming — SB
- Invictus Gaming — iG
- Hanwha Life Esports — HLE
- LNG
V5: If you asked me this time last season that V5 would be my top stack today, I’d have bet you $100,000 you were wrong. This team went from getting smoked every night and not winning one match all split to being one of the top squads with a record of 6-2. They face off against an LNG team that has lost five straight since starting 2-1. I’m riding the hot streak of one of the most improved teams in V5 and rocking them in a ton of four-man stacks. When I say four-man stacks, I focus on ADC, MID, JNG and TOP or SUP. They score a ton of points and are super aggressive this split. Oh, and did I mention that they are -500 favorites?
DRX: The undefeated DRX face off against the least improved LCK team in KT. If you can see from my stacks above, I’m not even bothering with KT stacks this time around. They were great last split but have struggled mightily and have lost to a bunch of teams that they shouldn’t have thus far. DRX isn’t the sexiest team in scoring points, but they get the job done. They are the second-most expensive team on the slate and I’ll primarily have them in two-man stacks, but I’ll have some four-man stacks as well.
BLG: For those of you that know me, this is my favorite LOL team. Why? Well, they’ve won me a lot of money. Just ask my good buddy, TenaciousDJones. BLG is a heavy underdog here, but I’m loving the matchup they have with IG. They recently added their old JNG into the starting lineup once again and this team looked revitalized. Some may call me crazy for touting for a +350 underdog, but this team is better with their new JNG. Yes, it’s a small sample size and yes, they are 2-4, but look at who they’ve played. Three of their four losses were against three of the best teams in the LPL. I am not a fan of the inconsistent and low-scoring IG team, so I think a 2-1 or even a 2-0 upset against IG isn’t out of this world. I am a BLG truther and I’ll be rocking them in a good chunk of my lineups.
Bust of the night
iG: I just went into length about how I love BLG. As for their opponent, iG, I’ll have a few stacks with them because #hedgelife, but I am definitely underweight on these guys. They are listed as the most expensive team on the slate and I have no idea why. They are a -600 favorite, but look at their game logs. Even when they do win, they score fewer than optimal points. It’s a grossly inconsistent squad and I’ll pass on them as a main lineup to me.
Example of my builds. These are some of my favorites:
- V5 – BLG : 4-2 stack
- V5 – SB : 4-2 stack
- BLG – DRX : 4-2 stack
I will have only MID or ADC at CPT. Also, when I say 4-2, I mean the following. This is an example:
- CPT – BLG ADC
- TOP – BLG TOP (or can use DRX TOP)
- JNG – BLG JNG
- MID – BLG JNG
- ADC – DRX ADC
- SUP – DRX SUP
- TEAM – DRX TEAM
