ESPORTS

League of Legends Daily Fantasy Helper: Tuesday 4/7/20

The LCS playoffs continue with FlyQuest versus Golden Guardians. Who should you be targeting?

FanDuel is offering League of Legends daily fantasy, and look, if you don't know what that is, it's okay.

I have you covered with a detailed but straightforward primer to get you all set up whether you're a DFS player looking to dig into the new sport or a League of Legends fan ready to take your action over to FanDuel.

Let's break down the LCS slate for Tuesday, April 7th and see who stands out.

The Slate

We have a single-match slate that is best-of-five format between FlyQuest, the LCS's 4 seed, and Golden Guardians, the 6 seed.

The table is sorted by differential in Kill:Death ratio, which correlates very strongly to win rate. Other stats listed include gold spend differential (GSD), first baron rate (FBN%), and jungle control (JNG%). These all are tied closely to win rate. All stats are from Oracle's Elixir.

Team K:D GSD FBN% JNG%
FlyQuest 0.96 4.4% 32% 48.3%
Golden Guardians 0.71 -3.3% 47% 48.3%


Matchup Overview

Projecting out this series, I have FlyQuest winning the best-of-five format 65% of the time. They swept 20% of the simulated series, and the most common finish is FlyQuest 3-1. That matters a ton for fantasy scoring. FlyQuest were actually in second place in the spring split after each team played every team midway through the season.

The series split is 1-1, and these two teams faced off in the final week of the regular season, which was the current quarantine setup. Golden Guardians won and were able to linger into the playoff hunt and tiebreaker bracket. Logic suggests that we should prioritize FlyQuest here.

Definitely note that FlyQuest are dealing with top-lane swaps often. They added Solo late in the season, and he played three straight games before actually sitting out for V1per against Golden Guardians in their recent matchup. Solo went back in for a tie-breaker. But Solo started the first two games of their series loss to Evil Geniuses before Solo finished out the final two. This kind of removes one of ten possible players in this series unless we get confirmation on the plan.

Overall, Golden Guardians are super cheap outside of FBI, so we have plenty of ways to save.

Players to Target

Star and MVP Picks

PowerOfEvil, FlyQuest ($15,500) - PowerOfEvil was named to the 3rd LCS All-Pro Team this split, along with FlyQuest's jungler, Santorin ($12,000). Their support, IgNar ($9,500), was actually named to the second team. Anyway, we should prefer FlyQuest straight up in this matchup, despite what we saw in Week 9. PowerOfEvil went just 1/4/1 (kills/deaths/assists) in that matchup but was 5/0/4 in their first matchup, a FlyQuest win. His matchup in the mid lane with Goldenglue ($8,000) is a positive one, as Goldenglue had a split-worst 2.44 KDA (kill/death/assist ratio). PowerOfEvil was fifth (3.92). PowerOfEvil also led the split in creep score per minute (9.22).

WildTurtle, FlyQuest ($16,000) - Neither ADC is really a top-of-the-league performer, and straight up, I prefer FBI. But we want players on teams that win, and if we go the FlyQuest route, then we should prefer WildTurtle. If the series goes deep, to five games, then both will be stellar plays. WildTurtle went 5/2/4 in FlyQuests's Week 5 win against Golden Guardians but was clipped to a 1/1/1 line in the Week 9 loss. That's kind of the power of a win. Both AD Carries are actually bottom of the barrel in kill participation rate, so there's an angle to downplaying them, though it's hard to ignore two of the odds-on favorites to lead the series in FanDuel points. You'll want to stack him with IgNar ($9,500) to help make the pricing work. If WildTurtle pays off, he'll probably be tied to a big outing from IgNar.

FBI, Golden Guardians ($15,000) - FBI owns a better KDA (4.12) than WildTurtle (3.62) and lays down more damage per minute. There's a lot of merit to stacking both AD Carries in what could always be a five-game series, but FBI is more of a differentiation play away from the chalkier FlyQuest side or if you're playing into the deep series narrative. If we're playing FBI, we can stack him with Huhi ($7,000), so the combined stack averages out to $11,000 per player.

Utility Picks

Santorin, FlyQuest ($12,000) - Santorin, again -- a member of the 3rd LCS All-Pro Team -- should have value against a team that is subpar in jungle control (48.3%, eighth in the split). Santorin leads qualified junglers in kill participation rate by a pretty good margin and is third in KDA (3.19). Santorin works both in a FlyQuest snowball team composition, and data shows that opposing junglers are the second-least affected position in losses.

Hauntzer, Golden Guardians ($7,500) - Hauntzer went 3/1/4 in their Week 9 win over FlyQuest, playing against V1per. He was 2/2/0 in their Week 5 loss. Hauntzer works in a FlyQuest stack, as top laners are isolated and actually are least affected by losses. Hauntzer is third in creep score per minute and in kill participation rate (61.1%) among top laners in the spring split. The primary concern is that FlyQuest will probably be forced into playing Solo, who has been significantly better than V1per.

Huhi, Golden Guardians ($7,000) - You can full on punt with Huhi, Golden Guardians' support. He has a 68.3% kill participation rate, a solid mark for a support, and has started the past seven games for Golden Guardians. The overall KDA is bad, but Huhi is playable in a stack with FBI, and if it's a FlyQuest domination, then there won't be tons of fantasy points from Golden Guardians overall, anyway.