LOL LCS Lock-in 2021 Quarter-Finals Day 1 Betting Predictions
The League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) 2021 Lock-In enters the playoffs this Saturday, January 23 with the opening two games between Immortals and 100 Thieves, followed by a clash between TSM and Cloud9. Here are our free betting previews and predictions for the opening two quarter-finals matches.
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100 Thieves v Immortals
Saturday, January 23 – 13:00 PST
100 Thieves enter this match as heavy favourites (1.300) and I can’t argue with that. The “2020 Golden Guardians 2.0” have impressed with their showings throughout the tournament and deservingly claimed the top spot in their group, which gives us hope for our outright prediction on 100T to win the whole thing.
100T are fresh off a fairly convincing win against Golden Guardians yesterday, when they have outclassed the young roster across the board. The only player who caused 100T issues was GG’s jungler Iconic, who is shaping up to be a very promising prospect, but even he was unable to turn the game around.
Even though 100T’s games were far from perfect, they’re still looking like the most consistent and the best or at least the second-best team at the tournament. They average the highest kills/game (18) and the third-lowest deaths/game (9.8), behind only Cloud9 and Team Liquid.
Immortals dragged their way into the playoffs with only one win against Dignitas and three losses against Evil Genuises, Cloud9 and FlyQuest. Despite their lack of success, I must say I am fairly impressed with how good Immortals have been performing, not necessarily due to the quality of their play, but rather because they are holding on surprisingly well fielding mostly an academy roster.
Based on what we have seen so far, I am giving Immortals zero to no chance of defeating 100 Thieves. Although the best-of-three series are completely different than Bo1s, the quality gap between these two sides is far too large for us to consider a bet on the outsiders. Anything less than a 2-0 victory for 100T will be a massive disappointment.
Prediction: 100 Thieves -1.5 maps – 1.943 at Pinnacle
TSM v Cloud9
Saturday, January 23 – 17:00 PST
TSM and Cloud9 are two of the strongest LCS teams on paper, yet two of the biggest disappointments of the tournament. There are way too many reasons why I don’t like either team nor do I believe either will win the title – which I have already touched on in our previous LCS betting previews – but at the end of the day, there can only be one team that will exit this match as the victors.
If we compare the individual quality of these two sides, TSM are stronger, but they rarely show that. Synergy and poor drafts have been TSM’s biggest problem this tournament and I don’t believe they will manage to fix either of two ahead of this bout.
C9, on the other side, have been hyped up through the roof after the signing of Perkz, but after a week of play, he has yet to impress me and it seems like he will need a few more weeks before he finds his place in the North American League. Outside of Perkz’s poor performances, the team as a whole is looking mediocre at most and only seem to do well against weaker sides.
I am leaning more towards Cloud9 for this one, as they have at least shown some improvement since the start of the competition, whereas TSM have not. That said, there is a world where TSM steal one map off Cloud9, largely because both teams have been very inconsistent, so there is no way of telling how this game will go.
No Prediction
Come back tomorrow for our LCS Lock-In quarter-finals Day 2 coverage, where we will take a look at the final two fixtures of the competition before the semi-finals. For premium esports betting tips follow us on BetMarkets or become one of our premium members.
