Team Liquid vs 100 Thieves – 2021 LCS Championship Betting Preview

Betting-Previews.com takes a look at the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Championship upper bracket finals match between Team Liquid and 100 Thieves. Here is our betting preview for the match, slated for Saturday, August 21.

2021 LCS Championship – Round 4 – Team Liquid vs 100 Thieves

When: Saturday, August 21 at 14:00 PDT

Game: Best-of Five (Bo5)

Liquid Looking Sharp

Team Liquid have been showing an entirely different side of them of late. Although I am not that surprised to see Liquid improve now that they have their roster back together, the improvement they’ve been showing is quite drastic.

Liquid eased past Cloud9 and TSM in their LCS Championship openers, winning both bouts with a convincing 3-1. Much of their success in those games was due to the phenomenal performance of their jungle-support duo Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen and Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in, who were key actors in Liquid’s win against TSM, where they denied TSM’s dives and coordinated attacks in the sidelines.

This, in turn, completely shut down TSM’s early game, allowing them to pick up only nine kills pre-15 minutes across four games. That, however, isn’t too surprising considering TSM haven’t been too efficient in collecting kills in the early game.

TSM’s average kills pre-15 min throughout the playoffs is at only 2.3, which is the lowest out of all eight teams. In contrast, Team Liquid managed 3.8 kills, while 100 Thieves average the most pre-15 minute kills in the league, at 5.2.

I don’t believe Liquid will change up their playstyle too much for this match, meaning that they will look to create pressure in the top lane and work around the top side of the map while matching 100T’s early aggression.

That is something Liquid should be able to achieve, given how dominant they’ve been throughout the LCS 2021 Championship.

The numbers above show only the stats the teams have produced throughout the LCS 2021 Championship. At this point, we have to keep in mind that TL have played against Cloud9 and TSM, while 100 Thieves have played only one series against Evil Geniuses.

Are 100 Thieves Good Enough?

Even though 100 Thieves have played only one match this playoff, they won against Evil Geniuses, who were the best team in the regular season, which definitely means something. While I still believe Evil Geniuses are better than 100 Thieves, we have to give 100T some props for what they’ve shown in their last series.

The question is whether 100T’s performance against EG was good enough for me to believe that they can beat Team Liquid. And as much as I would like to see 100T come out ahead, they will need to find a higher gear and show a bit more to stand a chance here.

This is still a weird spot since you can’t properly evaluate Team Liquid heading into this match. The from Team Liquid have been showing throughout the playoffs, compared to what we have seen from them during the regular season, is like night and day.

They seem 3x as strong as they were, which you need to respect – but how much weight can you put on performances across only eight games compared to what they’ve shown throughout the entire season? It all seems like Team Liquid are peaking just at the eighth time.

Situations like this are extremely hard to handicap since you don’t know whether Liquids are just that good or whether they’re just hot. If I had to answer that, I would probably say that Liquid are actually that good, and the simple reason is the overall quality of this roster.

You will see instances where a team goes on a tear and win games shouldn’t have, leaving you wondering how that happened. With Liquid, the situation is different in the sense that it doesn’t feel weird seeing them stomp considering they have the talent to be the best in the league.

We also have to keep in mind that 100 Thieves usually win their games through the jungle, which isn’t something I don’t expect them to be able to achieve tonight. Santorin is just too efficient in his role for me to believe 100T will gain any significant edges in the jungle.

Talking about individual gaps, Barney “Alphari” Morris is a better top laner than Kim “Ssumday”  Chan-ho, which is a problem for 100T. I sense that this game will be all about the top side, which should favour Liquid due to their strong top-jungle duo. Other roles seem evenly matched, while I would give 100T a slight edge in the ADC department.

100 Thieves are a good team, but they’re not at the level of Liquid in their current form. I expect a 3-1 victory for Team Liquid.

Prediction: Team Liquid -1.5 maps – 2.08 at Pinnacle

Betting Odds are correct as of Saturday, August 21, at 18:00 CEST