The Highlights
- The European league is in Week 3 of the summer split.
- Teams are still adjusting to the new metagame.
- Betting lines are still heavily influenced by last season’s hierarchy, which has little bearing in this meta.
It’s Week 3 of the summer split, and the story of this new season continues to be the new metagame and how teams are adapting to it. Some teams are sticking with the new mage-and-bruiser bottom lanes while others have gone back to traditional attack damage carry (ADC) compositions.
The summer-split picks I’ve recommended in articles and on Twitter are 29-19 (+7.75 units).
If you’re new to eSports, check out my League introduction. While I focus primarily on League betting in this breakdown, it has relevance to daily fantasy as well. If you’re playing League DFS, be sure to check out my evergreen strategy pieces.
- Three biggest esports DFS mistakes and how to avoid them
- Two most important stats for League DFS
- How to build a winning League lineup
For DFS, pay attention to the Kills per Win (KPW) and Deaths per Loss (DPL) numbers for this split. In general, you’ll want to roster players on teams with high KPWs playing against teams with high DPLs. Keep in mind, though, that we are early in the season; the samples are small.
For more League action, see my other regional breakdowns for this weekend.
All lines are from Bovada.
KPW Leaders
- Misfits: 21.8
- Fnatic: 18.6
- ROCCAT: 18.5
DPL Laggards
- Team Vitality: 21.0
- Unicorns of Love: 18.5
- H2k: 17.7
Bets
ROCCAT vs. Giants Gaming: Friday 6/29 at noon ET
- ROCCAT: -185
- Giants: +145
- Bet: ROCCAT -185
Despite having a rough loss in their last outing, ROCCAT is still a serviceable team, which makes them better than Giants, who on average are down over 2,500 gold at 15 minutes and have a 0% first turret rate and 25% first blood rate. They should get run over here by ROCCAT and by most teams over the course of this split.
Schalke 04 vs. Misfits: Friday 6/29 at 1:00 p.m. ET
- Schalke: +185
- Misfits: -235
- Bet: Misfits -235
The Misfits have historically been strong early in seasons and then fallen off later, but we’re not at that point yet. Schalke played above their heads to beat ROCCAT last week, but the Misfits are no ROCCAT. The Misfits should keep rolling this week thanks to their unreal 3.48 kill-to-death ratio. A Riot analyst even excluded the Misfits from his top performers of the week because he said it wouldn’t be fair to the other teams, which seems like a fair assessment given their recent performances.
H2k vs. Splyce: Friday 6/29 at 2:00 p.m. ET
- H2k: +105
- Splyce: -130
- Bet: Splyce -130
Both teams are 0-4, but of the two Splyce has the stronger players. They haven’t figured out this meta yet, but their individual skill levels are just so high that I can’t see them losing to H2k. As the season progresses, I expect Splyce to move up the leaderboard and H2k to stay right about where they are.
Team Vitality vs. Schalke 04: Saturday 6/30 at noon p.m. ET
- Vitality: -145
- Schalke04: +115
- Bet: Vitality -145
Vitality looked rough last week with winnable losses to ROCCAT and Fnatic, but they have a chance to rebound against a Schalke team that has overperformed. These teams are statistically similar in almost every metric, but the Vitality squad has been together for years, whereas Schalke is still getting used to a new jungler, which gives the edge to Vitality.
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That’s all I’ve got for Europe. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @Nty9problemsDFS, where I will post additional picks throughout the weekend.
Until next time, I’ll see you on the rift.
