ESB’s League of Legends betting tips and predictions for Saturday focus on the LoL Championship Series (LCS) Mid-Season Showdown match between Team Liquid and Cloud9, who will duke it in the semi-finals. Here is our betting preview for the match with two predictions.

The LOL betting odds on Team Liquid have been dropping quite rapidly over the last few days, which does not surprise us. Even though there is this narrative about how Cloud9 are the best team LCS has had in years, we don’t believe they’re that much stronger than Liquid, and would even go so far as to say that they are slightly weaker.

C9’s biggest strength comes from their mid-jungle duo, but the current meta does not prioritise the mid 2v2 as much as team fighting and top laners. And that is why we are a bit concerned with Cloud9, largely because Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami isn’t at the level of Barney “Alphari” Morris.
What’s more, C9’s bottom lane has been very 50/50 and while they’re still one of the best duos in the league, it wouldn’t be fair to rank them higher than Edward “Tactical” Ra and Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in.

Even stylistically, you have to favour Team Liquid, who have been extremely efficient in creating and maintaining gold leads and we don’t believe C9 will be able to slow them down – unless we see a heroic performance from jungler Robert “Blaber” Huang in the early-game.

This match can still go both ways, but looking at how these two teams have been playing recently, we have to give Team Liquid a slight edge. A 3-2 win for Liquid is something that can happen, and at the odds available at esports betting sites, we have to take a shot with the correct score bet as well.