We are eight weeks into the season, and we only have three weeks left of the LCS regular season and fantasy. The pressure to win is increasing exponentially and decisions have more weight behind them now that the end is upon us.

Week 8 Analysis

Last week, I incorrectly predicted Millenium, Roccat, Dignitas, and Alliance. My data incorrectly predicted Roccat, Dignitas, CLG, and Gambit. I made the mistake of thinking that Mil was on a downswing, when in reality they were just being horribly inconsistent which they showed in their crushing victory over Alliance and their close game with CW. Alliance was the exact opposite: I thought that they were just having a fluke week on super week and that their games vs Roccat and Millenium would boost them back up. Instead, they went 0-2 and look extremely vulnerable for the first time this season. It seemed expected that Dig would at least have close games with LMQ and CLG, but they were crushed in both games and garnered less than half of what was expected of them. Roccat went 2-0 against SK and Alliance. CLG went 2-0 against TSM and Dig in crushing victories. Gambit swapped their roster around and not even NiQ could post a decent score this week. SK did much worse than expected this week, however, they were expected to do the worst, or the 2nd worst in each of their respective positions, so I would say that was still accurate.

Overall, my data predictions were extremely accurate and fairly precise last week. I was 0.56% accurate, and +/- 9.53 points precise for both EU and NA last week. A lot of that deviation comes from EU where teams like Gambit, SK, and Roccat scored upwards of 30 points off from the predicted values. In fact, EU was +/- 11.51 points precise while NA was +/- 7.54 points precise. The good thing about EU is that it remains extremely accurate due to many games being stomps. When one team in EU scores over, another team will score just as much under the projection.

I found that another good way to compare how well predictions worked is to rank all players based on their predictions, and then see where they ended up for their actual performance. For last week, the two tables are here:

Projected Week 8

Actual Week 8

As you can see, even though teams like SK did much worse than predicted, they were still predicted to be some of the worst players going into week 8, and they ended in relatively the same spots.

Week 9 Method

Not many changes this week. The biggest change is that I am including the chart that ranks the players by their position which can be found directly below.

And the points projected for each player (M3):

Top Lane

FNC SOAZ 42.61 points

Fnatic is now #1 in EU by elo, and they have crushed their competition in recent weeks. They also play the two weakest teams in EU this week: Gambit and CW. I’m going to spoil the rest of this for you, Fnatic is #1 in every position, and they will all have the same reasoning as s0AZ. Start them.

TSM Dyrus 33.67 points

TSM is a strong team that struggles to consistently beat the top teams in NA. This week, they play LMQ and coL. That seems a little contradictory for them to do well this week, but TSM players average 14 points a game against LMQ even though they have not beaten LMQ. They also average 25 points against coL. So expect TSM to do well this week. Dyrus is the biggest risk of the entire TSM roster because he only averages 6.5 points a game against LMQ and about 18.5 points a game against coL.

LMQ Ackerman 31.15 points

Ackerman has been one of the best top laners throughout the split and he is lucky enough to be playing against TSM and CLG this week. Most teams score a lot of points for their top laners against CLG, and LMQ has yet to lose to TSM this split. If Ackerman performs to his average against these teams, he is in line to get 51 points, 31 from TSM and 20 from CLG. I would definitely start Ackerman.

Jungle

FNC Cyanide 40.78 points

Fnatic player. See Soaz. See the past two weeks.

TSM Amazing 39.47 points

TSM plays coL and LMQ this week and both teams like to have games that either last extremely long or have a lot of kills. Amazing has 36 points on average from these teams, and his aggressive playstyle will be rewarded in these probably high-scoring games.

Mil KottenX 32.52 points

KottenX always plays well. He has had maybe one bad week this split, but he has consistently been one of the top performers on a team that goes for kills. Mil plays a struggling SK and a resurgent Roccat this week, so they might have issues, but I thought they would have issues last week and almost all of them were #1 in their respective positions.

Mid

FNC xPeke 48.48 points

I tried warning you guys. Fnatic is #1 in every position, and I think those predictions are fair. Keep reading.

TSM Bjergsen 44.61 points

Oh, I forgot to mention, TSM is #2 in every position this week as well. Again, I think #2 is fair for all of them except for Dyrus, and entirely possible. Unless they give Vasilii Tristana. Then your fantasy points can RIP.

All Froggen 41.99 points

Even when most of Alliance underperformed last week, Froggen remained strong. Alliance has an easier schedule this week, and they will hopefully perform better than last week. I feel confident with Froggen being my #3 mid laner.

ADC

FNC Rekkles 54.72 points

Even if FNC wasn’t all #1 right now, I think Rekkles would still be #1. Amazing player, team is playing better than ever, “easy” week; all of that means a lot of fantasy points.

TSM WildTurtle 44.63 points

TSM is 2nd again. WildTurtle has been playing amazingly ever since the casters started talking about him not having a game with more than 5 (or was it 7) kills in this split. I think the players just enjoy proving Jatt wrong and it is very likely that it can be an NA LCS game that they play amongst themselves.

CLG Doublelift 41.69 points

He’s in the number three position along with his trusty partner and the more attractive half of rush hour: Aphromoo. He plays LMQ and EG this week, and on average would score 40 points against those teams. EG has not looked like they have improved much since the last time CLG played them, and LMQ vs CLG is always a high-kill game due to both teams always trying to make plays to get back in the game.

Support

FNC Yellowstar 47.94 points

Supports are very reliant on how well their team does. Fnatic is doing well. Yellowstar will do well. He has also played amazingly the past 2 weeks. Start him.

TSM Gleeb 37.35 points

TSM will probably do well. TSM likes to snowball games from kills. Kills mean assists. Assists mean free fantasy points for whoever started Gleeb.

CLG Aphromoo 34.10 points

APHROMOO! The community-titled “Best Player NA” has been playing outstanding recently. CLG has historically scored a lot of points against EG and LMQ, and I don’t see that slowing down anytime soon. I would start him, especially alongside his more attractive partner Doublelift.

Teams

Fnatic 34 points

This is like the really bad “Knock Knock” joke involving bananas and an orange. Except there are no oranges to make me glad I didn’t say banana. Fnatic is number one, once again this week, and that’s all I have to say.

Dignitas 30 points

Dignitas has already started their typical end-season slide with none of their players performing well in the past couple of weeks and a severe lack of coordination. Also, none of their players are expected to be in the top 10 of their respective positions, so it is extremely unlikely for their team to do that much better than the players. They play CRS and EG this week so there is hope, but I find it unlikely.

Alliance 30 points

Hopefully Alliance can pull it together, but like Dig, they are 2-4 in their last two weeks. They have an easier schedule this week than they did last week, but if they are really slumping, that might not even help them. SHC and GMB are still LCS-level teams, so no win is free, especially with how Alliance has looked these past two weeks.

Closing

LCS is coming to a close soon, and that means Worlds is coming up. However, that also means that Fantasy will end until January of 2015 (unless Riot has fantasy Worlds with a draft for all the teams for the round robin stage of Worlds. Rito pls!). So far, I think that fantasy data not only has applications in predicting the outcomes of games and scores players will get each game, but that the data is also extremely useful in identifying strength of teams and analyzing their playstyle’s or where their weakest link is. So far, I only have one loss this season in fantasy due to Mil and Roc last week (I hate you Fridge) and I have really enjoyed doing these articles for you guys. I look forward to the next 3 weeks and hopefully the next time Fantasy LCS becomes available.

Credit to /u/_Zaga_ and his site http://flcspro.com for compiling all data for me this week.

P.S. Have some elo graphs of NA and EU! K = 45.