AlphaDraft has freerolls (free fantasy contests with cash prizes) available, so that you can try out the site before you play for more substantial money. I’d highly recommend giving these a shot if you enjoy fantasy LCS.
AlphaDraft offers both two-day and four-day fantasy LCS contests. In this article I’ll discuss picking a lineup for the four-day contests (which include players from both EU and NA) for Week 4.
I’m going to focus on picking a strong all around lineup that can be used in head to head contests and other contests with relatively flat prize structures. For the most part, AlphaDraft isn’t offering huge tournaments that require riskier strategies yet, so you should be able to use this approach effectively in most of their contests. That said, if you’re playing in the large freeroll then you may want to take a slightly riskier approach than I am.
The first thing I do is always to look at the betting odds for a match. In this case, I’m looking for teams that are heavily favored in both games. With both EU and NA players to choose from, I shouldn’t have to compromise on anything. I want everything to be perfect for the players I’m picking.
When reading the odds, lower numbers are better. What follows are the teams that are favored in both games this week, with the odds listed in order in parentheses and the most heavily favored teams listed first. SK (1.21, 1.22) Fnatic (1.16, 1.36), Cloud 9 (1.24, 1.30), Elements (1.31, 1.40), Team Liquid (1.46, 1.43), TSM (1.27, 1.67), Team Impulse (1.56, 1.40), UoL (1.74, 1.25).
With the first three generally being the most heavily favored, those are the teams I’m going to focus on. Of the remaining teams, I like Team Impulse the best for this week. Some of the other teams (most notably TSM) have achieved their previous scores in contests where they were generally pretty heavily favored. So their lukewarm favoritism this week suggests that their match-ups aren’t great and that they might be expected to score less this week than in previous weeks.
I’m going to go position by position looking for the best values for my team. I’ll start out with the top lane, where Huni has been the highest scoring player by a pretty wide margin. Add his good match-up and reasonable price (7800) to that, and he seems like an easy choice.
For my jungler, Reignover has been the highest scorer by a wide margin. Like Huni, he’s got good match-ups this week. The only catch is that his cost is 9000. There’s a nice value pick for jungler in Kikis, who’s been a good scorer and costs only 5700. With UoL favored in both of their games this week, he’s got favorable match-ups as well. I’m going to have to save money somewhere and this looks like a good place to do it.
There are lots of high scoring mids to choose from. Febiven has been the top scorer so far and has the best match-ups this week. Sign me up! An added bonus is that his 8900 price tag is somewhat reasonable.
ADC is yet another position with an extremely high scoring Fnatic player who is somewhat reasonably priced. Steelback is the only player at any position averaging over 30 fantasy points per game and he’s only 8900. I’ve previously stated that Alphadraft has the sharpest pricing of the daily fantasy LCS sites, but there are definitely some moderate values to be found among the top players this week!
And…another standout Fnatic player at support. That said, if I take Yellowstar at 9200 (the top price for a support), then I’m likely to have to find a bargain somewhere else. I pencil him into my lineup for now.
I still have my flex position and my team to pick. I’m assuming that I’ll want a maximum priced (4000) team, which means I currently only have 5500 for my flex. It’s time to see who’s available in the bargain bin. I’m not sure how he snuck in there, but Santorin is an extremely inexpensive 5300! I’m not going to have to downgrade any of my picks after all.
For my team pick, I’ll go with SK Gaming over Fnatic to balance things out a bit between the two teams. With four picks from Fnatic already, this team is already a bit more unbalanced than I’d ideally want for a lineup that I’m going to use in head to head contests, but it’s so strong that I’m willing to take that risk.
For more tips on daily fantasy LCS strategy, check out ProFantasyESports.
Published: Feb 11, 2015 06:06 am