International Elo Ratings 2015/04/18 (Plus Wildcard Predictions)

International Elo Ratings

Predictions are hard. Predicting the outcomes of international League of Legends competitions is very hard. There was a time when you could at least say Korea > Everyone. But find ourselves in a post-IEM world where even Twitch-chat truisms can’t be taken for granted. This is why I put together these ratings. Their purpose is to help League fans understand how different teams stack up against each other; especially when they’re from different regions.

The table below contains the rankings of every team active in each of the four major regions (NA, EU, SK and CHN), any challenger teams that have guaranteed themselves a spot in one of those leagues (e.g. Origen), the teams in the LMS playoffs, and the teams that will be competing in the 2015 International Wildcard Tournament. Also included are SF5 (who can’t compete for Visa reasons) and Lyon Gaming (as the top LAN team). The numbers were calculated using both major and minor, national and international LoL competitions going back to 2010.

EDIT: Updated to 2015/04/20

Elo Rankings (2015/04/20)

As you can see there is substantial agreement between these rankings and the LoleSports Power Rankings. The principle differences are in ranking the top Chinese teams. 5 of their top 10 are Chinese, while only 2 Chinese teams have top 10 Elo ratings. Basically no team besides EDG is consistent enough to earn a high rating. The Power Rankings also over rate OMG and under rate WE (who’ve had the 2nd best recent performance among Chinese teams); even though they were published before OMG’s dumpstering at the hands of LGD the Power Rankings still show a tendency to buy into the “they’re just trolling before playoffs.” The other large disagreement is over KT Rolster. Since Week 8 they are 10-5. This includes 2-0 wins over IM, Samsung and Jin Air, 2-1 losses to CJ and SKT and GE’s first BO3 loss in the LCK. They are clearly one of the best Korean teams.

Coast, of course, is last.

There have been some questions about methodology. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

Wildcard Invitational Preview

The Elo rating for each of the Wildcard teams comes down to how successful their team has been internationally and how dominant they were domestically. INTZ are on a 15 game winning streak and are coming from one of the more successful Wildcard regions (hey Kabuum!). Japanese teams, by contrast, have lost almost every game they’ve played against teams from other regions and DetFM went “only” 8-2 in the regular season (An impressive score, but it’s much worse than, for example, the Chief’s 13-1 win-lose rate).

The tournament is expected to be close, overall, with the potential for upset in every game (INTZ are only 70% favourites to beat DetFM) and even the bottom teams are expected to score a few wins.

However, if there are team who will wildly deviate from their expected results it is DetFM; whether they might over- or under-perform is uncertain. Japanese teams have only rarely competed internationally and DetFM has played fewer games against teams from other regions than any other wildcard team. Their best result was a single win against CGA Legends, a mediocre Hong Kong, at the IEM Singapore Amateur Tournament.