Quarterfinal LCS Elo Rankings

EU LCS

The EU LCS saw very little change in the rankings, aside from the dramatic fall of Roccat. With both Fnatic and SK Gaming going undefeated they further distanced themselves from the pack, creating a huge gap between the top 2 teams and the rest of the league. At this point the rating difference between SK Gaming and 4^th ranked Elements is almost as large as the difference between 3^rd ranked H2k and 10^th ranked Roccat. Such a gap in rating should show up in the semifinal round with some one sided series in favor of SK Gaming and Fnatic. In the rest of the league there weren’t many very impactful moves, Giants Gaming two wins to close out the week weren’t even enough to see them overtake Meet Your Makers. Despite finishing 7^th in the rankings, Meet Your Makers will unfortunately be auto relegated due. The dubious honor of last place in the rankings belongs to Roccat, who took the spot with a combination of a 0-2 week 9 and Giants Gaming last second surge.

Copenhagen Wolves and Roccat remained as unpredictable as ever, combining for the three incorrect predictions on the week, leaving the Elo rankings with a 7-3 record for the week. When I publish the rankings for the entire summer split I will keep a season prediction record, and we can see how accurate these Elo predictions are.

The EU playoffs are by far the more lopsided playoffs, as the region is incredibly top heavy. H2k Gaming is predicted to win 69 percent of the time, which means that we will most likely see a 3-1 in favor of H2k, with a 3-0 series then next most probable.

The other semifinal features Gambit Gaming and Unicorns of Love, with Gambit favored to win 56 percent of the time. This series should be much closer, with the Elo ratings favoring a 3-2 or 3-1 in favor of Gambit. For EU the Elo rankings favor the higher seed in each playoff series, with Gambit Gaming poised to be a much closer matchup than H2k and Copenhagen Wolves. Although the Wolves did just ruin as many predictions as they could last week, so let’s see if they can do it two weeks in a row.

NA LCS

The NA LCS saw much more change in the rankings as Cloud 9 and Winterfox made late season pushes to keep things interesting. Heading into the playoffs Cloud 9 has reacquired their throne atop the Elo rankings, based on their quality win over TSM which means that heading into the playoffs, although they aren’t the top seed Elo has them as the team to beat. With three 1-1 weeks for the 3^rd 4^th and 5^th ranked teams there was very little change in the ratings of those teams. However, despite being the 3^rd seed, CLG is still in 5^th in Elo ranking heading into the playoffs. Both Gravity and Team Impulse are above CLG in the rankings, which could keep things interesting later on in the tournament. Team liquid grabbed the 6^th place spot on the back of Team 8’s heartbreaking week, and Winterfox’s stellar play boosted them ahead of Dignitas, which bodes well for their upcoming relegation games. Despite winning only one game Team Coast managed to avoid the worst Elo rating in history, the 1319 rating that Meet Your Makers held at the end of the 2013 EU LCS Summer split.

Again the Elo rankings went 7-3 for predictions on the week, with the Team Liquid loss to Team 8, the Team Dignitas upset of Team Impulse, and the Cloud 9 win over TSM all unpredicted. Both playoff matches are remarkably close in Elo, with CLG and Team Impulse being favored by 54 and 55 percent respectively. Like the Gambit Gaming vs. Unicorns of Love match we should see a 3-2 or 3-1 in favor of the higher seeded team. While these picks don’t make for very bold predictions, they do speak to the relative closeness of the playoff games. Should the winner of these matches meet up in the third place match later on in the tournament though, the higher seeded team may not be favored anymore.

Enjoy the first week of playoffs and thanks for reading!