What a sloppy but entertaining game. Hero really should have won. Fortunately I went really small and didn't post it as a play of the day as I do feel the correct line was about -150 for Hero.

Hoping I can get decent lines fading both Liquid Hero and Pet next week if they play. MVP are amazing at losing games they're supposed to win. Startale should clean them up from here either 3-1 or 3-2. Who knows though no more value plays today I don't think.

35-18 +10.17u for the season

W, L, W respectively today.

37-19 +11.17u overall (2 cancelled bets in San and Innovation going 1-1 0u but neither count to thread as Pinnacle cancelled action)

Its sad to see MKP in this form, he looks like he is on a massive tilt every game.

Also, very odd choices by Leenock. not only he went full greed build against someone like Departure, but he did also throw his decent position by losing all lings for no reason at all.

Hero should not have lost that game today to Pet. Pet played really badly, and Hero did multitask his harass well but suicided piles of units unnecessarily which added up over the course of the game. Hero still has the potential to be a top 15 type player, but I don't think MKP does simply because he gets too lost in TvT and chooses bad engagements in TvZ.

I actually missed the MKP game had something to do but he just seems lost and tilted outside of TvP these days

Nailed it with the Startale 3-2 just thought that Hero and Leenock would win instead of the other way around with Pet and Departure. CJ I just expected one of their three dogs to win on average and instead all of the favourites won. It'd be interesting to see if blanket betting every single favourite this proleague season would have shown a profit; it would be close I think. It's a shame we didn't see the ace match for CJ vs KT, was really hoping as a fan that we would.

R1 finals will be interesting. It looks like we have Startale vs KT Rolster for the 4th finals spot next week assuming JinAir beats Prime which is likely and SKT beat Samsung which is also likely if slightly less so. JinAir can still finish first but need SKT to lose to either Samsung or CJ Entus to have a chance to; CJ also lock their finals spot this week because either they beat ST on for and against or have more wins than KT. JinAir's finals spot is also locked if they beat Prime. Technically Startale can finish first and so can CJ but they both require an extremely unlikely set of results; it should come down to do SKTT1 lose a match; if not they take first and if so they need Jinair not to crush the last two matches to take first.

I think we're seeing a JinAir vs SKTT1 final for round 1 of proleague if I have to guess right now, although anything is possible of course.

Will keep an eye on the lines for tomorrow; no bets on yet but a few spots that are very close to bettable if we have late movement like we did to bring Stats to -111 today (should have bet him obv but let my degen take over as I didn't want to hedge against the CJ bet I already had)

Interesting to see money coming on Hurricane against Innovation now. If it comes in to the degree that Hurricane is a favourite and Innovation loses then i'd say it's safe to cast the same level of suspicion on Innovation as we currently have for San. I'm hoping it's not the case as the line movement so far has been normal, but it's something to keep an eye on tomorrow and you should not bet on either side of that match right now with all of the uncertainty. It disgusts me that I even have this suspicion for arguably the best terran player in the world.

Hoping Startale play it safe and don't field San for the foreseeable future. They have better choices anyway in Bomber and arguably even Hack and Pet given that if he didn't throw that match he's been pretty out of form since the first round of the season. Would be awesome if they got Parting back for round 2, but lol kespa. Their core of Life/Leenock is solid as both should win over half their games and Curious should win 40%ish of his games as well which isn't awful. It would make sense for Bomber to be their 4th once he's finished his preparation for the individual leagues when they're selecting their teams for the final if they make it.

MVP's had a surprising success in fielding Losira this season but MKP should only be fielded on P-favoured maps to try and draw protoss opponents at this point, Hero has so much potential but is out of form, Taeja isn't available I assume (if he is they should be fielding him every week). I think they should be fielding Yonghwa as part of their core as well that this stage he's been playing reasonably well this season.

Prime are a lost cause

JinAir and SKT are obviously so deep that even players outside their core top 4 are great. They can rotate in players outside their core against the weaker teams to give them experience now.

KT's core 4 strat should be fine as long as Flash stops playing like garbage, at this stage they don't have a suitable replacement for him but maybe dropping him from the team for a week, fan revolt aside, will be what he needs to motivate him to practice harder and get in form.

Samsung will be ok I think they're thinking long term resting some of their better players (like Solar this week) to give new guys experience since they're not a top 4 team anyway. I wouldn't be shocked if they put together a run late this season in round 3 or 4 but they're not going to do anything early in the season.

Startale need to get Parting released from Kespa jail and get Bomber motivated and they'll be contenders. Until then they'll finish 3rd-6th each round.

Flash had one of the sharpest declines i've seen in sc2, he would be on a 12 games losing streak, but managed to grab that win against BBoongBBoong (lol). And yes, they dont really have any quality replacement for him (sleep sucks equally or maybe even more)

Interested to see the potential upsets tomorrow. Hurricane dropped from +180 to +150 or something, which is somewhat weird, given that he is 0-5 against Innovation. If Hurricane will somehow win, then its very possible that SK telecom will get 3-0'd.

Prime has some chances only if Yoda wins, followed by another successful weird allin by Myungsik. Does not look that likely to me.

@Rainkhan If the dude had never before wagered like this, that's part of the red flag. And he's betting max and max at increasingly worse odds on a Bo1? That's not some whale that's someone who knows something. What do you want Pinny to do, pray the person is just a fish and does that again? Obv they are privy to the guy's betting history so this is clearly outside the norm.

They should suspend the grading of the wagers pending a full investigation. However, from the looks of it they had every intention to keep the dark bets if dark lost and do what they are doing now if dark won. Classic freeroll.

There is nothing wrong with someone whos never bet on sc2 to just show up and pound the **** out of dark if he knows that San has a really bad wrist. Also, if in his own expertise he determines that San wouldnt even stand a chance vs a code A player in this specific best of 1. Ask yourself, would you rather bet the farm on a game like the superbowl where you know about as much as any other speculator, or would u bet the farm on a game where you have first hand knowledge which is not cheating but merely you taking a risk based on your knowledge of pro-gamer related injuries and how such injuries affect their results on the games played after such injuries occured?

Cheating would be if San conspired with the punter in question to throw the match or soft play with the intention of profiting by betting on Dark. Pinnacle just flat out said because their "algorithm" set off red-flags that they are proceeding by suspending betting, but what this really means is that guy who bet 100k got freerolled hard while ppl who bet 20$ got a refunded lol.

In conclusion, I think the only thing pinnacle should do moving forward is update the e-sports betting community more thoroughly on what steps they're taking to resolve this as without doing so it leaves a lot to be questioned on their integrity. Why ever bother betting big on a side if they're going to suspend betting when u push a line too far? If you know San's hand is going to make him play like complete garbage then betting a line from -125 all the way up to -400 is just printing money when the real line should be as high or higher than 90% implied probability. Again, I must re-iterate: Betting heavily against San because of first hand knowledge is not cheating. If anyone questions this then I'm done here. If you hear about an nba star being sick with the flu and you know about this before the line moves then you can get in early by betting on the other team heavily and your bet won't be voided. Why should they void it here/freeroll the guy just because he's brand new? A full investigation needs to happen to prove if he was indeed cheating or was not.

Look I agree that it might have been inside knowledge rather that match fixing but San didn't play poorly due to reflexes he played poorly due to 'decision making' and match fixing is a clear possibility when factoring in a literally unprecedented line move. There is no way San was sub 20% to win a fair bo1 even with a messed up wrist he should/could have gone for a flippy all in build that requires very little micro (proxy gate/8gate allin/whatever) and had a better chance to win that would have made the bets pounding dark -ev.

I want an investigation too and I was too premature to label San a match fixer but there is a strong possibility that the match was fixed and we won't know unless Pinnacle/Kespa investigate properly. The Innovation line move was weird and suspicious too so if Pinny cancel they do have the responsibility to make a statement why and Kespa really should investigate properly.

In the meantime as bettors all we can do is not bet on their matches.

Jin Air Greenwings -280 vs Prime

We got the Prime steam I wanted so i've fired Jinair. Maru should crush Zoun and make it look easy. Cure is a small fav against Yoda. Rogue is a small to moderate fav not to die to Myungsik's cheese and should beat him if he survives. sOs is a small fav against Creator. Basically, I expect JinAir to take a 1-0 lead, then they need to win 2 out of 4 matches where they are moderately favoured from there.

Overall I think JinAir are about 75-80% favourites here, they will get the 2-3 upset maybe a quarter to a fifth of the time with an off day, but they win 3-1 or 3-0 a bit over half the time (which the -1.5 line agrees with) and then are moderate favourites in the ace match too pushing it to 75%+ which is at least -300

Absurdly huge line move when I hit it for the max (300), good chance my bets are moving the line more than usual due to Pinny's algorithm/rating of my account or something. If JinAir get back below -300 id say its worth tailing otherwise it's whatever. I'll add more myself (I fired 3u) if I can get better than the price I got otherwise seems fine.

No other spots stand out to me really; I don't think Maru ever really loses to Zoun but at -365 in a bo1 it just isn't worth the risk (yes, this is the sort of price San vs Dark was at - actually it was even wider - and Maru is a Code S winner against Zoun a guy who likely isn't even proleague caliber)

I'm tempted to take Bravo against Sorry but haven't talked myself into it yet. See where the line moves I guess.

ended up making small partial unit sweat plays on bravo -127 and dear +111 but not officially posting either itt as not confident enough they're definitely +EV. I did quite like Classic when he was -130ish but not enough to bet, now that hes -150ish im def staying away from that. Samsung +1.5 is getting close to bettable at -146 but isnt quite there yet and I don't think itll get to a price im comfortable firing.

Only official play of the day so far is Jin Air -280, pretty confident the true line is somewhere between -300 and -375, would have to handicap in more detail to figure it out exactly. Prime have gotten quite lucky with the matches they've drawn but they still aren't favoured in any of the matches and only sos/creator is really a flip and zoun is drawing very thin at best if not dead. I do think rogue will be prepared to take out myungsik as well and cure should handle yoda 60%ish of the time.

It's a best of 1 with another professional player bud. Even if he's drunk, there are still BO wins. -500 is not a reasonable line.

Case in point Maru vs Zoun isnt even that one sided in the betting and that may be the most one sided matchup handicapping wise in PL history. It's certainly possible that it was just inside info in the San vs Dark game but we won't know unless its investigated.

Ended up w partial unit sweats on Samsung +1.5, Dear and Bravo but didnt like any enough to post and then the JinAir ML which I posted. Will keep an eye out for late minute value if any presents itself

Innovation vs Hurricane was a fun game there nice comeback from Innovation, but Hurricane should have won probably with good control.

Innovation had no busieness winning this game, but Hurricane did his best to avoid winning.

Pretty much. Hopefully Bravo gets me off to a winning start today. Only spot I love today is JinAir ML and have sized it accordingly but hoping some of my degen sweat bets come through

Seriously though, i am pretty sure even a decent master league protoss could've closed it out from his position. He had like +20 worker lead + supply lead as a 3base protoss.

One of the biggest throws of a lead that i've seen yet in sc2.

Well, Bravo would have done fine if he learned to scout. Was crushing except for the whole hidden base thing. Dear and Dark both playing well atm next game should be good

The quality of these games is so low

That was a phenomenal game there from both Dear and Dark. Dear as a small dog looked about right.

On to my personal main event of the day, JinAir vs Prime.

Despite the iffy moves at times from both guys Dear vs Dark delivered from an entertainment perspective. Glad I didn't go big on any of my sweat plays today, hopefully JinAir can lock in a winning day for me. If not then i'll get crushed since they're pretty solid favourites, but it would be one hell of an upset if Prime can knock off two top five teams in a row.

JinAir -375 now looks like I got the absolute best price available at -280 so very happy w that

Maru -600 vs Zoun is pretty lol in a bo1, but it is a huge mismatch. Cure is closing in on bettable at -145 vs Yoda but id say not until -135.

Everything else seems about right.

No idea why jinair are -636 in live betting up 1-0 after their biggest fav won, massive overreaction from -375 close. Primes paths to victory all come through the other games. Prime +470 or w/e is still meh down 0-1 but its a crazy line move

gl cure lets lock it up with a cure win here

lol. good night

Massive fluke for Yoda to win down a base catching Cure unsieged. It was literally his only chance.

Jinair should still win but thats tilting.

Let's go Rogue, time to hold Myungsik's weird cheese

My +135 Yoda bet payed off. He totally outplayed Cure there even after this horrible micro blunder of not pulling off his scvs from marauders.

San and Zoun are not reasonable comparisons, Zoun is a debutante with a horrible resume, San is a mid tier proleague player with a 2-0 win that week over the opponent in question

I'm not saying it's impossible for a proleague player to be a -500 favourite in a bo1 (although thats hugely unlikely except for rare cases like say Innovation vs Terror or Maru vs Zoun), i'm saying it's impossible for Dark to be a -500 favourite over San in a bo1 without market manipulation as there is no way either player is better than -200 there.

@Mantid Yoda only won because he caught Cure unsieged. If Cure had stayed sieged up on the ramp between natural and third, it would have been game over within 2 minutes due to econ. Even still Cure holds that a reasonable amount of the time. Nice win for Yoda but not sure it's a +EV bet at +135 prob close to breakeven.

I am aware of the unsiege. However Yoda's position was potentially way stronger, his early micro blunder costed his a lot of scv's.

Cure had the game locked pretty much with that kind of scv lead. To make things worse for Yoda he totally rekt his expensive medivac drop with a mine that did 0 damage.

I disagree that you put Cure as that much of a favorite, but only slightly. You might as well be right and i could be wrong here.