disapointing finish on the day as ES had a total meltdown to lose to RNG (remember I mentioned earlier that RNG has a player named Betty who can single handedly turn things around)

frankly i got pretty lucky, ES came out to a huge lead on map3 but the live betting temporarily shut down on me (had to log back in) and by the time it was up again the tables had turned enough to hold off

I'm getting a better feel for o/u and realized my issue with that is I'm not betting that earlier in the day when they are a bit more random and all at -115 whereas betting late you often have a -130 or worse - also getting better at reading what team comps do for kills

otherwise, today should have been a slam dunk because the two teams who were dogs I actually viewed as the favorites heading into the draft so blame today's win less on draft insights and more on bad lines

+4.1 units on the day (real units for the first time)
+46.57 units on the year, 12.34% ROI

first matchup today was absurd it was like -1600 vs +900 so seeing no horrible draft i just put the min bet on the underdogs out of principle and live bet a full unit in one map where the DMO underdogs had an early lead at +400

didn't matter, DMO had too many outclassed players and lost easily 2-0 - rather drop a unit or two on a big payout than ever take a -1600 favorite and frankly if 2 guys on DMO didn't make a few awful plays in the late game DMO could have possibly won both games

for IG vs LGD, the chat mildly preferred LGD map 1 and 3 and IG map 2 and sure enough they won but it was a mild preference so i only wagered a little and the odds weren't all that good anyway

+2.84 units on the day
+49.41 units, 12.65% ROI on season

got extremely lucky today

chat mildly favored OMG over LNG so as dogs i put in some units, they fell way behind and then got extremely lucky in a very rare comeback - one reason why i preferred them in addition to chat talk was they had greater scaling heroes to make such a comeback possible but nevertheless this was a pretty shocking come from behind victory

in map 2 there wasn't much chatter so bet minimally for OMG and then hammered in a unit in the first minute after the KFC algo (yup a KFC sponsored win prediction) favored OMG's comp an absurd amount and they were still heavy dogs (the algo is normally like 52/48 to start a game but this time 60/40)

off to a good start but the TES vs BLG had me put on the brakes since it was like -1600 vs +900

without much preference in the draft, i still sprinkled some fractional unit bets on BLG in hopes they had an upset - they didn't and got swamped but nevertheless I don't see any situation where I'm betting -1600 for a series or -700 per map in esports ever - need to do some more homework to get a feeling for fair odds or maybe just hold off and wait to see if they get an early lead and bet it live, when those upsets occur it's nice but it genuinely feels more like gambling, like putting it all on #18 on roullette - big payout if it hits but how often will it realistically hit?

+2.98 units on the day, 10-10
+52.4 units on the year, 131-116, 13.11% ROI

six straight winning sessions is nice, especially since the training wheels are now off and no longer betting arbitrarily small units

p.s. been reading forum rules and it seems like it's frowned up to post after the fact, if anyone here is lurking and feels like i should be posting live and spamming a half dozen posts each day let me know, happy to do that if people post that is their preference, just figured posting a summary would be cleaner

odd day today, my book (whichever skin ACR uses) drastically overhauled their esports categories - they now basically offer every league, each league has its own page and matchups are posted two days in advance and there's dozens of props available as well

this is a massive change from earlier with just the korean and chinese top leagues and a sprinkling of random stuff

however, today's matchups were not listed, the v5 v rng one came up halfway through game one and stayed up but there wasn't really any major draft advantage - lost .16 units on some very small bets and then had my fingers crossed the next matchup would magically appear as well it hasn't and map1 just concluded

however, while I'm very hopeful for these changes going forward, i was astounded by how quickly the odds would change to reflect the state of affairs - for example V5 was up 2k gold after dozen minutes, had a dragon lead, and had a better scale for late game but were the dogs heading into the match and down in kills 1-3 - normally this is a spot where I could still get them at reasonable or even sometimes plus odds but this time it was like -500, which frankly a pretty good line

nervous this could be the end of the live betting lol for the lols and I'll have to be like jskelts and work hard and model then pray the drafts go normally

we'll see how it goes

-0.16 units on the day
+66.85 units on the entire experiment, 14.89% ROI (still updating the early bets i put in without tracking, will be a very different number tomorrow)

p.s. got access to my old bets, still in the process of updating them, as it's a real pain in the ass - who'd have thought a book wouldn't want people to conveniently account for their losses - but that's why the sudden jump

Fwiw I bet if you wrote your own model based on the draft you'd have an even more outrageous ROI. I havent looked at live betting whatsoever but just the fact that:
1. The draft gives you some of the most valuable information
2. The books very rarely know what theyre doing with eSports
I cant imagine a world where you wouldnt have an even larger edge.

Isn't that why we all increase?

Good run? I'm not sure what you mean with regards to standard and 2%. Can you explain with examples of why this is a standard approach?

@c&b

ugh, i don't know how or why I wrote 2%, even looked back on it and it seems i wrote it twice so honestly have no explanation for it, I for sure was considering upping the risk given this is essentially play money and maybe that was in the back of my mind

for the record i do 1% unit sizes now, often bet less than a unit if i feel the edge is slight or only theoretical

have everything up in an excel sheet where it keeps a running tally with a separate tab for each sport as well so i can see how i'm doing in lol vs other sports and one of the boxes figure out what the exact bankroll is at any time (includes bets still pending but thinking maybe I shouldn't include those in calculating BR for unit purposes, maybe assume they are gone?) and at the start of a session will look up the unit size, round down to an even looking number and go from there

@jskelts - yes that's definitely in the pipeline, a big reason for watching was because i genuinely enjoy it and i'm learning a lot about certain dynamics etc the more i watch - seems like i'll have to do this sooner than later because today the WE v RW disappeared a few minutes before even the draft started which is no bueno - it seems the syndicate is onto me

watching anyway because WE is really fun to watch (teacherma is so creative/good - best player in LPL imo) and have my fingers crossed I'll be able to hammer some units in with the next one

few minutes before draft it all went away, another minute or two later the link to the page disapeared itself and now just takes me to the menu

time to find a new book and get crackin on that model

mother of god, the book is live but it's so janky on and off - but they keep adding new things so I'm hoping it's just a matter of early stage bugs as they rolled out the new style

got my fingers crossed right there was a live bet available for DMO o1.5 drakes after they'd already gotten one so I hammered it and now just waiting hoping it clears (DMO finished with 4 drakes)

also got a lot of drake bets in the next ES vs FPX up right now so maybe I could become a drake prop betting specialist - especially since the win/lose lines are suddenly so much better and with all the vig I often don't like either

furthermore, it shuts down during draft so it does make it harder to exploit that

let's see how it goes, I'm either up a handful of units or a boatload depending on the grading

bets graded and paid out, barring a degen moment it's going to be a good day

indeed hence my post

Long drawn summary of my forary into pregame betting - long story short after finding the two props I loved, I also began sprinkling small amounts on a narrative play - gotta stop doing that and stick to the big obvious screwups


As for today, I've found it's going to more difficult finding soft lines going forward for the winners and losers but did find a bunch of soft prop bets. The live betting was up and down and I'm guessing they are still working out the kinks, wasn't able to bet the FPX ES game live for example.

But as mentioned earlier they had some silly bets available like o/u of 3.5 towers when a team already had 2, 1.5 dragons when a team already had 1, 4.5 dragons when 5 is almost never reached (probably less than 5% of matches), 15.5 kills when a team already had 8 and it was early game, etc etc etc

almost got not bets down on the winners themselves, which was most of the betting previously so I'm now for certain more determined than ever to really build up that model, I need to be able to accurately know if a team should get that 5th tower etc etc

but until then there's enough easy pickens out there for just betting it live, interesting how this is evolving from getting win loss advice from 9 year to no longer being able to bet during draft and having such terrible vig heavy lines after i'm now betting things like towers and drakes

-3.088 units on the non live prop betting
+26.49 units on live betting

was deeply concerned if i bet too much more than I normally did on the "wtf how can they offer that prop bet" stuff because i was worried they'd be cancelled and I'd be flagged/freerolled but after getting paid out i'm thinking the lines are sometimes just that bad and going to really hammer than going forward

still updating from the copy/paste job of historical stuff, going to continue updating immediately after posting this but here it is right now
198-175-7 91.31u 16.98% ROI in total

Today was a bit of a mess, the options were coming and going, something would flash and disapear in 30 seconds and maybe come back maybe not, when i entered a bet the odds given would be quite different as well

but worst of all a few times i had my preferred bet just waiting for it to reappear again and then in such a rush to nail it

also ran into a bunch of high variance plays, twice today a team with an absolute massive game that the commentators were talking about other stuff because it was so out one sided and the KFC win algo at 97% and then that team made one huge mistake and the other team rushed in and won - just really frustrating because it wasn't normal game issues, it was literally a team that could have easily won grinding it down over another 5 minutes but instead decided to flip a coin and finish it now like they had to pee really badly...

i'm fine with the results, but it's the panic betting the wrong prop or even the wrong side of it that punts units which really bothered me - much prefer the smooth saling days where only thing to bet live was winners and it was so off - definitely a new system in place now and while there's plenty of props that fall behind into great bets while live, it's a ton of work to constantly scan, see what's up and at what price then reconsult the live game

however, the books leave o1.5 drakes up way... too... long... once again got in a nice score betting that when they already had one and the next one was a foregone conculsuion at some absurd odds like -160 in fact, i am going to research this prop because it's so unbelievably good i don't think it can be true and deeply worried I'll back up the truck on it and then find out it's something else but so far 3 for 3 on it with big unit bets

-6.67 units on 18-34 for the day
+84.63 units on 216-209-7, 13.68% ROI total LOL betting (still missing a matchups, that I plan on adding to spreadsheet today)

ive been live betting league too bro

lck

lec

lpl

lcs

my sleep schedule has been weird and i started playing it, while bored during this lock down. i am up overall, but not sure if any of my theories r legit

today sweat it out with Jsmith

sadly it didn't pan out so well, my pre-game prop bets were no bueno, if i didn't have those then it would have been a break even day

also bet 4 units on V5+1.5maps on -350 in map1 when their victory looked solid but had the "accept any line changes" box checked and sure enough the prop had changed to -1.5 maps at like +200, wouldn't have put on so many units on that much riskier bet and sure enough fpx swept the next two, but i can't blame that as i would have put some units on v5 in map2 had i not already had those at risk so it sort of evened out

basically, i'm learning not to just wing it on betting props pre draft, that live winner odds are indeed vig heavy and no good and that occasionally you can get very good value on tower and drake prop bets that prevented today from being a total disaster

also got a bit lucky as towards the end of map3 i decided to sprinkle some small bets on +800 or above V5 props (they were down but a single team fight victory and would have been anyone's game) and fortunately the system freezed me out due to a team fight and then they lost that fight handedly and then the game so that saved some dinero

however, going forward it's going to be a lot harder, today when DMO was beating EDG, despite that EDG is a better team and DMO is in last place, they were at like -200 odds in a game with a slight lead whereas in the past i'd still be able to live bet that at +150 or so

22-29 for -2.97 units on the day
finally updated entirety of LOL betting
238-245-7 +78.37u 11% ROI

my prematch betting is a leak, have 4 more days of stuff i put in following narratives so we'll see how it goes

great day overall

first of all, i am so bad at betting pre that it's confirmed I should never ever do that again and just wing, my god "oh this should happen" type bets are not working out very well - really humbling as I had literally tricked myself into believing I'd really figured this out

nope, just good and line browsing live

it's still impossible for me to get a bet on the winner/loser mid draft and by the time it opens that up again enough has happened in the match itself that any draft advantage has already been realized or negated

also seeing vig heavy lines where when even it's -120 for one and -160 for the other, and one gets an advantage and then it'll be -400/+180 so really not seeing much there

but the live props have been great and since they are correlated you can find some creative hedges - there's always a chance neither hit but most of the time at least one will and they often aren't mutually exclusive

today i backed the truck up on WE o2.5 drakes when they already held a 2:0 lead there at like -130, which was a really bad line that i would have hit anyway, but I could also bet RNG most drakes at like +850 and the only thing stopping WE from getting a third was RNG getting 4 first or having some fluke situation where one team just punted and the other rushed the base - a few times almost got both, a little worried I'll hit 00 one of these days

more determined than ever to get started on that modeling once work slows down

sadly still have 4x more matches of bets already loaded in (RIP Money) as I'm losing my shirt in those, would have been up close to 30 units today otherwise

Day 25-30 (RIP pre bets), +13.11 u
Total 263-275-7, 91.48, 11.83% ROI

Have you tried betting on LCK whatsoever? Theyre on at the same time as the LPL and it would increase your volume. Even though I attribute it to mostly variance my model has been significantly more accurate on LCK than LPL matches, so maybe the region just plays a lower variance style. Either way nice work, glad to see youve become as addicted to it as I have

funny you mention it as acr added them in recent update and i have been adding in some LCK but dealing in smaller amounts due to less familiarity with the different meta and teams - did very well today in the T1 upset because chat was laughing about their draft so got in some units on DWG

overall today was fantastic, even my misclick bets wound up winning, the live bets are often only available for seconds at a time so when you see a good line you gotta act fast

today I saw u5.5 drakes -220 and just assumed it was for a team because there was simply no way that was a heavy favorite because this was a super close game and each already had one so 5 was basically a lock and then with elder dragons it was just really improbably of it hitting

furthermore, a number of times they'd had a team at o/u 4.5 (due to elder dragon) so i just slammed home 4 units on this not even caring which team it was at since they'd need two elders - later on one team had 2 and another 3 so at a minimum we were looking at 6 and then one team just made a massive mistake and the losing team ignored the 6th dragon and rushed the base before the dead guys respawned - got incredibly lucky, had the other team punted they'd have still gotten that 4th drake too because of the incredible bonus a 4th gives you makes taking that better priority (you almost never lose with that super bonus)

anyway, sure i've bored you all plenty by now but today was great day getting tons of great bets with close to sure things at -150 and 50/50 shots at +450 (ie bet for most kills, they were down by 3 kills but had a massive gold lead and were winning the game, they should have been the favorites)

my early bets still no good, never again (at least until I've modeled it)

50-31 on the day, +26.92u
313-306-7 total, +118.4u, 14.2% ROI

really gotta stop messing about and focus on bets that matter
if you only look at bets of mine of 2 units or greater I'm up 109u
if you look only at bets of less than a unit I'm down -17u (largely from my pre bets though)

i know it's early, but this is going far better than i'd possibly have imagined

loving these dragon props, book doesn't understand early dragons are often uncontested and that the stronger team will get the late ones

just got +708 on what should have been an even money bet for most drakes, sadly the other team suicided and lost early when it was 2-2 in drake count, seems like they'll be graded as a push as the winners and losers have all been graded but those are still pending for a while now

tilt continues, while it looks like the most drakes bets will be a push as they still haven't been graded yet i just missed a big opportunity

OMG was losing to RW by about a kill and some gold bonus because they timed a tower rush well and thus had a nice tower lead too - so this gold wasn't a big deal because sooner or later the other side would get their gold from towers too, while RW clearly had an advantage, they were still the worse team and only slightly ahead, at worst OMG was a 40% dog, match was basically close enough that whoever won the next team fight would win the match

yet I could get +953 OMG most towers and +700 Most Nashors despite that OMG was still -120 to win the map - i hammered these two, especially the Nashor because they could still sneak that and/or possibly nobody got a Nashor anyway

RW sadly won so lost the tower props but fortunately nobody got a Nashor so another push instead of a bunch of -units

still though, very tilting to get insane odds on a slight dog and watch it not pan out

super disapointing day, yet again got some massive odds on coin flips and ended up pushing

but going forward i see big things when a team is clearly winning and projected to win but down by one or two drakes, sadly each time they had a little too much of a dominant position and after tying it up in drakes proceeded to just win the game and ignore the free drake a couple times I wanted to yell at the compute "get the drake" because that 4 unit wager for 35 unit profit was just sitting there for the taking

still waiting for a bunch of the "most drake" bets to be graded, somewhat concerned I'm being freerolled on them because the ones made earlier in the day are still pending and the ones made on the final map of the day weren't graded as a "push" but rather "bet cancelled" much like how they grade the bets I place ahead of time on the 3rd map when it isn't played due to a sweep

worst part is the book understood the deficit otherwise and often gave similar odds the other way on another prop so I could bet 5 units to win 40 on drakes for one team then 1 unit to win 5 for kills the other way ie if that team didn't get most drakes it's because they collapsed and other team would get most kills in that spot

what happened was losing the hedges 1 unit at a time and pushing on the massive bets

day 64-17, -10.24u
total 376-377, +108u, 11.28% ROI

utterly demoralizing day

bet heavily on ES as they are in theory a very good team and VG a bad team and odds were pretty close to even due to an overeaction to them getting just curb stomped by FPX last match but FPX is arguably the best team in the LPL if not the world so i didn't put much weight on it

sure enough, all three games ES (one of the best teams at getting drakes) is behind 2-0 on drakes but otherwise winning the game or in one close enough to be a coin flip

i back the truck up on +300-+700 most drake or nashor props because there's a good +250ish correlated hedge on the other team to get most towers - ie if VG gets more drakes, they get the soul bonus, whoever gets that nearly always wins and whoever wins nearly always gets most towers

Game 1 they tie it up to 3 & 3 drakes and are down 0-1 in nashors, they win a team fight and can secure the drake prop or tie it in nashors but instead opt to base rush

Game 2 they are just dominating, not even close and I can get +700 on drake props because they didn't contest early ones, they then collapse on me but fortunately I hedged on VG so not a total loss

Game 3 same thing, ES winning but down in drakes, put 3.3 units to win 8 on VG towers and 5u on ES Drakes to win 20 units, ES ties it in drakes, looks like they'll get the 3rd, then they start a 3 on 1 fight and somehow lose and that snowballs into a loss, luckily the drake indifference helped me here as VG just went for the kill and left them tied up

13-40-3, -3.2u
389-417-12, 104.95u 10.24% ROI

despite that i found hedges to make the risky plays work out, i still lost a bunch on regular bets for ES to win and such

I still have those pushes from yesterday ungraded... getting a little nervous they may decide a push is still a loss like in soccer

absolute brutal day, should have just chilled but tried forcing in plays on "it could happen and those are insane odds" and having done it with multiple units previously due to hedges being available i made some bad bets on +1200 odds for multiple units but this time naked because the hedge wasn't there

making matters worse, bad internet connection made it seem like my big failing bet didn't go through so i ended up with it twice

so i'm going back to conservative play, this was a huge lesson for me about my hubris and no more multi unit bets on long shots without a hedge available

what happened is the much better team would be down 2 drakes and 2k gold, normally this means they'll lose the match a good 40% of the time, however, i kept telling myself (but they are the better team, win one team fight and they got this) and so I'd hammer away theses with unreasonable amounts hoping just one good map and I'll be betting those 1k limits next time around

lesson learned, hubris checked, this was likely very positive for me as I'd gotten concerned my success here would lead to leaks later on - i stand by the bets, just not the amount of brm available, in many ways I think knowing I could just deposit if things got bad is a bad safety blanket giving me undo confidence

my one saving grace is these units were smaller than usual because I have so much tied up in pending bets and recently decided to only treat liquid cash for unit sizing and assume all pending bets are losses this way I don't end up tying too much bankroll in pending action and get wiped by a bad week

definitely getting greedy, i've been kind of autopiloting some bets i mildly like over a unit whereas in the past i'd opt for like a .3 or .7 and save the 1 unit for big ones and anything larger for the absurd lines like earlier when the books did things like over o2.5 drakes when one team already had 2 and a dominant lead, gotta get back to waiting for those again

day 8-25-1, -23.88u
total 397-442-13, +81.58u, 7.61% ROI

p.s. if a sharp (or even a fellow square) is reading this, would love to hear how you handle pending bets for unit consideration, epecially thngs like futures or say political bets tied up until november

man, what a difference a day makes

kept those +700-+1500 type bets to small amounts unless hedged and ended up hitting a few which was nice - without yesterday's cold dose of brm reality I would be steaming now that I didn't bet them with more conviction

getting better reacting quickly to lines and knowing when the algos driving them will be in good spots to pick up - much less frantically and much more back to the earlier stages of watching for enjoyment and periodically taking a peek at specific prop bet lines

very determined now to tap into the RIOT API for live data to input into a live model as well as build a scraper for lines - also need to look into whether or not i'll be able to have a program make wagers on my behalf or if i'll have to enter them manually

i know i'm getting ahead of myself here but long term i see this as the only way to scale this and esports are only getting bigger, the book now offers 20x more than they did a few months back and the limits have expanded from $250 to $2k

anyway, it's a random burst of optimism that won't be acted upon anytime soon but i do see an upcoming project to focus on once this season comes to a close and i'll need to wait until next spring for more action

31-13, +40.22u (+1250 props that are in reality a 60/40 chance are bound to come around sooner or later)
428-455-13, +121.8u, 10.17% ROI