The Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) is kicking off on May 6th. Teams will fight against each other in the group stage: the first two of each group will advance to the next stage. Since it’s the first international tournament of the year, it’s very hard to assess each team’s ceiling and potential. In order to help you make your best bets, we’re going to analyze some matches of Day 1 and make our own predictions. You can also refer to our MSI Power Rankings to see some of our reasoning.
Without further ado, let’s jump straight into our predictions!
MSI 2021 will start off with one of the most anticipated matches: DAMWON KIA vs Cloud9.
North America will face the Korean representative with the goal of seeing how much of a difference there against one of the best teams (if not the best) in the whole world. It will be a big test for all the individual players, particularly for Robert “Blaber” Huang, who might suffer against its counterpart, Kim “Canyon” Geon-bu.
These two teams play in a very similar way, through aggression. Both want to look for opportunities in the early game, either through capturing objectives or first blood/turret. (C9 has 83.3% on First blood, while DK has 66.7% Tower control)
Their main strategy is to gain leads and snowball the come as quickly as possible, either by taking multiple dragons in a row or granting resources to the carries. For this reason, the early game will become very decisive: whoever gets ahead, will likely come out victorious.
And when it’s about the early game, mechanics become crucial. Korean teams are famous for having very clean microplay, and DK will easily win the game against Cloud9. The MSI Odds tend to agree, giving DK a mere x1.25 return on investment.
Pentanet.GG has a golden chance to make it to Stage 2 at this MSI: there are only 3 teams in Group A due to GAM Esports not participating (Covid-19 restrictions). This means that PGG needs to only beat one team in order to advance. There is a problem, however, PGG is in the same group as Unicorns of Love and the #1 seed from China, Royal Never Give Up.
The LCO Representative will go up against one of the favorites of the tournament on their first international appearance. It is going to be very stressful for the newcomers knowing that they will most likely get outclassed by RNG.
Nevertheless, it will be an important opportunity to understand what they need to improve on and what they can learn from the very best. RNG will put most of its attention on the mid-bot lane: PGG, which played similarly in Oceania, will have to find a way to play around it.
At 1.07 in return for RNG, this one is not even worth considering for LoL betting. Your best chance instead is to play, RNG demolishing PGG in a quick under-30 game.
The last prediction we’re going to be making is the battle between paiN Gaming and FastPay Wildcats (Instanbul Wildcats). Out of the games we’ve seen so far, this is the game that is the hardest to predict.
paiN Gaming has the advantage of having strong individual players that can be the carry in all three lanes. This creates a lot more flexibility and diversity in the draft: it will become a key factor of the outcome. IW, on the other hand, relies more on teamplay and look for skirmishes on the mid-bot side of the map. The jungler and the support will move together to put pressure on the map, while taking control of the objectives.
With that being said, we think that IW will likely take the victory. At international stages, macro becomes more important in teams of equal footing… and IW is the better team in that regard.
Finally, we made a separate prediction for PSG Talon & MAD Lions, so make sure to go check it out and make the most profitable bets!
| BETTING PROVIDER |  |
|
|---|---|---|
| DWG Kia vs Cloud9 | DWG Kia to win | @ 1.24 |
| Istanbul Wildcats vs paiN Gaming | Istanbul Wildcats to win | @ 1.61 |
| Royal Never Give Up vs Pentanet.GG | RNG to win in less then 29.5 | @ 1.74 |
| MAD Lions vs PSG Talon | MAD Lions to win | @ 1.55 |
| TOTAL ODDS | 5.38 | |
These are our predictions for Day 1 of MSI. Don’t forget to check our guide for additional MSI Betting Tips.
LOL
CS2
Dota 2
Valorant
Fortnite
Call of Duty
Mobile Games
Gaming
EN Global 
JP 日本語