VCS Winter Week 2 Predictions – Major changes after opening week

VCS Winter started off last week and we have already seen quite a few surprises in the first week of play. Let’s see what went down so far, how our predictions were, and what we can expect this week.

© Saigon Buffalo

VCS Winter Week 1 Recap

In the first week of the VCS Winter, the biggest surprise and upset so far is definitely Luxury Esports. We predicted them to be at the bottom end of the standings in our previous analysis, but the newly named team defied all expectations, taking all three wins in week 1.

What is even more impressive is that they were also able to beat one of the tournament’s favorite GAM Esports. Luxury Esports slowly built up gold and objective leads that were not recoverable by GAM. This week, they will face another strong team in Cerberus, and their outcome will better help us understand how strong LX Esports is.

The key to such success so far, however, resides in the jungle picks. Their jungler Lê “Killerqueen” Lưu Bách Đạt is an excellent assassin player, playing high tempo champions like Talon and Qiyana. With how strong both are in 11.21, the patch they’re playing on, it is only reasonable to see him shine so much. Not only that, but he also showed a pretty good Nidalee, which grants his team even more flexibility in the draft.

The other main team that went against our predictions is Team Secret. We expected to see them in the higher part of the standings: as of right now, they are sitting 6th at 1-2. They won against last-place Team Flash, but lost to both Cerberus Esports and SBTC Esports. Nonetheless, they were able to win one game in both series, showing that TS has some potential to perform well. They might struggle to fight for a top 4, but it’s still a reachable goal for them.

Predictions for VCS Winter Week 2

Hindsight is 20/20 now that we have a bunch of games under our belts. Knowing what we know, we now adjust our selections and picks for the upcoming games.

GAM Esports vs SBTC Esports

Week 2 is already underway, so we will be looking at some of the games at the end of this round. We mentioned the match between Luxury Esports and Cerberus Esports to better understand both teams’ strengths and weaknesses. Apart from them, however, there are a lot of interesting matches to watch: one of them is GAM Esports vs SBTC Esports.

Both teams are currently standing 2-2 in the standings, with SE having one more win on their scoreboard. GAM Esports struggled slightly in the first week, mainly with their drafts. Their mid laner Đặng “Kati” Thanh Phê doesn’t seem that comfortable on control mages and that compromises GAM’s gameplan overall. The team tried to find champions that allowed Kati to move and follow jungler Levi’s around the map but that didn’t work well. If that game plan fails, then GAM Esports always find themselves on the backfoot.

When Levi is not in a position to carry them to victory, the team doesn’t have enough tools to win. They also tried making Levi play magic damage champions, but that didn’t work out well either. It will be interesting to see how GAM will find a solution to a pretty vital problem.

Anyway, despite their problems, I think that GAM Esports will take the series. (1.37x) Levi is the type of player to have the X factor and GAM will do anything to make him get the leads he needs. He’s great at punishing players on the map and SE’s top lane tends to play aggressively. We expect Kennen to rise a lot in priority, as both teams haven’t played mid-lane mages often. It will be a close one though: I’m expecting GAM to win it 2-1. Here are some of the best odds for this series, all of them courtesy of GG.BET:

• First Blood: GAM (1.62x)
• Maps: Odd (2.12x)
• First Turret: GAM (1.52x)
• Total kills: over 29.5 (1.73x)
• First Dragon: GAM (1.81x)

Cerberus Esports vs Saigon Buffalo

The other important series for this week 2 is the battle between 2nd place Cerberus and 3rd place Saigon Buffalo. Both teams have had a pretty strong start, with two completely different playstyles. Saigon Buffalo likes to play mid-top centric, giving a lot of the gold and resources to their top laner.

Cerberus, on the other hand, has one of the best ADC in the VCS: Artemis. A whopping 32.3% of the team’s total damage output makes unquestionably the carry of his team. Both his mid laner and jungler love to hover around his lane, helping him get leads straight in the early game. Cerberus Esports is one of the more complete teams of this VCS winter: they have strong players all around, as we expect them to make a top 2 finish by the end of the split.

With that being said, I think that Cerberus will win against Saigon Buffalo. (1.75x) I’m not really sure whether it will be a stomp or a close series since draft will play such a huge role in opening or closing the gap. Nonetheless, there are some very good bets you can make, so I’ll list them below:

• First Blood: Saigon Buffalo (1.94x)
• First Tower: Cerberus Esports (1.79x)
• Total Kills: Under 32.5 (2.02x)
• Map 1 Winner: Cerberus Esports (1.78x)