Dota 2 BTS Pro Series 9 - Southeast Asia - Playoffs Simulation
BTS Pro Series 9: Southeast Asia continues with the playoffs, starting tomorrow. Time for another simulation! Which team is looking best-positioned to take home first place and the prize that comes with it? Read on to find out.
Group stage recap
First things first, let's take a look at how the group stage went, relative to my predictions:
| Team Name | Predicted Wins | Actual Wins | Place |
|---|---|---|---|
| BOOM Esports | 12.02 | 13 | 1 |
| Motivate.Trust Gaming | 10.64 | 12 | 2 |
| Yangon Galacticos | 5.74 | 10 | 3 |
| Nigma Galaxy SEA | 8.44 | 9 | 4 |
| OB Esports x Neon | 8.52 | 9 | 5 |
| Polaris Esports | 9.73 | 6 | 6 |
| Army Geniuses | 5.83 | 6 | 7 |
| Execration | 8.03 | 6 | 8 |
| Omega Esports | 3.04 | 1 | 9 |
A few shakeups here:
Yangon Galacticos did quite a bit better than I had expected, with a third place overall finish; I had considered them to be one of the weakest teams.
Polaris Esports and Execration both underperformed my expectations. Polaris in particular felt like it hsould have been one of the strongest teams, and ended with a losing record.
Otherwise, things mostly lined up - the exact order may have slightly moved around, but with many teams clustered similarly, that was bound to happen. Omega was clearly the weakest team, and have unfortunately been eliminated. Each of their matches was a pretty big uphill battle, but statistically they were likely to pick up a few upsets. They only managed to pick up one, which is unfortunate but hardly unexpected. BOOM Esports and Motivate.Trust Gaming were the obvious top two teams, picking up one win more each than my average expectation, but well within their likely outcomes.
The playoffs
With eight teams left, they're seeded into a double elimination bracket. Top four teams get to start in the upper bracket, which is a pretty big boon for their tournament prospects.
I simulated the bracket 50,000 times using my model (updated for group stage data, of course), to see where each team is likely to place and who is most likely to win it all.
The bracket
Here's the bracket itself:
The simulation
In my simulations, here is each team's probability of winning overall, as well as their median place finish:
| Team Name | % 1st Place | Median Place |
|---|---|---|
| BOOM Esports | 42.03% | 2nd |
| Motivate.Trust Gaming | 32.78% | 2nd |
| Nigma Galaxy SEA | 19.62% | 3rd |
| Polaris Esports | 3.52% | 4th |
| Yangon Galacticos | 1.51% | 5th-6th |
| OB Esports x Neon | 0.30% | 5th-6th |
| Execration | 0.21% | 7th-8th |
| Army Geniuses | 0.03% | 7th-8th |
The top teams continue to be the top teams, to the surprise of nobody.
Nigma were somewhere near the middle of the pack in my original predictions, but came through for a fourth place finish (I'd projected them around fifth). That upper bracket start boosts their chances quite a bit, though they'll still have to face both boogeymen of the tournament to get far.
My model still thinks Yangon are fairly weak (sorry to their fans!). Even that upper bracket start won't save them, as they'll likely get crushed by Motivate.Trust and then probably face Polaris in the lower bracket, who I still think have the potential to play up.
Placement distributions
And, as always, here's each team's distribution of placements:
The top three are almost certainly going to be BOOM, Motivate, and Nigma in some order, though nothing is set in stone. We've seen crazier things happen in Dota (literally last month at TI). If anyone makes a crazy lower bracket run to steal the crown, my money's on Polaris.
Money and markets
Speaking of money... let's check in with the market to see where they come out on all of this:
If we convert and normalize these odds to get each team's expected probability of winning, we can then compare them to my predictions:
| Team Name | Odds | Implied Win% | Predicted Win% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Motivate.Trust Gaming | 2.62 | 31.59% | 32.78% |
| Boom Esports | 2.75 | 30.10% | 42.03% |
| Nigma Galaxy SEA | 3.5 | 23.65% | 19.62% |
| Yangon Galacticos | 11 | 7.53% | 1.51% |
| OB Esports x Neon | 29 | 2.85% | 0.30% |
| Polaris Esports | 34 | 2.43% | 3.52% |
| Army Geniuses | 81 | 1.02% | 0.03% |
| Execration | 101 | 0.82% | 0.21% |
The market is actually giving more of a shot to all of the underdogs than I am, which is somewhat unusual - usually the odds are more lopsided than my model.
Motivate.Trust have a better shot, according to the market, than BOOM Esports do - this may have to do with their easier round one matchup, for otherwise similar-quality teams. My simulations account for that, but also find that exact matchup to be around 55/45 in BOOM's favor (depending on which team is Radiant or Dire), which helps them in the long run.
I wouldn't recommend placing bets on the outright, at least not from a value perspective. If you wanna have fun, go for it! However, the vig on this type of bet is usually pretty high: 17.2% in this case. In other words, the oddsmaker is paying out 17.2% less than a fair bet would if you win this bet, which makes it pretty not worth your money. Betting on BOOM may be the only bet here that still has positive expected value, so it's not terrible, but the vig overcomes any other possible bet.
Bets on each individual match can be worthwhile, however, with a vig of around 5-6% typically. I'll be updating my suggested bets page daily to make sure you can keep up with every single match!
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