LoL NEST 2021 Group Stage Simulation and Power Ranking

Note: The analysis in this article was done using all of the team's prior rosters. Since then, many have announced temporary rosters specifically for this tournament. I am leaving this page up for completeness, but you can find the updated analysis here.

China's 2021 National Electronic Sports Tournament (NEST) begins tomorrow, so I figured I'd sneak in with some last-minute power rankings and group stage simulations. World Champions Edward Gaming are the obvious favorites, but do any other teams have a chance to do well?

Power Ranking

Before getting to the actual group setup, I threw all fifteen invited teams into a single large group to run my power ranking simulation on them.

Here's how it works: I simulated each team playing each other team once (using the average of their blue and red side matchup probabilities). With fifteen teams, each team plays fourteen matches this way. Their rank is just the average number of wins across my simulations. In effect, this is equivalent to each team's average win probability against all other teams.

The results:

As expected, EDG show up at the top of the list, where they've certainly earned their place. Their Worlds compatriots, FPX and LNG, are similarly ranked highly. SN round out the top four.

On the bottom end of the spectrum, we have a few teams that are completely outclassed by the competition. V5 stand out as somewhat painfully weak: they're expected to pick up only two wins out of fourteen games, with devastatingly low matchups against just about every other team.

Matchups

These rankings, as well as my group stage simulations, were built off of head-to-head match probability predictions, courtesy of my model:

Group stage setup

The fifteen teams were split into four groups (three groups of four and one group of three). Each group plays a double round robin, with the team with the most wins moving on to a double elimination bracket. For each group, I simulated all of their games, with some sensible tiebreaker rules to determine final placement as necessary.

Group A

Group A consists of Edward Gaming, Oh My God, Rogue Warriors, and Ultra Prime.

With six games played by each team, here's how their expected records shake out:

This should be a pretty easy group for EDG, as none of the other teams pose it much of a threat. Those other teams are fairly evenly matched to pick up some wins from each other, but ultimately it won't matter as only one team moves on from this group, and EDG are almost certain to finish 6-0 or 5-1.

From these records, we can get each team's probability of leaving the group stage:

EDG have an almost 90% chance to take first, mostly driven by some ridiculous series of upsets by any of the other teams.

Group B

In Group B, we've got Bilibili Gaming, FunPlus Phoenix, LGD Gaming, and Suning.

Expected records across six games:

FPX are the strongest team in this group (Worlds flubs aside), but SN might give them a run for their money. I wouldn't expect a 6-0 in this group, and even a 5-1 record for either of those teams is less likely than a 4-3 finish.

That leads to these likelihoods of winning the group:

FPX have a 45% chance to move on, and SN clock in at around 32%. That still leaves a 22% chance for one of the other teams (most likely BLG) to swoop in and steal that spot.

Group C

Group C is Invictus Gaming, JD Gaming, LNG Esports, and Victory Five.

LNG are the strongest team in this group, but JDG and IG aren't too far behind them, and almost evenly matched with each other. All three teams are going to just prey on V5 - if V5 manage to pull off a single upset, that could pretty strongly influence the outcome of this group, as that opponent will effectively drop out of the running.

So who's most likely to get out of this group?

A 0.7 edge in expected games in an otherwise close group gives LNG almost double the chance of taking first than either JGD or IG have, at around 50% to 25% each. V5 have a one-in-a-thousand shot, but anyone that's done any serious statistical modeling knows that tail events are notoriously impossible to properly model, so even that chance is probably exaggerated a bit.

Group D

Finally, Group D rounds out the pack with only three teams: Rare Atom, Team WE, and ThunderTalk Gaming.

Each team only plays four games here, since they only have two opponents:

WE and RA are fairly evenly matched, and are both going to probably take free wins off of TT. Once again, though, TT has some chance of stealing a win, and that will likely decide which of the other two teams advances to the next stage. The most likely outcome is a 3-1, 3-1, 0-4 record as WE and RA split 1-1 in their matchup and each 2-0 TT, so it'll all come down to a tiebreaker between those two teams.

In that event, who ends up moving on?

WE have an advantage over RA head-to-head, and so are the ultimate favorite for this group. However, this one's still pretty close.

Wrap-up

Your most likely four bracket contestants are Edward Gaming, FunPlus Phoenix, LNG Esports, and Team WE. Since the groups were randomly drawn, Suning get snubbed a bit - they would have looked very strong in Group D, but instead have to get through FPX in Group B. Ultimately, they'd still have to get through those other teams anyway, but a higher finish still feels nice.

In addition, this is one of the rare tournaments where my model has found that the favorite is often being undervalued. In particular, I find Victory Five to be incredibly weak against the entire field, while the market is giving them reasonable chances at upsets, which leads me to suggest betting on the favorite much more often than I normally would.

All of my bet suggestions for all of these matches, as well as many more, can be found on the suggested bets page, which is updated daily to keep you on top of it all!

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