LoL Worlds 2021 Power Ranking

We had previously posted our League of Legends Worlds 2021 power ranking, but have since updated our model. We now have an even more robust system for comparing regional differences and rewarding players for performing well in top tournaments, and wanted to offer you an updated quantitative perspective.

So without further ado, our new and improved (tm) Worlds 2021 power ranking:

Ranking methodology

Before we get to our actual rankings, a few points about our methodology:

• These rankings were created by simply simulating a massive group stage where each team plays each other team.
• Thus, it creates a fair comparison of how each team stacks up against each other, but does not reflect our prediction of the final outcomes of the tournament. Tournament structure, the longer path from Play-Ins, which exact teams face each other, and other logistical nuances mean that the tournament may play out completely differently.
• Since these are hypothetical matches, there's no such thing as side selection advantage. So, we ran our prediction for either possibility and took the average.
• As the matches actually play out in reality, that information will get incorporated into the model, and so these matchup predictions will change (probably not by much) to make sure we always have the most accurate predictions before each match

Expected records

Since we're simulating this tournament as a massive, 22-team round robin, our power ranking for each team is simply that team's expected record:

Or, if you prefer pretty graphics:

Major differences compared to our prior ranking include:

• a moderate demotion of PSG Talon's rank - we still think the market is slightly undervaluing them, but not as drastically
• a slight demotion of Galatasaray Esports - though we still think that they're significantly stronger than the market's 18th place ranking for them
• a slight bump for Cloud9 and Team Liquid - NA memes will never die, but these teams have really proved themselves
• a reshuffling of the bottom teams - the bottom of the ranking still looks the same, but some relative orders have changed - RED Canids aren't quite in last place anymore, for example

And, if anyone wants to dive a bit deeper into the data, some summary plots. We show each team's probability distribution of records in this hypothetical round robin, and our cross-table of matchup probabilities:

The market

While odds markets don't supply explicit power rankings, they do offer odds on the outright winner of the whole tournament. Teams with lower odds are more likely to win in the market's view, so we can use that as a proxy for ranking:

FPX are the market favorite, paying out 3.00 and thus implying a 33% chance of winning the whole tournament. Our model still places them highly, but the top three teams are all very close to each other and we think that FPX aren't the clear top dog.

T1 are also placed quite highly - the market has them in sixth place, and we've got them all the way down in fifteenth. Conversely, we put Galatasaray up in thirteenth, compared to the market's eighteenth.

It's worth noting that the odds on the market reflect each team's chances of winning Worlds - which would include their potential path to get there. Odds on Play-In teams are inflated because they have to get through to the Main Event first before even being on even footing with other teams. Our rankings don't account for this, and are simply meant to be a summary of overall team strength, so this comparison isn't exactly apples-to-apples.

For example, Galatasaray would have to get through their Play-In and then fight through the Main Event to win it all, so eighteenth-most-likely-to-win-worlds might be fair for a team that would be in thirteenth place if everyone was on even footing.

Outright betting

You may have noticed in those offered odds that various teams have been lumped together into the same payout. For example, UOL, GS, and RED are all at 251. It's unlikely that any model would treat them as all being of the same exact caliber, so the takeaway here is that oddsmakers often get lazy on extremely unlikely and hard-to-predict tail event scenarios and just throw rounded numbers out.

We'd advise against actually placing bets of this nature, at least if you're looking for value. If you want to take a 250-to-1 rider on your favorite team, go for it! From an expected value perspective, however, it's a bad idea. As we just mentioned, oddsmakers throw out rounded big numbers to get your attention, but the result is an absolutely massive vig:

On a normal match, oddsmakers typically charge a vig of around 6%, which means that they're paying out 6% less than they should for a "fair" bet. Here, the vig is about 29.5%, or almost five times higher than normal! This pretty much guarantees that the EV of any one bet is negative.

In short: betting on outright winners is tempting due to the potentially huge payouts, but the value in doing so is severely stacked against you.

There will definitely be plenty of opportunity to bet on individual matches, however, so keep up with our suggested bets page to never miss a beat!

For more in-depth match analysis, discussion, and predictions, as well as quantitative betting strategy tips, subscribe to stay in the loop! You can also follow us on Twitter or Facebook for quick prediction snapshots of upcoming matches. Alacrity is your fastest path from simply gambling to beating the market. Stay ahead of the game!