LoL NEST 2021 Group Stage Simulation and Power Ranking

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:

Team Name Wins Losses
EDward Gaming 10.26236 3.73764
FunPlus Phoenix 9.75128 4.24872
Suning 9.091 4.909
LNG Esports 8.71684 5.28316
Team WE 8.67432 5.32568
Bilibili Gaming 8.21544 5.78456
Rare Atom 8.0709 5.9291
Invictus Gaming 7.49874 6.50126
JD Gaming 7.4614 6.5386
LGD Gaming 6.40336 7.59664
Oh My God 5.10132 8.89868
Rogue Warriors 4.88262 9.11738
Ultra Prime 4.87148 9.12852
ThunderTalk Gaming 3.95338 10.04662
Victory Five 2.04556 11.95444

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:

Alacrity's NEST 2021 Matchups
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Matchups


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:

Team Name Wins Losses
EDward Gaming 5.0272 0.9728
Oh My God 2.43226 3.56774
Ultra Prime 2.28406 3.71594
Rogue Warriors 2.25648 3.74352
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group A Record Distributions
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group A Record Distributions

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:

Team Name % 1st Place Median Place
EDward Gaming 88.89% 1st
Oh My God 4.23% 3rd
Rogue Warriors 3.46% 3rd
Ultra Prime 3.42% 3rd
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group A Placement Distributions
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group A Placement Distributions

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:

Team Name Wins Losses
FunPlus Phoenix 3.78894 2.21106
Suning 3.4481 2.5519
Bilibili Gaming 2.8948 3.1052
LGD Gaming 1.86816 4.13184
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group B Record Distributions
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group B Record Distributions

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:

Team Name % 1st Place Median Place
FunPlus Phoenix 45.29% 2nd
Suning 32.48% 2nd
Bilibili Gaming 17.75% 3rd
LGD Gaming 4.48% 4th
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group B Placement Distributions
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group B Placement Distributions

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.

Team Name Wins Losses
LNG Esports 4.20254 1.79746
JD Gaming 3.55866 2.44134
Invictus Gaming 3.55192 2.44808
Victory Five 0.68688 5.31312
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group C Record Distributions
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group C Record Distributions

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?

Team Name % 1st Place Median Place
LNG Esports 49.69% 2nd
JD Gaming 25.22% 2nd
Invictus Gaming 24.98% 2nd
Victory Five 0.10% 4th
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group C Placement Distributions
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group C Placement Distributions

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:

Team Name Wins Losses
Team WE 2.7102 1.2898
Rare Atom 2.51008 1.48992
ThunderTalk Gaming 0.77972 3.22028
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group D Record Distributions
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group D Record Distributions

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?

Team Name % 1st Place Median Place
Team WE 53.91% 1st
Rare Atom 43.27% 2nd
ThunderTalk Gaming 2.82% 3rd
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group D Placement Distributions
Alacrity's NEST 2021 Group D Placement Distributions

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!


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!