How to Adapt to Changes in the Polymarket LOL Sector After the New Version?

Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | CryptoLeo ( @LeoAndCrypto )

As a loyal fan of League of Legends, I have spent many nights grinding ranks. In my younger days, I didn’t reach a very high rank, but I have encountered many skilled players and streamers at the peak of the Rift. Now that I’m older, I can only play casual games. Since Polymarket exploded in popularity, I have shifted my focus to trading in the PM LOL sector.

However, after the recent version update, I feel completely out of touch with the games, even starting to doubt if players are throwing matches. Upon reflection, I realized it’s not just me; friends who frequently play in the Polymarket LOL sector must also feel quite "strange/confused" lately. There have been miraculous comebacks in leagues like LPL and LCK, and if you bought into the favored team without selling in time, your entire position could go to zero.

Therefore, I conducted a bit of research and analysis—how to trade LOL matches on Polymarket with a better chance of winning based on the current version's game-ending capabilities.

After Version Changes, Economic Leads Don’t Guarantee Game Ends

Recently, there have been many League of Legends matches where teams with an early economic lead of over 5000 lost in the late game, such as NIP vs IG, WE vs AL, BLG vs TES, and several matches in LCK.

In previous versions of League of Legends, teams with an early economic lead could easily "snowball" to gain a larger lead and easily end the game.

After this version update, the decisive weight of economics in ending games has decreased. The current version emphasizes "advantage conversion, resource exchange, team composition strength, and teamfight execution" rather than just early economic numbers.

Advantage conversion refers to a team being able to convert their economic lead into pushing towers, killing opponents, and securing resources (Rift Herald, Scuttle Crab, Dragons, Baron, etc.);

Resource exchange means that a team can make decisions to compensate for resources given up with other resources;

Champions in League of Legends are divided into early-game champions and late-game champions, meaning early-game champions are strong in early teamfights but become less effective in the late game, while late-game champions are weak early on but can often decide the game in late teamfights. This has a decisive impact on overall composition and strategy; if you have an early-game composition, you need to end the game quickly, or you risk being turned around. Conversely, if you have a late-game composition, dragging the game into the late stages usually secures victory.

Teamfight execution involves preparation before the fight, such as vision control and champion positioning, which can greatly influence the outcome. A single mistake by a player can trigger a chain reaction leading to a significant disadvantage.

The League of Legends system also provides significant opportunities for the disadvantaged side:

1. Bounty Compensation: When a core champion from the leading side is killed, the disadvantaged side receives a large bounty and experience, causing the economic gap to shrink instantly by thousands or more;

2. Strategic Point Compensation: The disadvantaged side can gain extra gold and experience compensation by taking down important resources like towers, Dragons, and Barons, allowing them to catch up to the leading side;

3. Baron Rewards: In the current version, the rewards for killing Baron have decreased, emphasizing the need to convert resources into tower pushes and map control.

Many recent comebacks are also due to the current version's bottom lane choices no longer being traditional ADCs but mages. Compared to ADCs, many mage champions cannot achieve sustained damage output during teamfights, which is a factor in some teams losing their advantages in the late game.

In summary: previous versions were more about "grabbing resources to snowball"; as long as the leading side controlled objectives well, they could easily end the game. The current version relies more on the quality of mid-to-late game decision-making rather than early economic differences. The leading side should push towers, control vision, and secure resources to avoid giving up game-ending opportunities; the disadvantaged side should stabilize their development, look for solo kill opportunities, and secure key objectives. In actual matches, execution and team composition synergy often determine the final result more than pure economic numbers. This is the fundamental reason for the frequent fights, upsets, and difficulty in converting early advantages into victories in the current version.

What Strategies Work Best

Based on my experiences in PM over the past few months, I’ll first introduce the matches I often play and the leagues I suggest avoiding. We are currently in the third phase of League of Legends matches, where many teams with opportunities need points to qualify for the 2026 World Championship. As long as there’s a chance, these teams will do their best to win their upcoming matches. In terms of seriousness and the correlation between "strength and results," this phase may be easier to predict than the previous two phases.

For example, if a match is of little importance and won’t affect the subsequent schedule, the team may not take it seriously. For instance, in the recent LCK KeSPA Cup match between GENG and DNS (you could clearly see GENG’s players were particularly fatigued), they didn’t need this victory, so they didn’t play particularly seriously, leading to an upset.

1. Choosing the Right League is Important

First, you need to select the matches you want to participate in, with filtering criteria being whether they can impact the team’s qualification points for the League of Legends World Championship, whether there are significant monetary rewards, and whether some players need to perform well in this phase to secure better salaries for the next season.

My experiences are as follows:

Major Leagues: LPL, LCK, LEC, LCS, LCP, CBLOL, with LPL, LCK, LEC, LCS as top choices:

I find LPL matches to be relatively "normal"; there generally aren’t any particularly outrageous situations. Upsets usually occur because of the version and the players’ ability to finish games (picking early-game compositions and dragging them into the late game), trying to operate the match and wasting early advantages, or picking poor compositions. So far, I haven’t seen any LPL team clearly dominating others. Currently, BLG, TES, AL, and WE are considered strong teams, but some teams can be "hot and cold".

LCK matches depend entirely on player form and BP (champion selection). Player form has a higher reference weight than champion selection. Teams like T1, HLE, GENG, KT, and DK are still quite strong. You can observe player form in the first game and make buy/sell decisions in the second game.

In the LEC, the dominant teams remain G2 and KC; you can fully trust these two teams to win games when they want to.

In the LCS, the dominant team is still LYON (they can win when they want and lose a game when they choose to). LYON’s starting jungler, Inspired, is currently unable to play and is replaced by an older player, but this shouldn’t significantly affect their performance. The North American league can be quite erratic, with teams sometimes clearly not wanting to win (deliberately picking poor compositions or not securing resources), so be cautious about selling.

I suggest avoiding matches in the Brazilian league CBLOL; there’s a saying, "In the Brazilian big stage, if you dare, come on!" It’s so fake that you might suspect some professional players are bots. For example, in version one, weak teams would kill a lot in the early game to gain an advantage, but once the resource fight started, the strong team would take over and ultimately win the match. In version two, strong teams would perform well in the early game, kill and secure resources, but suddenly lose in the final teamfight. There are many versions, so I won’t go into detail.

I rarely participate in the LCP league, so I won’t provide an introduction.

For some smaller competitions:

In the LCK Challenger (small CK) matches, T1, DK, and Nongshim are three strong teams, but T1 often leads significantly, while DK and Nongshim can "often" lose to bottom-tier teams. The majority of small CK matches are 1:1 leagues, meaning in a BO3, each team wins one game in the first two (a common situation is that one team seems to have no communication or picks champions they don’t know how to play in the first game, then suddenly plays like they’re cheating in the second game). My suggestion is to play matches involving these three teams, but avoid others. If you must play, you can try to enter at the lowest price for a chance at an upset. Additionally, some small CK matches don’t have video sources, making it hard to predict without live broadcasts.

In the French LFL, the dominant teams are GAL and SLY; you can try playing matches involving these two teams. The strength gap between the remaining teams isn’t too significant, and you might predict the match based on champion BP, but there are often situations where a good composition can’t win the game.

In the German Prime League, the most common situation is that matches go the full three games, with strong teams winning (if you’re unfamiliar with the strong and weak teams, you can assess based on prices).

Circuito Desafiante is Brazil’s secondary league, and I also suggest avoiding it.

The Turkish TCL is not worth playing; the fastest live broadcasts have delays of over three minutes, making it hard to judge wins and losses.

The North American Challenger league is basically hell-level difficulty, with wins and losses entirely dependent on the "script".

2. Trading Strategies

Before trading, you can generally analyze based on team composition and player form. In terms of composition, what’s important for a team is the choice of champions, whether they have initiation champions (tanks with control skills), whether they have sustained damage output carries, whether damage dealers have mobility skills and space to output, the power spikes of key champions, the AOE (area damage) and burst potential of mages, and whether there are combos between champions.

Player form requires you to be someone who frequently watches matches and is familiar with a particular player’s playstyle, allowing you to discern whether their performance has significantly deviated from past matches and whether they can leverage a champion to bring advantages to the team.

A small skirmish over resources or one or two kills can usually affect prices by 5-10 cents. My experience:

(1) Learn to Place Orders

1. For teams you are confident are significantly stronger, place buy orders 5-15 cents below market price instead of buying at the current price; this will minimize your losses if you lose.

2. For teams with less pronounced strength differences, this version can easily see small reversals or major comebacks; a small mistake can lead to a 20-cent price fluctuation. If both teams are those that like to fight, their buy prices will fluctuate significantly. You might consider placing equal shares of orders on both sides; as long as the total is below 100, you’ll profit. For example, in A vs B, if A has the advantage early but B has it in the mid-to-late game, and it’s hard to confirm which team will end the game, you can place simultaneous orders for 100 shares of A and B at 25-40 cents shortly after the match starts. Your total cost will be 50-80 cents, creating a profit range of 20-50 cents. If the fluctuations are small, you might face a loss, but currently, most matches in major leagues with less pronounced strength differences can accommodate orders for both A and B, depending on whether your buy prices are reasonable.

PS: I’m quite aggressive; I often place orders at 25 cents. Matches where I can do this include small CK matches (the first two games of BO3), LFL matches (the first two games of BO3), and German matches (the first two games of BO3). It’s best to place orders in matches where the team differences aren’t too large.

3. As mentioned earlier, each match’s team composition will have a power spike period. They may be at a disadvantage before this power spike, but once they reach their strong period, they can turn the tables. At this point, you can buy low and place sell orders 20-40 cents above your buy price, focusing on short-term trades rather than betting on wins or losses. You can analyze when the team’s power spikes occur by watching more matches.

(2) Timely Selling

Everyone has different playstyles; some prefer to buy above 90 cents as a stable investment. Others like to buy in the 50-80 cent range to capitalize on larger fluctuations, making the selling price extremely important.

Predicting the market is like trading cryptocurrencies; the most important thing is to learn to take profits (which I still struggle with). As mentioned earlier, many matches see early advantages wasted over time. If you see a team you believe in gain an early advantage and your buy price isn’t high, you can place sell orders in the 85-95 cent range. This is crucial; I’ve often correctly predicted the side with the early advantage but failed to sell in time, resulting in losses when the match turned around and my position went to zero.

Now my selling habit is: I will sell 75% of orders received at 50-60 cents in the 85-90 cent range; the remaining position won’t be too painful even if it goes to zero due to an upset.

Another extreme method is to buy the favored side at a low price, sell high, and then place orders on the opposite side (for example, buying team A at 30 cents, selling at 75 cents, then buying team B at 25 cents, and finally team B winning the game). However, this requires live broadcasts with no delay, and I need a deep understanding of the game’s development trends.

(3) Position Management

Learning to manage your position is crucial. Don’t go all-in on the next match after losing two games; this can easily lead to a total loss. You can set a maximum order amount for each match at no more than 5% or 10% of your capital. Most importantly, don’t let a few wins or losses affect you; some small league matches can see all upsets on a given day (the bottom-ranked team beating the top team). In such cases, what you need to do is close your computer and find something else to do; continuously chasing losses will lead to ongoing losses.

Conclusion

In the beginning, I found it easy to play the prediction market and rarely lost games, but recently, with the version update, everything has started to become chaotic. To play LOL predictions well, you need to watch important matches, understand how economics, compositions, team playstyles, and league styles affect the game, so you can quickly adapt to the version.

The next version will be updated in August, at which point the influence of traditional ADCs will increase, and many mages in the bottom lane may not appear anymore. If I have better insights in the next version, I will write and share content in a timely manner.

The above is just my personal opinion for reference and not investment advice. Trading requires careful analysis and attention to risk. I also hope everyone has their own set of strategies and theories to make more money.

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