After the new patch, dramatic comebacks have become common. How should players adapt to changes in the LOL section of Polymarket?

Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜CryptoLeo (@LeoAndCrypto)

As a die-hard League of Legends fan, I used to spend countless nights grinding ranked games to climb the ladder. In my younger days, I never reached the highest tiers, but I did encounter many skilled players and streamers on the Canyon of Valor. Now that I'm older, I can only play for fun. After Polymarket exploded in popularity, I naturally shifted my attention to trading on the PM LOL market.

But after the latest patch update, I feel like I know nothing about the game anymore—I've even started suspecting players of throwing matches. After thinking it over, it's not just me; anyone who regularly trades on Polymarket's LOL market has probably felt a bit "weird/chaotic" lately. Across leagues like LPL and LCK, there have been insane comebacks, and if you bought the favored side but didn't sell in time, your entire position went to zero.

So, I did a bit of research and analysis—based on this patch's ability to close out games, here's how to trade LOL matches on Polymarket with better odds.

After the Patch, a Big Gold Lead Doesn't Guarantee Closing Out the Game

Recently, there have been many League of Legends matches where a team led by more than 5,000 gold in the early game but lost in the late game—like NIP vs IG, WE vs AL, BLG vs TES, and a few LCK matches.

In previous versions, teams with an early gold lead could easily "snowball," extending their advantage to close out games effortlessly.

After this patch, the decisive weight of gold on closing out games has decreased. The current meta emphasizes "converting advantages, resource trading, team composition strength, and team fight execution" rather than just raw early-game gold numbers.

Converting advantages means a team with a gold lead can translate it into taking towers, securing kills, and grabbing objectives (Herald, Voidgrubs, Dragons, Baron, etc.);

Resource trading means a team can make decisions to compensate for giving up certain objectives by securing others;

League of Legends champions are divided into early-game and late-game champions—meaning early-game champions are strong in team fights during the laning phase but fall off significantly later, while late-game champions are weak early but can often decide game outcomes in late-game team fights. This has a decisive impact on overall team composition and playstyle. If you draft an early-game comp, you need to close out the game quickly, or you'll likely get reversed. If you draft a late-game comp and stall to the late game, the win is practically secured;

Team fight execution refers to preparation before fights—vision control, champion positioning, etc., all have a huge impact. One player's mistake can trigger a chain reaction leading to a massive disadvantage.

League of Legends' system mechanics also give the disadvantaged side significant opportunities:

1. Bounty shutdown compensation: When a core champion on the leading side is killed, the disadvantaged side receives a large bounty and experience boost, which can instantly shrink the gold gap by a thousand or more;

2. Objective bounty compensation: The disadvantaged side also receives bonus gold and experience for taking down towers, Dragons, Baron, and other key objectives, helping them catch up to the leading side;

3. Baron rewards: In the current version, the reward for killing Baron has been reduced, placing more emphasis on converting the buff into tower pressure and map control.

Many recent comebacks are also because the current bot lane meta is no longer traditional AD carries (ADC) but mages. Compared to marksmen, many mage champions can't sustain consistent damage output in team fights and have lower margin for error—another factor behind teams having their advantages stalled and reversed in the late game.

To sum it up in one sentence: previous patches were more like "snowballing through resource grabs," where the leading side only needed to control objectives to close out easily; the current patch relies more on mid-to-late game decision-making quality rather than early-game gold differentials. The leading side needs to push towers, control vision, secure objectives, and avoid giving shutdowns; the trailing side needs to stabilize their farming, look for picks, and contest key objectives. In practice, execution and team composition fit often matter more than raw gold numbers in deciding the final outcome. This is also the root cause of the frequent skirmishes, upsets, and the difficulty of converting early advantages into wins in the current patch.

What Strategy Works Better

Based on my months of trial and error on PM, let me first introduce the matches I frequently trade and the leagues I'd advise avoiding. We're now in the third split of League of Legends, and many teams with a shot at qualification need points to secure a spot at the 2026 World Championship. As long as there's a chance, these teams will fight hard to win their remaining matches—in terms of seriousness and the "strength-to-result" correlation, this split might be slightly easier to predict than the first two.

For example, if a match is of low importance and won't affect the rest of the schedule, teams may not take it too seriously. Take the recent LCK KeSPA Cup match between GENG and DNS (where GENG players were visibly exhausted)—they didn't need the win, so they didn't need to try hard, and you end up with an upset.

1. Choosing the Right League Matters

First, you need to pick the matches you want to trade. The filter criteria should be: whether the match affects a team's points toward qualifying for Worlds, whether there are significant cash prizes at stake, and whether players on certain teams need to perform in this split to boost their market value for better salaries next season.

Here's my experience:

Major leagues: LPL, LCK, LEC, LCS, LCP, CBLOL—my first choices are LPL, LCK, LEC, and LCS:

LPL matches feel relatively "normal" to me; you rarely see anything too outrageous. Comebacks happen because of the patch and teams' weak ability to close out (picking early-game comps and stalling to late game), trying to manage the game and wasting their early advantage, or drafting terrible compositions. I haven't seen any LPL team clearly dominate the others yet. BLG, TES, AL, and WE currently look like strong teams, but some squads are extremely inconsistent—"godly one game, awful the next";

LCK matches are entirely dependent on player form and BP (champion select). Player form weighs more than champion select. T1, HLE, GENG, KT, and DK are the stronger teams. You can watch the first game to gauge player form, then buy/sell in the second;

In the LEC, G2 and KC are still the kings—if these two teams want to win, you can fully trust them;

In the LCS, LYON is still the top dog (the kind of team that wins when they want to and can throw a game if they want). LYON's starting jungler Inspired is currently unavailable and will be replaced by a veteran, but it shouldn't affect their record much. The NA region can be ridiculous—sometimes teams clearly don't want to win (drafting terrible comps or not contesting objectives), so you need to be careful about selling;

I'd advise staying away from Brazil's CBLOL. There's a saying: "Brazil's big stage, bring your courage if you dare." The matches are so fake you'll wonder if some pros are bots. Example: Scenario one—the weaker team racks up kills early for an advantage, then things change at objective fights, and the strong team takes over and wins; Scenario two—the strong team looks solid early, getting kills and objectives, then suddenly collapses in the final team fight and gets wiped for the loss. There are more scenarios, but I won't list them all.

I rarely participate in the LCP, so I won't cover it.

For smaller leagues:

In LCK Challenger (small CK), T1, DK, and Nongshim are the three strong teams, but T1 is far ahead. DK and Nongshim will also "often" lose to bottom-tier teams. The vast majority of small CK matches are 1:1 leagues—meaning in a BO3, each team wins one of the first two games (often you'll see one team look completely uncoordinated in game one or picking champions they can't play, then play like they're cheating in game two), with a deciding third game. My advice is to only trade matches involving these three teams and avoid the rest. If you absolutely must play, you can try buying at the lowest price and betting on an upset. Also, some small CK matches have no video feed—not good for predicting.

In France's LFL, the top two are GAL and SLY—you can try trading matches involving them. The gap between the remaining teams isn't huge. You might predict outcomes based on champion BP, but you'll also often see teams with great comps fail to win.

Germany's Prime League most commonly goes to three games, then the stronger team wins (if you don't know which teams are strong or weak, you can judge by the prices).

Circuito Desafiante is Brazil's second division—also advised to avoid.

Don't trade Turkey's TCL—the fastest live stream delay is over 3 minutes, making it very hard to judge wins and losses.

The North American Challengers is basically hell mode—wins and losses all depend on the "script."

2. Trading Strategy

Before trading, you can roughly analyze based on team composition and player form. In terms of composition, what matters most for a team is champion select—whether they have engage tools (frontline tanks with CC), sustained-damage AD carries, whether damage dealers have mobility and space to deal damage, the power spikes of key champions, the AOE and burst of mages, and whether champions have combos between them.

For player form, you need to be someone who regularly watches matches and is familiar with how specific players play, so you can tell whether their gameplay differs significantly from their usual style and whether they can generate advantages for their team with a particular champion.

A small skirmish over an objective or a couple of kills can typically swing prices by 5-10 cents. My experience:

(1) Learning to Place Orders

1. For teams you're confident are significantly stronger, place buy orders 5-15 cents below the market price rather than buying at the current price—if you lose, it minimizes your losses;

2. For teams where the gap isn't as large, this patch is prone to small reversals or massive comebacks. One small mistake can cause a 20-cent swing in a team's buy price. If both sides are fight-happy teams, their prices will fluctuate wildly. You could place equal-size buy orders on both sides—as long as your total is under 100, you're profitable. For example, if A is favored early and B takes over mid-to-late game, but it's hard to tell which team will close out, you can place buy orders simultaneously at 25-40 cents for 100 shares of A and B right after the match starts. Your total cost would be 50-80 cents, leaving a 20-50 cent profit range. If volatility is low, you might end up losing, but most matches between closely matched teams in major leagues will fill orders for both A and B—it just depends on whether your bid prices are reasonable.

PS: I'm a fairly aggressive trader and often place orders at 25 cents. Matches where I do this include small CK (first two games of BO3s), LFL (first two games of BO3s), and German league (first two games of BO3s). It's best to place orders in matches where the teams aren't far apart.

3. As mentioned earlier, every team's composition has a power spike window. Before that window, they may be behind; once they hit it, they turn the tables. You can buy low and place a sell order 20-40 cents above your buy price—just trading swings without betting on the final outcome. To know when a team's power spike hits, watch more matches to analyze.

(2) Selling in Time

Everyone plays differently. Some like buying above 90 cents as stable "fixed income." Others like buying in the 50-80 range to ride bigger swings—this is where your sell price becomes critical.

Prediction markets are just like crypto trading—the most important skill is knowing when to take profits (I still can't do it myself). As mentioned, many matches have big early leads getting wasted by stalling. If the team you're backing takes an early lead and your buy price isn't high, place a sell order in the 85-95 cent range. This is crucial—I've picked the right high-early team many times but didn't sell in time, and when the comeback hit, I couldn't exit fast enough and my position went to zero.

My current selling habit: for positions filled at 50-60 cents, I sell 75% at 85-90. Even if the remaining position goes to zero from an upset, it won't hurt as much.

Another extreme approach: buy the favored side low, sell high, then immediately flip to the other side (e.g., buy Team A at 30 cents, sell at 75, then buy Team B at 25, and Team B wins the game). But this requires a zero-delay stream and deep understanding of how the game is trending.

(3) Position Management

Learning position management is crucial. Don't get tilted after two losses and go all-in on the next match—that's a fast track to zero. You can set a rule that each match's order size is no more than 5% or 10% of your bankroll. The most important thing is not to let a few results affect you. Some smaller leagues will have days where every match is an upset (a team ranked dead last destroying the top team). When that happens, the best thing to do is close your computer and find something else to do—continuous tilt means continuous losses.

Conclusion

When I first started trading prediction markets, things went smoothly and I rarely lost. But lately, with the patch update, everything has gotten chaotic. To trade LOL predictions, you need to watch more important matches, understand how gold, team compositions, team playstyles, and league styles affect the game—that way you can adapt to the patch quickly.

The next patch arrives in August, and traditional AD carries will become more impactful. Many of this patch's mage bot laners might disappear. If I gain better insights on the next patch, I'll write and share them in time.

These are just my personal thoughts—for reference only, not investment advice. Buy and sell with careful analysis and watch out for risks. I also hope everyone develops their own playbook and theory to make money. Feel free to reach out to me anytime!(@LeoAndCrypto)