by Thursday, September 5 – 9pm EST
The Overwatch League Season 2 playoffs will commence this Thursday when Vancouver Titans take on Seoul Dynasty, but it is the clash between Hangzhou Spark and Los Angeles Gladiators a few hours later that promises to grab the spotlight.
Featuring the fourth and fifth seeds from the regular season, this is a fascinating fixture between two evenly matched teams and should not be missed.
Hangzhou Spark
-140.85 at BetOnline
Hangzhou Spark have produced remarkable results this season, which earned them a very solid fourth spot at the season end.
The problem, however, is that the bulk of their strong performances came from the middle of the season, whereas, their results towards the end of the regular season were mediocre at most.
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A lot of their success in the playoffs will come down to how well their star player Kyeong-bo “GodsB” Kim will perform.
GodsB can singlehandedly win a game for his team when he performs up to par. On the other side, if he underperforms, Spark usually struggle even against weaker opponents.
Los Angeles Gladiators
+106 at BetOnline
LA Gladiators have been very consistent throughout the season, to the point where, they almost always lost to teams above them in the standings and almost always defeated the teams below them.
With overall solid results this season, it should not come off as a surprise LA Gladiators found their way into the playoffs, yet there are concerns about how far can the team go.
Much like in the case of Sparks, LA Gladiators’ results will come down to the performance of their star players.
Lane “Surefour” Roberts and Junwoo “Void” Kang have been the driving force behind their team in season two and should they be on top of their game, we could imagine Gladiators go deep into playoffs.
Spark vs Gladiators betting predictions
There was very little to separate the two teams this season, which becomes rather obvious considering they finished fourth (Spark) and fifth (Gladiators) on the standings, separated by only one win.
Last time Gladiators and Spark meet was in week four of stage four fixtures when it was Spark who came out ahead 3-2, which is also why the Chinese team are considered the favourites to defeat Gladiators here.
Despite entering the fixture as the favourites, Spark could struggle against Gladiators, if both Sufefour and Void perform up to par.
With that in mind, this fixture seems like it can go either way, especially considering Gladiators are known to keep most of their matches close.
We expect LA Gladiators to push Spark to the limits on Thursday, meaning we are in for a long and exciting fixture. We also can’t exclude the possibility of Gladiators coming out on top and avenging their defeat from mid-August. Two bets for this match.
LA Gladiators +1.5 – -175.44 at BetOnline
