MSI bracket stage R1 betting picks & odds – May 11-12, 2023

This Thursday and Friday, we will see the third and fourth quarter-final series of the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational take place, with Cloud9 vs Bilibili Gaming and JD Gaming vs Golden Guardians. Below you will find eSportBet.com’s free preview and best bet for the series’, with odds courtesy of the best esports betting sites.

This series between Cloud9 from the LCS and Bilibili Gaming from the LPL, will be one of the more intriguing clashes, as the North American team will be the only team that qualified directly for the bracket stage that won’t go into their match as the bookies favourite.

Cloud9 will be attending their second ever Mid-Season Invitational, with their only other attendance coming in 2021 where they finished in fifth place on that occasion. Cloud9, along with TSM, is one of the most successful organisations in the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), however, a North American team is yet to win an international event, either the Mid-Season Invitational or LoL World Championship. C9 are coming off one of the better LCS Spring splits, as they ended the regular season with a 14-4 record and went undefeated during the playoffs on their way to being crown LCS champions. A big win against a Chinese team will do wonders for their confidence early at this tournament.

Bilibili Gaming qualified for the bracket stage by winning their first two series over Rainbow7 and Golden Guardians, which saw the Chinese team join G2 Esports as the first teams to get out of the play-in stage. BLG will be making their debut at the 2023 Mid-Season Invitational after they finished second in the LPL Spring split, losing to JD Gaming 3-1 in the grand final. There is clear evidence to show why BLG are rated so highly by many in LoL circles. They were only one map away from beating the current MSI favourite, JD Gaming, in the upper-bracket semi-finals during the LPL Spring playoffs. Outside of the top three in the LoL MSI market, BLG is currently the fourth favourite at +700 to win the event.

Even though Bililbili Gaming is very short with BetOnline, however, we don’t expect to see them take this series 3-0, so we will be taking the favourites at the match line of -1.5 instead.

The final quarter-final of the bracket stage will feature the current bookmakers’ favourite to take out the Mid-Season Invitational and reigning LPL champions JD Gaming, who will clash with the third and final play-in stage qualifier Golden Guardians from the LCS.

JD Gaming will be making their MSI debut in 2023, coming off the back of a dominant LPL Spring split, where they finished on top of the table with a 13-3 record and ended the playoffs undefeated on route to becoming the champions. JDG will come into their maiden MSI with a lot of confidence behind them, after they finished in third-fourth place at the 2022 LoL World Championship losing to T1 1-3 in the semi-finals. With the new additions of Zhou “knight” Ding from Top Esports and Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk from Gen.G, this JDG roster has been built to win big international events, and in our minds, they look ready to do so at MSI 2023.

Golden Guardians will also make their debut at this year’s edition of the MSI, as they are coming off their first ever top four finish in the LCS. The Guardians were very good in the play-in stage of MSI 2023. After they dropped into the lower-bracket, the LCS Spring runners-up defeated Rainbow7 2-0 and PSG Talon 3-0, seeing them qualify for the bracket stage and set up a clash with JD Gaming. The odds appear to be against the North American representatives, as they come into this match as massive outsiders, and we will be too.

JD Gaming are at unbackable odds, so we will be taking them at the kills handicap of 11.5, which should be very achievable for the tournament favourites to cover in what we expect to be a comfortable series victory.

More esports betting tips