VALORANT Champions 2022 esports betting tips – Friday, September 16

ESB brings you free Valorant betting predictions for a pair of VALORANT Champions 2022 bouts on Friday, September 16. Here are our picks for LOUD vs OpTic Gaming and FunPlus Phoenix vs DRX, with betting odds courtesy of BetOnline.

Not many people expected LOUD to do well following their abysmal performance at the last Masters, and they hadn’t impressed with their group stage showings either. However, the Brazilians found their stride and are now just one step away from reaching the finals.

Since qualifying for the playoffs, LOUD crushed Leviatan (2-0) and added a solid victory against DRX (2-0), granted that series was much closer than what the score suggests. Nevertheless, LOUD have been getting the job done and are living up to their tag as LATAM’s superteam.

OpTic Gaming are the current main favourites to win VALORANT Champions, priced at $2.25 on the outright betting markets, which sounds right, but isn’t quite. OpTic did well in the group stage, but they dropped a map against BOOM Esports (2-1), and they weren’t very impressive so far in the playoffs, playing three-map series against Team Liquid (2-1) and XSET (2-1).

Their wins were reasonably solid, but overall, OpTic have yet to show the dominant form you would expect from them. You could argue that OpTic should defeat LOUD since they already won this bout (2-1) at the start of the month, but LOUD have since improved while OpTic have not.

This should be a close series, but we’re leaning towards LOUD, so we’ll take a shot on a correct score market and take LOUD to win 2-1.

DRX have been playing surprisingly well this tournament, having suffered just one bad loss against LOUD (0-2) in the upper bracket semifinals. Still, even in that series, DRX had a chance to win and perhaps would have had they not choked on Breeze (11-13).

Overall, DRX are a solid team, and they’ve proven that with wins against 100 Thieves (2-0), Fnatic (2-1), and FunPlus Phoenix, who DRX beat in the first round of the playoffs with 2-0. Admittedly, their series with Fnatic on Tuesday started a bit shaky with DRX losing Icebox (7-13), but they quickly bounced back with wins on Ascent (14-12) and Fracture (13-9).

FunPlus Phoenix enter the lower bracket semifinals following a controversial yet deserved win against XSET, who they beat 2-1 (11-13, 13-10, 16-14) on Tuesday, securing their fourth victory of the tournament. Nearly losing to XSET might seem like a big deal, but XSET haven’t been playing that well, so we would take that success with a grain of salt.

FunPlus Phoenix are priced as 1.66 favourites to defeat DRX, which, assuming they play to their full potential, is a fair price. But we feel like DRX aren’t getting the respect they deserve and shouldn’t be priced at $2.10. They beat FunPlus Phoenix (2-0) last week, and there is nothing to suggest they can’t do it again.


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