The first round of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) 2023 Spring Playoffs will serve us with an exciting clash between 100 Thieves and FlyQuest, who will lock horns this Thursday.

FlyQuest ended the regular season in second place, following a rough loss against Cloud9 in the tiebreaker. However, despite losing their chance to claim the regular season crown was painful, FlyQuest were still miles ahead of other teams in the standings.

100 Thieves concludes their regular season campaign in third place, with a 10-8 record, which doesn’t look good compared to FlyQuest’s 14-8, but 100 Thieves looked like an entirely different team since Erlend “Nukeduck” Holm took over as the head coach at the start of March.

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With Nukeduck at the helm, 100 Thieves went 8-3, which includes seven straight victories across the final two weeks of the regular season. They didn’t have to face Cloud9, not FlyQuest, over that stretch, but 100T looked good in their wins against Golden Guardians, Evil Geniuses, and Counter Logic Gaming.

So for this match, we have FlyQuest, who regressed in the final weeks of the split and 100 Thieves, who found their rhythm just in time to contest the LCS crown. Now, how much weight should we put on the recent results?

100 Thieves have looked better, but teams look much different when we have a best-of-three series compared to the regular season single-map games. And unlike in one-off games, where any team can beat anyone, individual talent and preparation play a much more significant role over three maps.

This match has upset potential and might represent in-play betting opportunities, but if we zoom out and compare the teams and what they’ve shown this entire split, FlyQuest look like clear favourites to advance.

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