Analyst Analysis: The Squad Behind the Squad

January 24 2019
Most everyone in the community knows something about Analysts at large. We see them on stream every weekend dishing out things like “Jatt Stats.” We get to hear the fruits of their labour in the form of data blurbs during casts. And we know that teams hire them to research and collect data. But while some Analysts focus on formulating things like average first turret blood timing per region, team Analysts work hand in hand with their individual org’s coaches, players, and team managers to round out your typical League of Legends coaching staff.

If you were to describe what team Analysts do, more likely than not you’d say something along the lines of "helping the team prepare for games/tournaments by gathering knowledge and stats on things like itemization, enemy champion pool, and important data from scrim results." And for the most part you’d be right. Analysts do this type of opponent focused data gathering all the time. This type of research is both an important and integral part of certain Analysts’ jobs.

Among other things, opponent focused data gathering helps the coaching staff plan out picks and bans for upcoming matches. But while it's important, it's not the whole picture. In addition to opponent focused data gathering, team Analysts are responsible for collecting more team focused data as well. This data is used to identify individual players’ bad habits through scrim and solo queue results, assist the team in understanding what deficits they might have, and even assist in solidifying communication between the players by numerically identifying when and where communication break down begins to affect overall performance.

To put it simply, Analysts are responsible for observing, assembling, and 'mathing' quite literally every and any piece of data that could constitute an important pattern. Be it in game data, individual player data, or even enemy team/region data. And by every piece, I mean every single pattern that’s deemed important is researched and quantified.

Take wards for example. Team Analysts can track individual player warding data in the form of ward timing and placement tendencies and average vision score by champion played, then can compare and contrast that data to regional and/or worldwide averages. And that’s just a single data point. There are hundreds more that rise and fall in and out of importance over a single split, let alone an entire year.

These men and women are rocket scientists. By doing a lot of the in-game dirty work when it comes to things like build efficiency and data collecting, they enable our players and coaches to focus solely on performing well.

Team Liquid’s Analysts are no exception. Our three musketeers of data are the cream of the crop and the best of the best. So, without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Team Liquid’s 2019 League of Legends Analytics Team.


Jack Kayser

Head of Analysis and Scouting

Quick Facts: Likes to watch football(NFL) and baseball(MLB) or hang with family/friends in order to destress; favorite teams are the Houston Astros and the Houston Texans.

As the Athos to the team it is Jack’s job to oversee and coordinate all analysis, scouting, and recruiting. While he specializes in opposition scouting, Jack is also responsible for a myriad of other forms of data collection and reporting for the team. He also created and maintains our current analysis structure in addition to acting as the Avatar between the other analysts and our players. The combination of Jack’s recent experience in helping Fnatic make World Finals and his personal goals of wanting to integrate well into Team Liquid in order to help us go the distance internationally by growing together make him a perfect addition to the team.


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Kevin Bracken

League of Legends Analyst

Quick Facts: One of his fondest memories of working with the players is back when Piglet kept trying to teach Fenix’s dog the command “Kill Quas”; Likes to play other games and watch Battlestar Galactica to destress.

Kevin has been a part of the TL family for the past 9 splits (that’s going on 5 years folks) and remains an integral member of our analysis team. For those of you who watch our League related YouTube videos, you’ve seen Kevin! As our player-focused Analyst, Kevin attends scrims and works very closely with our players and coaches. Since player focused analysis is also player specific, Kevin focuses on different data points for every player and tailor-makes an analytical approach for each depending on what the coaches and players themselves deem necessary. This data helps the coaches and players identify and remedy any issues the team or any individual players are having and gives a metric off which future growth and improvement can be measured. In a nutshell, Kevin acts as the Support for the support staff.


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Jordi Plana

Athletics Back-End Developer

Quick Facts: Used to be in the top 100 in his region in Hearthstone (when it first came out) just for fun; has never had boba, a miracle in LA!

Along with Jack, Jordi is also a new addition to our analysis team. Leaving Fnatic at the end of last year to follow Jack over the pond has brought Jordi to the team. And we couldn’t be happier with this duo. As he is both a Data Analyst and a Programmer, Jordi is in charge of keeping up all of our League databases, reporting match history stats, and doing all team research. The data Jordi collects assists the other Analysts in keeping track of important data points for the coaching staff and players while also giving them a basis for their own research. Constantly keeping track of this immense amount of data is absolutely vital and makes Jordi more than just a cog in the machine — it makes him the balance wheel itself.


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Writer // Sarah Enders