Alliance are the play here, and the recent form gap explains why. While 9z have gone a middling 5W-5L across their last ten, Alliance sit at 9W-1L over the same stretch with scalps over fnatic, Ninjas in Pyjamas and Nexus on the resume. That's not a fluke run, it's a team peaking at the right time, and their head to head with 9z backs it up: tied 2-2 overall but Alliance took the most recent meeting 2-0. The map pool tilts firmly their way too. Alliance are a perfect 10-0 on Inferno and win Ancient at a 72.7% clip, both comfortably ahead of 9z's 54.5% and 60% marks on those same maps, which matters a great deal once the veto phase starts stripping away 9z's comfort picks. Add in the round-level numbers, Alliance's 55.8% round win rate and 76.6 ADR both outpacing 9z's 52.1% and 71.8, and this reads like a team winning rounds more efficiently across the board. 9z's T-side round win rate of just 43.9% is a specific crack Alliance's overall round strength is built to exploit. None of this is a guarantee, underdog tags exist for a reason, but the market appears to be pricing 9z off reputation rather than recent output. The numbers suggest the sharp reference probability undervalues Alliance's chances, and that gap is where the price makes sense. For anyone backing the upset, Duel currently has Alliance at 2.60, a number that looks generous given everything above.