The online multiplayer video game League of Legends is popular worldwide, with 115 million monthly players. Team gold has been repeatedly shown to be a powerful predictor of victory, but formal research has often focused on game-wide gold acquisition and not early-game statistics. However, players and analysts recognize team- and player-share of gold at ten and fifteen minutes as powerful hints at eventual victory. In this paper, we model the distribution of early-game gold among League of Legends teammates and investigate how the gold share at fifteen minutes can influence the probability of victory. Classification and regression trees and association rules illustrate relationships between gold share of certain positions and an increased probability of winning over baseline.
