[2020] I'm going to be Observing a few League games over the next couple of weeks. Any tips?

Evening folks. I recently came across the opportunity to observe some small-time tournaments (volunteer/free) down here in Southern California. I've usually only casted games before and have always wanted someone to observe the game other than myself and the caster, because it's so distracting and it takes me out of the action.

The problem is: I've never observed before. I've been practicing on the client, trying to get used to the keybinds for teamfights and general. I have a few questions for any observers here, professional or otherwise.

Is there any way for me to observe while my casters don't see my mouse cursor? I'll be clicking around on the map and that'll be shown on stream. Is there a way to make this less ghetto or am I basically out of luck and I'll need to use keybinds to see anything so I don't distract the stream?
Is there an observer-specific mode in League? This tournament has been sponsored by Riot (sort of) and the players will be playing on a tournament code.
What should I be focusing on early, mid, and late game? And what do you as casters/observers like about the observers you've worked with?

I know this is pretty incoherent but I was kind of just told about this opportunity a few days ago (the call is on February 11th) and even though it's a little out of the blue, I want to do the best I possibly can.

Thanks for any advice,

Gile

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Hey, long-time observer here :)

Learning to observe can be a bit overwhelming at first, but extremely fun after you get used to it.

I'll just answer the questions the best I can here.

If you enter settings in spectator mode, you will find all the keybinds that are needed for observing. You want to specifically go for "Drag Scroll Lock" seen near the bottom in this picture. https://gyazo.com/29c8351f4f06739add988b5050cba6ab It will center your mouse (hidden) in the camera and make the camera move much smoother around. As well you will want to use the "Select blue/red player"-keybinds to move around the map with out having to click the minimap.
If it's played via a tournament code, I think it depends a lot on how it's set up. I'm not very familiar with it, but I think it is possible to spectate those via invite / friendlist, if the creator of the code allowed it. But don't take my word for this.
In my experience, early and mid it's a lot about jungle focus, vision set up, objective or lane control. I usually let the casters do their story and I try to adapt and follow it. But if they don't have any specific story going on, I tend to just go where ever trading is happening or vision toggle junglers getting spotted by wards, wards being placed or cleared. Late game it's more focused on lane control (split pushing etc.) and objective vision control. If some lanes have big leads early/mid you can gold toggle as well so casters can talk about that (if they're not already using their own screen).

I like casters that break everything down in a game. It makes it easy to cater to what they are talking about. It's always nicer to be showing what casters are talking about currently, so new players or even experienced ones can get a visual view of what's being explained. But of course always break that if you see a fight or gank happening somewhere else.

Hope you will enjoy it :)

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