CS Go: IEM Katowice 2019 Discussion thread

[vennali]

Counter Strike Global Offensive's Major is just few days away and the qualifiers going on right now. I noticed that there arent any discussion thread dedicated to it. So here it is.


Today's Matches:

Ninjas in Pyjamas vs Vega Squadron  @   12:00 GMT

G2 vs Fanatic  @  15:00 GMT

C9 vs Furia  @  18:30 GMT

these are eliminator matches and the loser goes home.


It is hard to believe that one of the powerhouses in G2 and Fanatic wont make it to a Major and I hope NIP makes it in the first match. Beating the ever so unpredictable Vega Squadron wont be an easy task though. What do you guys think?


Tournament so far:

[vennali]

Cloud9, NIP and G2 all manage win their respective matches 2-1 and go into the next round. If they manage to win that, they will qualify for the major which is the Legends Stage. Quite surprised that G2 managed to best Fanatic. Both those teams have a rich history of counter-strike and have an era named after them but the expectations this time around on Fanatic were higher as they had been a much more consistent team comparatively. Today's rounds will be interesting as all the 3 favs are coming from the lower bracket. We'll just have to wait and watch what happens. My money will be on NIP for sure.

[Oilacris]

Cloud9, NIP and G2 all manage win their respective matches 2-1 and go into the next round. If they manage to win that, they will qualify for the major which is the Legends Stage. Quite surprised that G2 managed to best Fanatic. Both those teams have a rich history of counter-strike and have an era named after them but the expectations this time around on Fanatic were higher as they had been a much more consistent team comparatively. Today's rounds will be interesting as all the 3 favs are coming from the lower bracket. We'll just have to wait and watch what happens. My money will be on NIP for sure.

My money is on NiP too even though its opponent is Vega.This wont really be an easy game for the team but if they would able to outsmart the unpredictable Vega team then there would be a chance.I didn't even expect that these favorite teams are on lower brackets.

[vennali]

pic courtesy u/thebrainypole (reddit)
The Challenger stage comes to an end with all the 3 teams in the lower bracket(surprisingly) of the elimination match made it through to the Legends Stage, which will start in 2 days from now.

[YuginKadoya]

Well the popular ones were the Ninjas In Pyjamas no wonder about that and they are going in for a new league now and that would be the legends stage in a 2 day prior this day, I really think the return of their coach pita is a great thing that happens for them and making a great strategy for the team, and I think the addition of Lekr0 was pretty great for the team to further advance in the game, I should say my money will surely go for them.

[vennali]

Finally Today is the day IEM Katowice starts. Will we see a new team win the major? or is it going to be the likes on Astralis, Navi, Faze, MiBR to take it. Is it going to be EZ4Ence? Going to be an action Packed day with 16 matches.

the last 8 matches will be dependent on the winners and losers of the first 18.

[jossiel]

I only knew 4 teams at this moment with CSGO since I'm just new to the scene and I'm mostly betting with Dota 2. What do you think guys to bet with except with these 4 choices of mine?

• Astralis
• Mibr
• Liquid
• FaZe Clan

[vennali]

I only knew 4 teams at this moment with CSGO since I'm just new to the scene and I'm mostly betting with Dota 2. What do you think guys to bet with except with these 4 choices of mine?

• Astralis
• Mibr
• Liquid
• FaZe Clan

Navi are world no.3 but the team is being carried by just 2 players. One of them is the best in the world according to 2018 rankings. That's S1mple, other than that Flamie is young and really good. The rest 3 generally lack quite a lot. Vitality are the best French team and has one of the top young prospects in Zywoo who has been proving to be a really good player. NiP is a mix of veterans like Forest and Get_Right and is a decent team. NRG has players with really good mechanical aim but seem to be lagging when it comes to Strats and Counter-Strats. Over all its going to be an entertaining Major. Matches worth watching today are. Navi vs G2, NRG vs NiP, Astralis vs Complexity and Faze vs HellRaisers.

[vennali]

After Day 1 of the major. Astralis, Renegades,Navi and Team Liquid go unbeaten in 2 maps. Where Astralis beat Cloud 9 16-0 on nuke going unbeaten on that map for over a year. Surprisingly NRG couldnt muster up a win and MiBR and Faze had an underwhelming day.

[leowonderful]

That 16-0 from Astralis was absolutely incredible to watch, I could never have predicted that Cloud9 would fall so hard on Nuke even though Astralis were clearly the favorited team on that map; pretty uncommon to see a 16-0 at all in any sort of tournament. Honestly a bit of a miracle C9 made it to the major at all considering the teams they had to beat and how lucky they were with their matches in the qualifier, but it'll be interesting to see how they fare later on in this tournament. I don't see them going too far considering how their past matches have gone personally. Personally putting a medium bet on Vitality to beat Cloud9 tomorrow.

[vennali]

That 16-0 from Astralis was absolutely incredible to watch, I could never have predicted that Cloud9 would fall so hard on Nuke even though Astralis were clearly the favorited team on that map; pretty uncommon to see a 16-0 at all in any sort of tournament. Honestly a bit of a miracle C9 made it to the major at all considering the teams they had to beat and how lucky they were with their matches in the qualifier, but it'll be interesting to see how they fare later on in this tournament. I don't see them going too far considering how their past matches have gone personally. Personally putting a medium bet on Vitality to beat Cloud9 tomorrow.

Yeah, it was incredible. I dont think any team should pick Nuke against Astralis. Lol.. they had a similar streak on Inferno iirc. Where it was impossible to beat them on Banana control and it left the T sides to just go A, where there were 4 players wating for the opportunity to pounce. C9 did beat Faze yesterday and that too dominated them 16-3 but I think, depending on the map. Vitality is a good pick against C9. Zywoo looked sharp yesterday and hardly missed a shot.

Today's matches:

 

[PryptoMontreal]

That 16-0 from Astralis was absolutely incredible to watch, I could never have predicted that Cloud9 would fall so hard on Nuke even though Astralis were clearly the favorited team on that map; pretty uncommon to see a 16-0 at all in any sort of tournament. Honestly a bit of a miracle C9 made it to the major at all considering the teams they had to beat and how lucky they were with their matches in the qualifier, but it'll be interesting to see how they fare later on in this tournament. I don't see them going too far considering how their past matches have gone personally. Personally putting a medium bet on Vitality to beat Cloud9 tomorrow.

Yeah, it was incredible. I dont think any team should pick Nuke against Astralis. Lol.. they had a similar streak on Inferno iirc. Where it was impossible to beat them on Banana control and it left the T sides to just go A, where there were 4 players wating for the opportunity to pounce. C9 did beat Faze yesterday and that too dominated them 16-3 but I think, depending on the map. Vitality is a good pick against C9. Zywoo looked sharp yesterday and hardly missed a shot.

Today's matches:

 

Predictions for today's matches :

Though I know that all the predictions are better to be made once map pool is selected, but for now, some pre-match predictions
mibr vs G2 : G2
Faze vs Avangar : Avangar Looked solid yesterday against both NRG and Liquid
Vitality vs C9 : Vitality
Nip vs HR : Nip
Astralis vs RNG : Astralis
Ence vs Big : Big This is going to be a close and exciting match
NRG vs Complexity : ez for NRG
Navi vs Liquid : Liquid This is the match we all are waiting for, right?

Edit : I'll be updating my predictions once maps are decided

[leowonderful]

Been without access to a secure computer that I can access this site with, but the Vitality vs C9 match was much closer than I initially thought it would be, though Vitality still pulled through with a 16-14 victory. C9 was actually looking pretty solid through the entire match, might be the result of more practicing and scrimming or a combination of both. Not gonna lie, though I was going to lose on my bet many times during that match.

Also pretty surprised Liquid ran through Navi the way they did today, odds were nearly 50-50 on HLTV.org's skin match betting system with a slight edge towards Liquid. Zeus didn't do so well on the second map where Navi lost 6-19; according to the HLTV match page for the match (link here) the guy was 8-21 and had 33 ADR during Dust2. Didn't watch much of the other matches today, but NRG vs CoL is definitely going to be interesting as both teams are close on both maps played so far.

[jossiel]

I only knew 4 teams at this moment with CSGO since I'm just new to the scene and I'm mostly betting with Dota 2. What do you think guys to bet with except with these 4 choices of mine?

• Astralis
• Mibr
• Liquid
• FaZe Clan

Navi are world no.3 but the team is being carried by just 2 players. One of them is the best in the world according to 2018 rankings. That's S1mple, other than that Flamie is young and really good. The rest 3 generally lack quite a lot. Vitality are the best French team and has one of the top young prospects in Zywoo who has been proving to be a really good player. NiP is a mix of veterans like Forest and Get_Right and is a decent team. NRG has players with really good mechanical aim but seem to be lagging when it comes to Strats and Counter-Strats. Over all its going to be an entertaining Major. Matches worth watching today are. Navi vs G2, NRG vs NiP, Astralis vs Complexity and Faze vs HellRaisers.

Okay, so NaVi is also that strong in CSGO well during early days of The International in the Dota 2 scene they have made their name. Going back to CSGO, I've seen that Astralis won against Cloud9 easily and they are now at the top bracket.

Sad to see that the guy I used to watch on youtube highlights together with his team is now on lower bracket. It's the Team Liquid, @OP do you think that they can make it to the finals?

[vennali]

~Snip~
Sad to see that the guy I used to watch on youtube highlights together with his team is now on lower bracket. It's the Team Liquid, @OP do you think that they can make it to the finals?

Well, Team Liquid is what all the North Americans are cheering for. Its probably going to be Liquid vs Astralis in the finals. Classic, America vs EU.

The qualifiers and the minor comes to an end and now its Major time from 28th Feb. Which will start off with a bang. Faze vs Natus Vincere. Surprisingly, Navi are fav's to win it at 1.5x but I think the star studded line up of Faze might be able to best Navi. 2.5x seems to be a good value too. H2H in the last 5 matches, it has been Faze up 3-2 but looking at the matchups before that Navi has won most of them.