🕹️ Esports 🎮 Prediction & Discussion Thread

[ralle14]

As far as I can see there are still 6 teams maintaining their chances for Major now.

I wasn't expecting Vitality to have this much difficulty honestly. I'm really surprised by this performance level. They lost to GamerLegion and Outsiders.

The same thing happened in the Road to Rio tournament as they followed the same format and some teams underperformed during these best-of-ones and eventually got eliminated because of it.

Even though they barely survived and qualified by beating OG, at this rate they might be the first few teams that could get eliminated in the legends stage.

The other two matchups could end up being very one-sided games, Fnatic and C9 both -1.5 handicaps look like free money, tbh

C9 nearly lost that handicap but good thing they're able to climb back in the second half and close the first map with a win.

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[execijutiere]

The last matches of the major tournament before the legends stage. Gamerlegion started the major qualifiers well and finished poorly, failing to qualify for the legends stage. Cloud9, on the other hand, started badly and finished well to qualify for the legends stage. In one of the tough matches of the day, og-vitality, vitality was the victor. Both teams were very good, but vitality stepped forward and became the team that made it to the legends stage.

[CLS63]

woxic has announced that he wants to evaluate offers from other teams from now on. He isn't in Eternal Fire's main roster anymore.

Losing one of their best players might affect them quite negatively. They are already in some kind of transformation process once again. I think that woxic should have stayed and Calyx should have brought to paz's place. Actually I thought of a composition like this:

XANTARES - woxic - Calyx - paz - Soulfly

I would rather see imoRR on the bench because of making simple mistakes. But the team is still insistent on keeping him in the main roster. Eternal Fire should make their decisions as good as possible if they want success in the future. But I just started to feel like this team might even disband sooner or later.

The source: https://www.hltv.org/news/34977/woxic-benches-himself-from-ef-i-want-to-continue-my-career-in-an-international-team

[boyptc]

We don't know what's with their agreement but I think that T1 will take the advantage of having him on their organization. And it's likely that they'll offer him everything they can just to retain him.

If Topson wants to play in the EU then T1 can just migrate there and be based there whoever is going to be added to the team.

Most teams want him because he's still one of the best mid players and having that individual skill makes him unique and desirable for most of them.

There's no problem on topson on why T1 didnt able to make it through the internationals, it is really just the other members of the team which do really lacks out on playing their roles efficiently.
I wont be surprised if T1 will really be doing or offering the best that they could on holding topson or retaining him on the team.
Kuku had already been looking for another team which does simply means that there are potential team mates that could be patch up and hope it would be
a good offlaner + having a good coach which would really be potentially make T1 team more even better.

The chemistry is what I think that they lack of. They've just been within a few weeks before the TI qualifiers and that's why it didn't clicked. Unlike with their past team as the old roster of OG, they've been together for quite a while and that's why they still click.

Just as the EU great coaches and players are talking about SEA, they've said that what SEA is lacking is a good captain.

Well, the shuffle starts, beastcoast and Thunder Awaken has already switched some players.

[arallmuus]

This is taken from Rollbit and it seems T1 is the clear favourites to win the last match. Totally not into taking T1 to win for the silly 1.25 odds there so probably getting handicap for DRX +1.5 seems the best odds from that list. Probably T1 -1.5 if you guys are thinking of betting decent amount because there is a good chance that T1 could triumph DRX into a complete 3-0 series

[boltz]

Team Liquid vs Mouz should be a great game tomorrow at Rio Major. Liquid is doing great lately but Mouz are in great form and I do expect them to win tomorrow and produce a surprise.

Team Spirit vs Bad News Eagle...I have no idea about Spirit when it comes to CS:GO but I saw Bad News Eagle playing in Contenders and they looks shaky ...always on the edge....every round.

Faze vs Cloud9 ...well it's actually Faze vs Gambit and Faze always had a weakness to ex Gambit players so I'm expecting a rough game for Faze but most likely they will convert it to a win.

Sprout vs Big ...both teams are actually in a great shape of CS:GO so this is another game when I do expect majestic CS:GO rounds and kills.
 

[CLS63]

Bad News Eagles had a really solid run in Challengers Stage. It was quite surprising to see Vitality and Cloud9 barely being able to qualify for Major. Thanks to the wins in their last matches they made it. I thought that fnatic were eliminated first but I found out that they had one last chance. They didn't make any mistake against their weaker opponent which was 9z. The only surprising elimination was OG's. Being not able to qualify for Major would reflect on their ranking as some decrease I assume.

And here we go! Major matches are starting tomorrow. I see FaZe - Cloud9 and Vitality - Natus Vincere as the matches worth watching. I think FaZe and Natus Vincere will be the winners.

[Trofo]

Team Liquid vs Mouz should be a great game tomorrow at Rio Major. Liquid is doing great lately but Mouz are in great form and I do expect them to win tomorrow and produce a surprise.

Team Spirit vs Bad News Eagle...I have no idea about Spirit when it comes to CS:GO but I saw Bad News Eagle playing in Contenders and they looks shaky ...always on the edge....every round.

Faze vs Cloud9 ...well it's actually Faze vs Gambit and Faze always had a weakness to ex Gambit players so I'm expecting a rough game for Faze but most likely they will convert it to a win.

Sprout vs Big ...both teams are actually in a great shape of CS:GO so this is another game when I do expect majestic CS:GO rounds and kills.
 

Thanks for this for overview, I think I will steal some picks from you if stats on HLTV correspond to your predictions. Did not watch CS:GO in last couple of moths so I am missing a lot of first hand info but I have to switch to it now when it is quiet on DOTA scene. There isn't a real substitute for eye test so I always appreciate when somebody has posts like this.

[Jossque]

The legends phase of the Major tournament starts tomorrow. I think we will see some good matches and I am looking forward to the results of the first matches. One of the important matches will be Vitality-NaVi and the other one will be Faze-C9. I expect Navi and Faze to win, but sometimes things can change when the match is bo1. Actually, this is the excitement of major tournaments.

[dothebeats]

Faze vs Cloud9 ...well it's actually Faze vs Gambit and Faze always had a weakness to ex Gambit players so I'm expecting a rough game for Faze but most likely they will convert it to a win.

It's either they perform so well against ex-Gambit players or they fall terribly against them, always no in between as I have noticed in the past. But you also have to give some props on Faze on defeating a lot of big names despite falling short most of the time on Tier 2/3 teams that are leagues below them. Well in any games whatsoever, there will always be a top-tier team that loses to a so-so team just because, and the rest they can defeat quite easily.

[ralle14]

This is taken from Rollbit and it seems T1 is the clear favourites to win the last match. Totally not into taking T1 to win for the silly 1.25 odds there so probably getting handicap for DRX +1.5 seems the best odds from that list. Probably T1 -1.5 if you guys are thinking of betting decent amount because there is a good chance that T1 could triumph DRX into a complete 3-0 series

I agree with the T1 handicap even though DRX pulled off an unlikely upset against Gen.G I don't think they could get away with another win and this time it's against a much more experienced team that's been through Worlds several times. The DRX handicap does have some value but I'm having a hard time trusting them to win at least 2 maps compared to T1 dropping one map at best.

[Jossque]

Liquid's players have more major history and more experience. Mouz placed 3 players from the academy team in the starting lineup but they don't have much experience in majors. That's why I think liquid will win the match because of bo1.
As for the Spirit-BNE match, I think it is a great success for BNE to even come here. I don't think they can do much against these opponents here. Spirit has young and talented players. bo1 will be an advantage for which side, but I expect spirit to win

[sunsilk]

After the Jabz and Sunbhie's departure from Fnatic, Jabz is now with Talon Esports.

Source: https://twitter.com/Talon_esports/status/1588529569640099840

On other teams from the South American region, we'll not see the same Thunder Awaken roster as they've got a new roster update.

Source: https://twitter.com/dotaradio12/status/1588268277649866763?s=20&t=Nf_MYlAoQ0vSnmGpFF0jdg

It seems the rumor is true about the old TA roster that they'll be adopted by Evil Geniuses.

[jakelyson]

Taking some action in Rio Major. I am taking Faze in this match against C9. In my opinion, C9 is quite shaky in this tournament. There are some matches that they should take easily but was given a hard time by their opponents and now that they are against Faze, a very talented team, C9 will have a hard time winning this game. If Faze starts hot, Faze can easily overwhelm C9 and take the game.

[Pulsar77]

Vitality - NaVi was a really lovely matchup today. It was like a finale match truthfully and I've seen the number of people watching as around 300k on ESL Twitch channel.

The map was Mirage and as you know the first matches are BO1. Because of this, both teams needed to be really careful as they didn't have a second chance. Vitality were the better starting side but NaVi pulled themselves together before it was too late. s1mple was really impressive and we watched a great duel between him and dupreeh for being top fragger of the match (both of them got 40 kills). We watched 3 OTs. Vitality made a huge comeback in the 2nd one but I'm afraid they couldn't prevent a 25-21 loss in the last one.

But it was nice to see both of these teams this much ambitious. I wouldn't say no to watching this duo in the final series also.

[STT]

Tempting to bet on C9 to beat Navi, its too close but the aim on Navi is amazing also so despite mistakes they can win.

I went with the underdogs for the next 2 games, eagles and Spirit I think are worth a small bet.  I wont really consider these games started until bo3 is the standard format, so this is all just a warmup.

[ralle14]

Those first two rounds of the Legends stage were similar to the Challengers stage the top 3 teams with a shaky start as they all had at least one loss on their record and then Cloud9 took down both Faze and Navi, they might even go 3-0 at this point with how insane they've been holding with their CT sides.

Faze closing in from elimination was a shock I thought they'd get their first win against Vitality but they gave way too many rounds in the first half. Their situation will probably get easier now that all of their remaining series will be a best of three.

Edit: Also, the Worlds grand finals were like a complete package, it went through all five games and the last game was a nail-biter. Rough loss for T1 and props to DRX for completing their run.

[judas]

I took a screenshot of the Worlds' odds before the semi-finals started. We can understand better how big job the winner of the cup DRX did when we look at these odds. However the most surprising thing was to see Kingen being chosen for MVP prize last night. So if one bet on the options with the highest odds before the semi-finals, they would be shocked after looking at their balance today.

[arallmuus]

So if one bet on the options with the highest odds before the semi-finals, they would be shocked after looking at their balance today.

I doubt that anyone would be putting any money on him considering that he is the least favourites from the list. Also that his team is also the least faovurites on the odds market, that kinda makes it kinda impossible for anyone to actually bet him. Well someone could be cheesy and bet on him but I kinda imagine it would be $1 or something so that would be hundreds of dollar but yeah its decent

[ILuckyGuyI]

Things are really worrying for the Vitality - NaVi duo right now. Because they both got only one win after playing three matches.

Vitality's loss against NaVi wasn't surprising maybe but the MOUZ loss was unexpected. Mirage is just like a nightmare for Vitality now. After losing to NaVi there they got another loss this time against MOUZ. It happened after OT again also. NaVi's loss against Cloud9 and Liquid were also unexpected for me. Mirage and Ancient were the maps consecutively in these matches and the results were the same, 14-16. Ax1Le and EliGE were the stars of these matches by the way. When s1mple doesn't carry the team NaVi really have a bigger issue with winning these days.