DreamHack Cluj-Napoca CSGO Group Stage Predictions

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The next CSGO major kicks off on Wednesday 28th October (this Wednesday) at 10:20am GMT+2. Let’s take a look at the groups. As you can see below the groups are insane. There’s no team that you instantly count out, every team could get through to the knockout stage.

dreamhackclujgroups

The format is the same as last Major which was slightly confusing last year so here’s a nice graphic hltv.org made to help us out. The groups are best of one matches up until the decider match which is a best of three.

Dreamhack Cluj-Napoca Groups Stage - Image provided by hltv.org

Dreamhack Cluj-Napoca Groups Stage – Image provided by hltv.org

So let’s get in to the predictions.

Group A

fnatic and Vexed (formerly eBettle) play first, they open the whole tournament. For this game, I think we’ll see fnatic take it; it could be argued that Vexed is the worst team at the event. That would take fnatic up in to the winners bracket and put Vexed down in to the losers bracket. Luminosity would then play Cloud9, this is a tough one to call because we’ve seen some good things from Cloud9 in the past, they’ve had good runs before. They didn’t get out of groups last Major but the team did well at other smaller LANs around that time. However, I don’t think Cloud9 are on form at the moment, they look shaky. I’m going to say Luminosity will win, which puts the Brazilians into the winners bracket against fnatic and Cloud9 in to the losers bracket against Vexed.

fnatic has previously struggled against Luminosity at the last Major when fnatic were looking a lot better than they are now. Recently they’ve had issues where they are swapping in game leaders, there seemed to be some beef between pronax and flusha, which might affect how they play at this Major. Cloud9 vs Vexed I think Cloud9 win this, I think they should be able to out play the Polish Vexed, but if Vexed get a lucky map pick (this is still bo1) they might steal a win, but I doubt it. So we would then have a decider match between either Cloud9 and Luminosity (more likely) or Cloud9 and fnatic. I think out of these two match ups Cloud9 will want to face Luminosity in a best of three but I don’t see the Americans getting through.

So from Group A I’m predicting fnatic and Luminosity to progress.

Group B

The first match in Group B is TSM vs FlipSid3, I don’t think FlipSid3 will be able to beat TSM, I think TSM is a strong contender to win the whole tournament and they’re not going to let arguably a tier 2 team to beat them in the groups. That puts TSM in the winners bracket and FlipSid3 in the losers bracket. The second game of Group B will be Gamers2 vs Mousesports. With the departure of ScreaM from Gamers2 I think they’ve suffered a bit hit and aren’t the team we hoped they could be. There were big talks about this being a super team and the best thing since sliced bread, now the lineup is very lackluster. I think that mousesports are able to take this game, beat Gamers2 and progress to the winners bracket to face off against TSM.

In the winners bracket of this group TSM should be able to beat mousesports. Again, I think TSM is easily top 3 in the world right now and they shouldn’t have an issue against mousesports. The losers bracket will then be Gamers2 vs Flipsid3, a hard game to call. I think Gamers2 were a very good team a few months ago, but that was when they had ScreaM and a manager for an IGL. But ScreaM has left and their manager/IGL got VAC banned, so I really don’t rate this Gamers2 team at the moment. I’m going to say that FlipSid3 only just beat Gamers2 to progress in to the decider match against Mousesports. Mousesports vs FlipSid3 is a great match up, both teams will be fighting til the death to get out of groups and automatically qualify for the next Major. I’d give this game 60/40 in favour of Mousesports. gob b is a really talented in game leader and I think that Mousesports will be able to beat FlipSid3 in a best of three, I think FlipSid3 will burn out and struggle towards the end of the series.

Group B will see TSM and Mousesports go through.

Group C

Now we get on to the group of death. First game, Virtus.pro vs Liquid. Liquid have been playing really well recently with the addition of Hiko. However, I don’t think Liquid are able to beat Virtus.pro unless they get incredibly lucky in the bo1 map picks. The second game in this group sees NiP take on Titan. NiP have had a poor run of form for the past few months but recently they’ve started to step it up, they’ve gone back to their roots and started playing their style of play. From watching their online play they seem to be playing better, but still not incredible. There are rumours floating around of a roster change for this team too which definitely seems plausible and has been heard from multiple sources. I think this again comes down to what map the teams face on. Looking at NiPs previous vetoing skills I have to say Titan will win the veto and go on to win the match.

So in the winners bracket we have Virtus.pro vs Titan and in the losers bracket we have NiP vs Liquid. In theory we should expect Virtus.pro to be able to beat Titan, but Titan have an incredibly strong lineup this Major and Virtus.pro can be very volatile, one match they could be Virtus.plow the next game they could be Virtus.flop. I’m going to go with the statistics and say that Virtus.pro will turn up and beat Titan in the winners bracket. NiP vs Liquid again, NiP seem to be very volatile too and Liquid have been looking good. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Liquid beat NiP and we see the once great org come crashing out of this Major without winning a game and having serious roster changes almost immediately after the Major. Then in the decider match Titan vs Liquid in a best of three, Titan wins and gets out of the group. I think Titan will have a larger map pool, more drilled strats and a 95% headshot machine.

I think Virtus.pro and Titan leave Group C with their lives.

Group D

The final group, Group D, which many people have argued that this is harder than Group C. The first game is EnVyUs vs Dignitas. I don’t think this game is hard to predict, I think EnVyUs smashes Dignitas, I don’t think Dignitas gets double figures. They’ve recently changed their lineup literally last week and won’t be able to prepare a lot of maps and in a best of one that’s no where near ideal. Na`Vi vs CLG is the next game, I think this could be close, I think CLG are definitely slowly overtaking Cloud9 as the best NA team. But I don’t think they will be able to beat Na`Vi. Na`Vi are just too drilled, too good on LAN and should be able to beat the North Americans.

That means that EnVyUs will play Na`Vi in the winners bracket and Dignitas will play CLG. The EnVyUs Na`Vi game will be good to watch, I think EnVyUs should be able to comfortably beat Na`Vi, not as much as they’ll beat Dignitas but definitely something like 16-12. I genuinely think EnVyUs are the best team in the world right now and are the favourites to win this Major. The Dignitas CLG game I think will be close but I think CLG will be able to beat Dignitas. I just don’t think after having a recent roster change Dignitas will be in any sort of organisation or mental state to be going in to a highly competitive Major tournament. The final decider game will be Na`Vi vs CLG. I think this will be a really good game to watch and will go to all three maps. At the last Major when these two teams faced off against each other Na`Vi only just beat CLG 16-14 so I expect a similar result. A Na`Vi 2-1 win over CLG.

For the final group I predict EnVyUs and Na`Vi will progress.

Adam

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Adam

Adam is the owner of BC-GB, find him on Twitter. BC-GB is the place to get CSGO tips, news and blog.

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