Latest Esports Predictions

The world of esports moves at a rapid pace spurred on by tournaments occurring every single weekend on the calendar. The biggest and most historic first-person shooter, Counter-strike: Global Offensive, is the perfect illustration of this. A look over the upcoming events will paint a picture of a vibrant scene featuring the biggest players and teams in the world all the way to the hardly-known competing monthly.

There are a number of phenomenal tournaments on the horizon currently for CSGO including; IEM Beijing, Dreamhack Open Rotterdam, and Blast Pro Series Copenhagen. It is so very typical of organizations to both be invited and qualify for these LANs in the furthest corners of the globe.

 

First up is Dreamhack Open Rotterdam taking place from October 18th to October 20th. It features an eight-team field of European and CIS born players competing for a prize pool of $100 000. Now today the prize pools for such tournaments have started to balloon. However, only a decade ago a tournament of this compensation would have dwarfed the entire year’s cumulative prize pools. Headlining Rotterdam is a recent Major-finalist’s Avangar. 

After Rotterdam, the CSGO community turns its eyes toward Belek. Where, right? Well, Turkey is not a nation that commonly gets a lot of attention from the esports community, however, it has a vibrant and keen fan base there. CSGO featured an organization known as ‘Space Soldiers’, that until last year was vying for a top-ten in the world echelon. Many of those players from SS have found new homes now, however, at the BPS Istanbul tournament, we saw excellent turnout and reception. Avangar will once again be present, but this time they are joined alongside some other world-class teams. Fnatic, Ninjas in Pyjamas, and MIBR have been staples of the CSGO scene for years now, almost since the game's inception back in the early 2000s. Fnatic and NiP are comprised of new and old legends of the Swedish scene, while MIBR is...MADE IN BRAZIL! That’s right, the best of the South American powerhouse will be present in Turkey. There is no clear favorite from the field here in Turkey, but a look at the two Swedish organizations would be my bet.

Blast Pro Series Copenhagen is one of the final stops on the BPS circuit in 2019. What a competitive tournament it should be! Three of the top five teams in the world are attending; Astralis, Liquid, and Natus Vincere. It is truly going to be one of the best of the year. Astralis is the justifiable favorite. They are currently enjoying a run of three-straight Major victories and have reclaimed the #1 position in the world. However facing them will be the top team from North America, Team Liquid, who until a recent slump was the team everyone was expecting to take home the Berlin Major title. Then if we look to the CIS region, Natus Vincere displayed their brand new roster with Guardian back in the team and Boomble as the in-game leader. What a scary dynamic this team has with the best firepower from Russia, Ukraine, and Slovakia. On the outright markets, Navi offers the most value certainly, however they will have to show an even better performance than they did at the recent Dreamhack Masters Malmo!