ECS Season 8 Finals - Group Stages Betting Advice and Predictions

Today we are going to take a look at the ECS Season 8 finals, featuring the 8 best teams through the ECS season. The teams are split into two groups, group A consisting of Avangar, EG, Liquid and NIP and group B with Astralis, fnatic, MIBR and Sharks.

Before we dive into the individual match and group previews its worth noting that this will be the first big LAN tournament being played on the new patch, which saw the Krieg get more expensive, now 3k, and the price of Galil and AUG reduced. We think it will be interesting how this patch will play out, in our opinion 3k for the Krieg still is too cheap but lowering the famas and Galil price certainly is interesting.

Avangar vs EG [3+]

On paper Avangar versus evil geniuses might look like an easy match for the Americans but when having a closer look we might find some value here.

Avangar, being a team who performs way better on LAN, was not able to show this at the CS:GO Asian Championships, due to missing SANJI half of the tournament because of visa issues.

EG on the other hand had a very disappointing showing at the same tournament, bombing out 0-2 in the quarter final and looking completely lost on dust2 versus G2 (the only team they beat).

Stanislaws team might also be affected by the recently nerfed Krieg, a gun that has been their go to within the last months.

In the veto we will most likely see inferno or dust2 picked, which will give us the opportunity to bet on avangar on one of their favorite maps dust2. Like previously mentioned Evil geniuses looked pretty clueless on it versus G2 and most likely had no time to work on that.

We recommend looking out for the veto and betting avangar on dust2 for odds of at least 2.6 or betting pre-veto for 3+ odds.

NiP (2.86) vs Liquid (1.45) [NiP ml 2.75+]

In this matchup we will have NiP faceoff team Liquid. The Swedes have been able to make big improvements and slowly rise up in the rankings. They started off the month of October ranked as the #17 on the HLTV rankings. As of today, they are ranked #8, and with some impressive wins during this period. They have been able to solidify their spot as a Swedish powerhouse and should not be underrated this tournament. The addition of plopski added a lot of needed firepower to this roster, which they desperately needed.

On the other side we have Liquid. A few months ago they were considered the #1 team by a lot of people, but recently their form has dipped quite a bit. They lost a lot of games that they should have won during the Blast Pro Tourney, including a map to NiP. They are still Liquid, and we know that they are unstoppable at their peak, but until we see them setup, it’s hard to back them at 1.45 odds.

Considering the form of both teams, and that it is a best of 1, we would recommend a bet on NiP at odds above 2.75.

Sharks vs Astralis

Onto the next, most clear cut, match of the group stage, Sharks vs Astralis.

Let’s talk about Astralis first. Astralis are back to being the best team in the world at the moment after their dominant performance at IEM Beijing where they didn’t drop a single map. This victory came just a few days after they didn’t make the final in their home tournament, BLAST Copenhagen, a familiar picture as they have been struggling at tournaments in Denmark for a while. For us Astralis are back to being the undisputed Nr. 1 team right now as Liquid hasn’t been able to reach their level from this summer and it seems like EG overperformed a lot in New York, since they have been able to put up the same numbers outside of this one tournament.

Sharks big underdog coming into the tournament showed potential online after acquiring the young Argentinian Meyern and Luken from Isurus. Qualified for this tournament by accumulating price money during the ECS season, where they finished 2nd in the first two weeks and thus qualified for the finals. Beating teams like Liquid and Cloud9 during that time.

Hard to say what to expect from Sharks, Astralis will most likely roll them. We won’t bet on this match unless there will be a ridiculously high handicap for Sharks. However we hope to at least get a glimpse of how Sharks can perform along with the big dogs, to maybe take them as underdog on later days in the tournament or at the Pro league finals a few days later.

We could see them take a map off MIBR, who haven’t seem to found their groove with their new roster. However making a call now is too early as bets always depend on the odds.

MIBR vs fnatic

For the last game we have MIBR facing off vs Fnatic in a bo1.

Overall Fnatic had a resurgence in their performance after Golden rejoined and that is showing over the last few months ,as they are on the rise to the top being currently number 3 on the HLTV ranking.

Fnatic had a very good october managing to win DH Master Malmö in the beginning of the month and then finishing second in Belek, Turkey at Starladder i-League season 8, where they lost vs EG in the finals who are currently 2. in the world on the HLTV ranking.

MIBR have been slowly improving ever since the addition of KNG but the emphasis lies on slowly as they have been quiet inconsistent and are not really a strong contender when it comes to winning lans.Looking back on their past LAN results they really haven’t done a lot since the major. Finishing 4th at Blast Moscow ,then losing to Tricked in the semi finals at the V4 Future Sports Festival ending in 3-4th place and for their last lan the ended in 5-6th place at the Starladder i-League season 8.And just recently they ended up losing to a Ence who are struggling themselves after the removal of their IGL Aleksib , in the semis at CSGO Asia Championships 2019 (CAC) resulting in another 3-4th place finish.

FNC come rightfully into this match as favourites to take the game. Last time these 2 faced off against each other was at Starladder i-League season 8 and FNC won 2-0 in a convincing fashion.For that bo3 they played on Inferno(FNC pick) and Mirage(Mibr pick).Fnc perma ban Vertigo and MIBR perma ban Nuke, FNC are currently on a 4 map losing streak on dust and it seems logical that they will probably avoid it for this game as well.Train is map MIBR has been picking a decent amount as well ,rocking a 80% wr on it but it seems unlikely that Fnc will risk allowing MIBR to pick it.Leaving Mirage,Inferno and Overpass. Even Tho MIBR has been playing Inferno a decent amount they struggle pretty heavily on their CT-side,Mirage is a middle ground for both of the teams and Overpass is kinda the same it's not a map either would first pick in a bo3 but its surprising if it would end up being the decider map in one.Thus it seems like the map for this bo1 could probably be Mirage or Overpass , as Mibr has been struggling on Inferno and would try to avoid it.

We would suggest betting Mibr for 1u if you manage to get on 2.8+ odds.