StarLadder Berlin Major 2019 New Legends Stage Betting Predictions

Welcome to the StarLadder Berlin Major 2019 Legend Stage Betting Predictions.

This is the 2nd stage of the major, the top 8 teams are going to advance to the Champions stage.

In this post we will try to give you a good overview of the first part of the tournament also called "Challenger Stage". We will take a detailed look at the first matchups, check out the teams map pools and give betting advice aswell as giving you the minimal odds you need to bet the teams.

Since most lines have been online for quite some time now value is hard to find and you will either have to wait for the favorite to get more steam right before the match to bet the underdog or for the map vetos to come out.

We will most likely post our bets on short notice in our discord-server and on twitter, so join and follow if you don't want to miss out.

Bets

Here is an overview of all bets we took so far:

Vitality ML vs north @ 1.88 (1.8+) [Berlin Major] [1.25u] on Betonline *won*

Cr4zy ML vs liquid @ 4.27 (3.5+) [Berlin Major] [0.5u] on Bookmaker *lost*

Natus Vincere ML vs G2 @ 1.77 (1.7+) [Berlin Major] [1u] on Lootbet

Mousesports ML vs FaZe @ 1.77 (1.7+) [Berlin Major] [1u] on Lootbet *lost*

Dreameaters +7.5 vs Astralis @ 1.95 (1.85+) [Berlin Major] [1u] on Bookmaker *won*

Cr4zy +5.5 vs liquid @ 2.01 (2+) [Berlin Major] [1u] on Lootbet *lost*

mibr vs nip @ 2.2 (2+) [Berlin Major] [1u] on Betonline *won*

Source: Liquidpedia

Analysis

Ence (1.75+) vs Avangar (3+)

Ence are coming into the major with an announced roster move that will happen after the event.

They are benching their ingame leader Aleskib for the rifler Sunny that has been sitting on Mouz’s bench for a while now. We can only speculate on how the climate inside the team will be, but the move will most likely not have any positive influence on the team at the major, and will eventually even cause internal problems.

Ence’s past results have been up and down while they got second twice at their last 3 attended big events (IEM Chicago and Dreamhack masters Dallas) They lost both times in the finals vs the current #1 team in the world, Liquid, and even bombed out in last place at ESL One Cologne.

They will face Avangar - a team that barely made it through the major main qualifier by beating Complexity, Hellraisers and Syman Gaming and losing vs Mouz and NRG.

Ence, even with their internal problems, are the clear favorites in this bo1, but it’s still a bo1 after all and an upset is not unthinkable with factors like a finished roster move that will take place after the event, the right map and an overperformance from Avangar’s players.

Ence still has an upper hand in terms of mappool, and the veto should end on one of their stronger maps of the likes of Train or Overpass.

At the moment the odds for both sides feel a bit short to make a plusev bet, as we suggest betting Avangar ML at 3+ odds.

Astralis(1.45+) vs Dreameaters(odds) [6.0+]

Astralis are coming into this series as obvious clear favorites. The formerly best team in the world until Liquid took over in the last few months, will face a CIS underdog that impressed many, myself included, at the Major main qualifier.

They had arguably the hardest road to the major as they had to play vs 5 very good teams of which ⅘ qualified themselves for the major- NRG,G2,Vitality,Cr4zy and forze - a team that impressed the world with very good online results leading up to the major.

Astralis hasn’t played an official game in over 50 days now and are looking to take back their throne. They are a team that will take their opponent serious, they will study the demos of their enemies to the maximum of their ability.

But as previously mentioned, it's a bo1 and while upset may be unlikely, it can still happen and we suggest a bet on dream eaters at 6+odds for 0.5u on the moneyline and to take the spread(6.5+ rounds or higher) on a map they showed that they are confident on like inferno or overpass where they can make use of their decent ct side ,at around 1.9+ odds for 1u

NRG(1.7+) vs Renegades(4.0+)

In this match we have NRG, who cruised their way through the challenger stage by beating Tyloo, Syman and Avangar comforably after getting upset by the CIS underdogs (we bet that btw) on day one.

On the other side is Renegades who are a big question mark going into this tournament. They had a lot of time to prepare for this tournament, which they definitely needed after their disappointing results in the previous months. It’s hard to have a proper read on this game as Renegades have had a lot of time to prepare, however they also didn’t play any official match during that time. NRG who already played in the challenger stage is used to the environment in Berlin and had match practice after the player break. Thus we recommend...

Liquid(1.7+) vs Cr4zy(3.7+)

This is probably one of the more interesting matchups of the first round. Not because its particularly even, but because cr4zy had a wild run at the Minor and the Main Qualifier beating teams like North, fnatic and Furia. This will be the first proper test for serbian team, facing liquid who haven't lost a single match since the 18th of June and are leading the HLTV Rankings unquestionably.

It will be a tough task for crazy, but since it's a best-of-one, there are certain maps like dust2, mrg and nuke that make crazy have a realistic chance of taking it home.

The current odds the bookies offer (around 4.0) should already be good enough to bet but it's the nature of Major tournaments that the favorites get steamed a lot before the match start so we might as well wait until right before the game.

Vitality (1.8+) vs North (2.5+)

In this match we have the #2 team in the world Vitality vs #11 North.

Both teams made their way through the challenger stage, North 3-0 after a thrilling series against Cr4zy and Vitality just barely getting to the next stage after beating Grayhound in the deciding match.

Vitality has been looking really shaky during the challenger stage, getting upset by two CIS teams in Dreameaters and Syman. Now they have at least one day break to relax, with reaching the challenger stage, a huge chunk of pressure should have fallen off them.

North gave us a solid look in the challenger stage after having to go through the major play in which lead to huge doubts in the team. This should give us a really interesting match with the winner being up in the air. For this reason we are considering North at odds of 2.3 or better.

Faze (2.7) vs Mouz (1.8+)

Now we come to Faze vs mousesports. This is another matchup involving a team not playing with a healthy lineup. Faze already mentioned that they plan to do lineup changes after this tournament. Apart from that they had a rough time at their last showing at blast pro-series.

Mousesports on the other hand are on the rise since karrigan, woxic and forzen joined the lineup and had a pretty smooth run in the Main Qualifier finishing 3-0.

We took mousesports @1.87 right when the lines came out but these odds are gona already and most likely wont come back. If you want to bet anyway and want to be on the plusev-side you should probably wait for faze 2.5+.

Navi (1.7+) vs G2 (2.75+)

This is a hard to call matchup, not only because G2 performance spans from playing liquid close over 3 maps to losing to mibr with a coach, but also because we haven't seen navi since ESL ONE Cologne in July.

Navi's performance on the first day of the tournament was so bad in the past that it almost became a meme, but they have been working with a sports psychologist for quite a while now.

Their newest addition Kirill 'Boombl4' Mikhailov also seems to have revitalized the teams will to win tournaments and they had a month and a half to prepare.

G2 on the other hand had to fight their way through the main qualifier where they had a hard time beating forze and lost to mousesports.

We already recommended taking Navi @1.7+ earlier but since our recommend odds are no longer available and g2 is not nearly at the price we would need to take them (2.75+), we would recommend skipping this match.

MIBR (2+) vs NiP (2.5+)

The last match on the first day features two current legend teams, MIBR vs NiP.

This match would sound good on paper, however both teams have to use stand ins for the major.

MIBR is playing with Zews instead of coldzera who requested to be benched in July while NiP has to use Golden instead of Plopski who played the minor with Ancient.

Another big story going into this is the accusations that the NIP org is not paying salaries and last but not least, the legend get_right playing his last tournament with the team.

MIBR came into this major with a respectable result from IEM Chicago, reaching the semi finals while having Zews standing in. During this run they managed to beat the likes of G2 and took a map off ENCE in the semi final.

NIPs last lan result is a quarter final run in cologne where they managed to beat Vitality and Heroic but then lost to Astralis in the upper bracket final and got knocked out by Navi in the quarters. This however is almost 2 months ago. More recently we have seen them struggle in the EPL relegation by getting 0-2’ed by sprout and barely scraping by Heretics.

Looking at the match it is pretty unclear how to rate the teams since both play with a standin. However in our opinion MIBR should be favored due to the respectable results while playing with zews (who could even hold his own on the server), compared to nip whose org is breaking apart and is using a player they don’t have much experience playing with.