CS2: Copenhagen Major Pick’em Challenge - Playoff Predictions

Counter-Strike

25 Mar

The first CS2 major in Copenhagen has finally reached its final stage where we’ll be seeing 8 of the best teams compete in front of the packed crowd at the Royal Arena in Denmark.

All the owners of the viewer pass who have gotten the pick ems correct for the first two stages would be looking forward to their diamond coin, which is obtained by completing all the objectives in the viewer pass. Their only hurdle is predicting the correct playoff bracket, that includes guessing the correct winner of the major.

In order to achieve this, players have to get two correct guesses in the quarter finals, one semi finals and the winner of the grand finals. Some of the quarter-finals games of the playoffs can be pretty tough to guess as there’s two evenly matched teams facing each other.

Playoff Pick’em Picks:

This will be a tough bracket to predict as the teams would be playing on the stage in front of the crowd, which can affect a teams performance. There is also a few days break before the playoffs start so this will give teams time to relax and also study their opponents.

I will be going with the following picks along with a brief reasoning behind my pick. Please make sure to do your pickems after doing your own research as well. Some of my predictions may be really off or will be risky as most of these games are 50/50.

Team Spirit vs Faze Clan

I would be going with Spirit with this one as they have been one of the top teams lately. They have already beat Faze a couple of times recently, there’s still a chance that Karrigan has finally studied them well enough to counter their strategy but they would need to be on point with their aim in order to compete against donk, shiro and zontix.

Prediction: 75% Team Spirit Wins

Vitality vs Cloud9

This is a toss-up to be honest, both teams had a shaky start to the elimination stage after which they recovered. Zywoo has not been performing well this tournament and if that continues then I can see Cloud9 having a chance. Their only weak point is not having a dedicated player on the AWP and on some maps it can make a difference if Zywoo shows up. I would still be hoping for an upset by picking Cloud9.

Prediction: 50-50

Eternal Fire vs NaVi

Eternal Fire looked sharp in the elimination stage where they actually managed to beat Vitality and had a close game against Mouz. They decimated FaZe Clan and then qualified for the playoffs with a win over Virtus.Pro.

Navi on the other hand went to the very last round to qualify after being up 2-0 in the start however, their matchups were pretty tough as well as they lost to Cloud9 and Spirit while beating The Mongolz, G2 Esports and Pain Gaming. The obvious pick would be Navi as they are a team with much more experience in the arena and can handle the pressure but if Eternal Fire stay in the form as they are then they can pose a threat and can make it tough for Navi to move to the semi finals.

Prediction: 70% Navi wins

G2 Esports vs Mouz

This match can go either way as G2 had looked shaky in the elimination stage however they are a top team with some of the best players and on a good day they should be able to beat Mouz but Mouz had a strong start at the major by going 3-0, making quick work of Complexity in the 2–0 matchup by only losing 3 rounds over 2 maps. They are also being led by Siuhy who had taken his previous team; GamerLegion to the grand finals of the previous major in Paris which was completely unexpected from them.

Prediction: 65% Mouz wins

Moving Forward

My proceeding picks are pretty straight forward as well with Team Spirit winning over Cloud9 again. They have already faced a few times before including the opening match of the elimination stage where Spirit won 13-7, I will be on the Team Spirit hype train like most of the community as they are one of the best teams right now with donk, sh1ro and zontix performing really well.

The other semi final match is pretty even amongst the community as most players have either picked the grand finals to be Spirit vs Mouz or NaVi. I have went with Mouz as I believe that Siuhy might be able to lead another team to the grand finals with the talent that he has on the team.

I truly believe that Team Spirit would be winning this major and I have picked them as the eventual winner regardless of if they face NaVi or Mouz.

Banner photo courtesy of HLTV.

Hashir "HasH" Anis

Long-time esports follower and have worked for esports organizations such as Blight Gaming and Natus Vincere (NaVi). I also help in organizing monthly Dota 2 tournaments hosted by the Dota 2 sub-reddit, partnering with multiple organizations such as ESL, Team Secret and Alliance. You can follow me on Twitter.