Now that ELEAGUE 2017 is over it’s time to get back to our regular scheduled programming but let’s make sure we take away some things after that Premier.
ELEAGUE 2017 Quick Recap
First of all let me say that it was a pretty accurate tournament as far as standings go. Other than the insane luck of Heroic (who absolutely destroyed SK Gaming in the Group stages), the final results made sense.
FaZe Clan came away with $500,000 USD in first place, followed by Astralis in second. Cloud9 and North came in 3rd-4th and 5th-8th was G2 Esports, Fnatic, Team EnVyUs and Heroic. The last two teams in that top 8 could have been anyone but for the most part the results make sense.
Now let’s head over to the ESL Pro League and use these showings to predict this crucial second last week of seasonal play.
ESL Week 5 Standings
North America
ESL Pro League NA Week 5 Standings – Image Snipped from http://en.pro.eslgaming.com/csgo/proleague/standings/
Europe
ESL Pro League EU Week 5 Standings – Image Snipped from http://en.pro.eslgaming.com/csgo/proleague/standings/
Some Teams are Better Online
It’s hard to get an accurate guess on who is going to do well in the ESL just based on the standings alone. If you look at Fnatic’s record, they really have only played two maybe 3 tough teams so far this season and just looking at their performance at ELEAGUE 2017 proves that when it comes to LAN, they don’t hold up to their ESL name.
Of course when it comes to the top of the class like Astralis, FaZe and SK Gaming, you see them on top regardless of LAN or Online. SK Gaming did have a horrible performance at ELEAGUE but it doesn’t mean you should bet against them, especially this week.
SK Gaming
Sure Heroic pinned down SK Gaming and tickled them until they cried uncle but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still one of the best (if not the best) teams in the world. SK Gaming has quite the easy week ahead of them, first facing Ghost and then Rogue.
Both teams have only 3 wins to their name with Rogue having slightly less losses (11 to Ghost’s 16) and each team has won over 100 rounds less than SK Gaming has. I don’t want to say this is in the bag (as nothing is ever a for sure in sports) but I’m taking SK Gaming all four matches no question.
Cloud9
Cloud9 has a very unimpressive record (8-7) but that doesn’t mean all bets are off. Cloud9 crushed G2 2:0 and lost a hard fought battle to Astralis 1:2 in the SemiFinals.
Cloud9 has always been a solid team and they are undeniably on an upswing as of late. That with the combined knowledge of their opponents this week is why I’m taking them to win all four matches.
Renegades and compLexity Gaming are their opponents and even though Renegades have had some good matches, most of their wins (minus OpTic) have been against low tier opponents. I feel it will be close but Cloud9 will still walk away with the W against Renegades, compLexity on the other hand should be a write off.
compLexity hasn’t won a match worth talking about and I don’t see that changing this season. Still I’m going to watch their match against NRG closely but I have faith C9 has this in the bag.
