Our esports expert Michael Lee is back this Monday, the 13th of July with a full preview and betting tips for some of his favourite matchups across the gaming globe! Today he focuses in on CS:GO Nine to Five tournament for all three of his bets.
Esports Betting Tips: Monday, July 13th
SG.pro vs ALTERNATE aTTaX
Nine to Five 1
ALTERNATE aTTaX are entering this match after they have defeated CR4ZY, HONORIS, Lyngby Vikings, sAw and LDLC. While ALTERNATE aTTaX are a decent Tier2 team, they also tend to drop games against unknown and awful teams such as lvlUP, Ambush, Sprout... Nevertheless, ALTERNATE aTTaX are faring well in the online era of CS and are holding onto a 62% win rate across the last three months.
SG.pro are in a worse form compared to ALTERNATE aTTaX, as they won only two games out of last five. They defeated forZe and sAw, but lost to HellRaisers, forZe and Syman. SG.pro are a new and young team, so they don't have a lot of experience under their belts and are entering this match with only a 50% win rate across the last three months. However, they have already defeated AA (2-1) a couple of days ago in round one of Nine to Five 1.
The Russians started the series against AA with a strong performance on Mirage, lost 13-16 on Vertigo, but bounced back with a 16-13 win on Overpass. Alexey "RuFire" Burakov was the best player on the server that day with a total of 69 frags and 1.26 HLTV rating. On the side of AA, we saw Stefan "stfN" Seier and Sabit "mirbit" Coktasar produce a somewhat solid performance, while their teammates failed to show up.
Although SG.pro managed to defeat ALTERNATE aTTaX, I am expecting a much different result this time around. The German squad looked very solid as of late, which should not only give them the morale boost but also the momentum to claim a revenge win here. Bet on AA to win without dropping a map!
ALTERNATE aTTaX -1.5 Maps
$2.00
CR4ZY vs AGF
Nine to Five 1
Both teams are coming into the match in a similar form with three wins out of the last five matches. CR4ZY won against Hard Legion and twice against FATE, but lost against ALTERNATE aTTaX and AVEZ. AGF, on the other end, lost against forZe and HellRaisers but defeated lvlUP, Wisla Krakow and LDLC.
I don't see how and why AGF are entering this match with such low odds, considering they are playing with two stand-ins. Kristou is here from North and is set to return when Tier1 CS comes back, and Daffu will be playing instead of netrick, which is obviously not ideal. While AGF are not a bad team per se, they are nowhere near as good as the odds would lead us to believe.
CR4ZY on the other end are ranked lower than AGF, but are entering this match with a 55.6% win rate across the past three months, which suggests they are holding on well in the online CS. Even though this is a young team, they boast with a lot of talent and I still don't understand why people underestimate them. From what I have seen when watching them play, CR4ZY tend to perform admirably well even against much stronger teams and they even managed to defeat Giants a couple of weeks ago.
Apart from Dust2 and Vertigo, both teams seem to be comfortable on all maps, which makes me believe we are in for an open match. Bet on CR4ZY to deliver!
AVEZ vs Wisla Krakow
Nine to Five 1
AVEZ are entering this match on a five-match winning streak. They have defeated CR4ZY (twice), Illuminar and Nexus without dropping a map and took down FATE (16-6) in a BO1 match. Clearly, AVEZ are in good form, and their 53% win rate across the last three months only further proves that. This team also has no internal issues, so I am confident AVEZ have a bright a future ahead.
Their next opponents, Wisla Krakow, however, are on a 3-2 run in their last five. They defeated lvlUP, Nexus and 9INE, but lost to AGF and Illuminar. Besides holding onto a worse record in the last five, Wisla Krakow also won only 48.5% matches across the past three months.
Wisla Krakow and AVEZ last met about two months ago in a quarter-finals match of the ESL Polish Championship Spring 2020. The match ended 2-1 in AVEZ's favour, however, it was an incredibly close bout. AVEZ won map one 16-11, lost the next one 12-16 and edged out a win with 31-29 on Overpass.
Considering how close the last meeting between Wisla Krakow and AVEZ was, we can expect something similar here, so the low odds on AVEZ make no sense to me. As mentioned in previous betting predictions, these Polish CS:GO matches tend to be very close and are more times than not a complete coin-toss, which is why we will bet on the series to go the distance!
