Our esports expert Michael Lee has had a few days to rest up and he is back this Monday night with a full slate of best bets for the esports action around the world! Today he focuses in on some CS:GO action from the ESEA Advanced Season 34 and the Nine to Five Cup.
Esports Betting Tips: Monday, July 20th
Tricked vs sAw
ESEA Advanced Season 34 Europe Grand Finals
Tricked are coming into this match with a one map advantage since they earned their spot in the grand finals via the upper bracket. They are also in a slightly better form compared to sAw, with only one defeat out of last five matches. Tricked Esports’ only loss came against HellRaisers, while they managed to defeat CR4ZY, Sangal, Ambush and Secret.
SAw, on the other side, won only three matches out of last five played. They have defeated Secret, Nexus and Tikitakan but lost to ALTERNATE aTTaX and Secret.
The last time Tricked and sAw met was in February during the Flashpoint 1 Europe Closed Qualifier, where sAw outclassed Tricked 16-3 on Vertigo and 16-5 on Inferno. These two sides also met in April at the DreamHack Qualifier, where sAw stomped Tricked 16-4, so it's fair to assume sAw are the better team in these bouts.
The bookmakers, however, favour Tricked on the outright market due to their one-map advantage, but I don't believe that one map advantage matters as much in the online CS. We have seen teams overcoming the map handicap numerous times before and considering sAw players are far more experienced than Tricked, I can’t agree with the odds here.
The Portuguese are in great form and despite the map handicap, they should have no real problems taking down the young and inexperienced Danes. Value bet on sAw!
GamerLegion vs HONORIS
Nine to Five 2 Dawn
If you as a team lose 6-16 to HellRaisers, you will have a hard time winning anything and I hope Honoris are aware of that. The Poles have yet to show anything that would fill me up with confidence and their 24% win rate only further proves how terrible this team really is. Even though I can respect Taz and NEO, as two CS legends for their decision to continue playing, they're nowhere near as good as they once were and perhaps should consider retirement soon.
Honoris have lost all four of their last four games played against CR4ZY, HellRaisers, Endpoint and ALTERNATE aTTax. While they played a couple of close matches, I find it hard to praise them too much for what they have shown.
Like Honoris, GamerLegion lost all of their last four games which includes losses against Syman, Wisla Krakow, Endpoint and FATE. Unlike Honoris, however, all four of GamerLegion's losses were very close and quite frankly, they were a bit unlucky not to win at least some of them.
Both teams are in bad form ahead of this match and I highly doubt any of these two sides put any serious preparation into this match. GamerLegion may be slightly stronger as a team, but they're nowhere near as good as the odds would suggest. These online matches are often a coin toss, so there is definitely value in backing Honoris to cause an upset and defeat GamerLegion.
Lyngby Vikings vs Tikitakan
Nine to Five 2 Dawn
Tikitakan are a newly established team that has played only five matches in their short history and considering this is a fresh roster with unknown names on the team, I must say they did a good job. Tikitakan won against Winstrike, Sangal and Brute without dropping a single map and even though they lost to Team Secret and sAw, Tikitakan looked fairly solid and deserve a pat on their back for the effort.
For this match, Tikitakan will be playing with three stand-in players REDSTAR, flameZ and Djur, who will replace nicoodoz, elllement and acm. That is obviously not ideal, but considering Lyngby Vikings are also forced to field stand-in players, I would not put too much weight on that inconvenience.
Neither team is what you would call top-tier, so we can expect an open and "puggy" match, especially with all the replacement players, which makes this match a complete toss-up. Nevertheless, Tikitakan are the rightful favourites to win here due to their better form. It's also worth pointing out that Tikitakan core has previously played with their stand-in players, so Tikitakan’s synergy will likely not suffer as much. Bet on Tikitakan to win with relative ease!
