Big night of esports coming up this Sunday night and into Monday morning with a variety of different events on the card! Today we take a look at some of the key matchups from the CS:GO Road to Rio and LOOT.BET tournaments as well as the WePlay! Pushka event in DOTA2.
Esports Betting Tips: Sunday, May 3rd
MIBR vs Furia
CS:GO ESL One: Road to Rio
Boy o boy am I excited for another Brazilian derby between two of the strongest Brazilian teams. As we have come accustomed to, MIBR are consistently beating lower-ranked teams without any problems, including 2-0 against Bad News Bears, 2-0 against Yeah and 2-1 against NA and EU mix known as Envy. Recently MIBR also met with the best NA team, Team Liquid, and even though it was a close match, the Brazilians lost without winning a map. FURIA, on the other side have been performing very well recently, beating teams left and right. They won all of their matches so far, 2-1 against Envy, 2-0 against TL, 2-1 against BNB and 2-1 against Yeah. It is quite clear from the recent H2H results which teams is the current top dog in Brazil. Normally we would be in for a banger of a match if this would be played on LAN, but since the CS scene transitioned to online format, FURIA are looking like the clear favourites.
Winstrike vs Nemiga
CS:GO LOOT.BET Season 6
Winstrike and Nemiga will meet once again this Sunday, with Nemiga looking to secure a revenge win, following yesterday's crushing defeat against Winstrike. Looking back, the first two maps in yesterday's match were extremely close. Winstrike came away with a win on the first map, but only just, as they had to show up in the overtime (19-16). In the second map, Winstrike took HT lead on T-side of Dust2, but Nemiga fought back and secured the 16-13 win. It all looked like it was already over for Winstrike on Nuke with Nemiga leading 11-4 at the HT, but since Nuke is very CT-sided, the comeback was somewhat expected after a couple of initial rounds, with Winstrike producing a spectacular comeback to seal the series with 16-13.
Despite their success, it seems like Winstrike can’t slow down speed2k, who was definitely the best man on the server. Unfortunately, his duo lollipop21k had a terrible night so it's fair to assume Nemiga would have won had lollipop21k showed a bit more. I'll count on lollipop21k to perform slightly better here, and if he can deliver, Nemiga should have no issues outperforming Winstrike.
Virtus.pro vs Natus Vincere
CS:GO ESL One: Road to Rio
Navi made short work out of team Espada on the opening day of ESL One: Road to Rio with a convincing 16-7 win on Inferno, and while they had some problems on Nuke, they eventually turned things around and won 19-17 after the OT. As for Virtus.pro, they played very poorly against the old CIS guard playing under the pro100 banner. VP lost the match 0-2, although it was quite a close fixture played online, so perhaps we should give them some slack for the final result. As per usual, the online format continues spewing out unusual results and the CIS regions is a perfect place for something unusual to happen again. While VP and NaVi haven't played each other for almost 10 months, the players know each other very well, which usually results in very close matches and that's exactly what I expect to see here.
Virtus.pro +1.5 Maps
$1.90
Nigma vs OG
DOTA2 WePlay! Pushka League Season 1: Division 1
Surprisingly enough OG, the two time back-to-back TI champions have yet to win a single match at Pushka League, which does concern me whether they can even do something against Nigma. I mean in theory, OG should win, but I could have said the same for their match against OG.Seed, which they lost. What's more, OG are already eliminated from the tournament, so winning here won't help them much, besides maybe helping them with their morale. Nigma, on the other side are just as terrible as OG, seeing how they lost to Liquid (1-2) and NiP (0-2), although they did defeat OG.Seed (2-1). This fixture will basically be a clash between two teams who are incredibly strong on paper but play laughably bad, so I don't really see which has an advantage over the other. In a perfect world OG would win, but since this is an online tournament, this seems like a coin-toss match, so I really don't see a reason to side with either side. Expect a scrappy fixture, which will end with all three maps played.
Natus Vincere vs VP.Prodigy
DOTA2 WePlay! Pushka League Season 1: Division 1
Although I believed they can put up a fight, I did not trust VP.Prodigy to defeat HellRaisers on Saturday and they proved me wrong. I'm not trying to say VP.Prodigy are the next best thing that has happened to Dota2 competitive scene, but they looked very solid so far this tournament. Natus Vincere, on the other side looked even better. Outside of their 0-2 loss to HellRaisers on day one, NaVi defeated B8, Team Spirit, FTM and most recently Virtus.pro and with that guaranteed themselves a ticket for the playoffs. Given that NaVi have nothing left to fight for, it's fair to assume they won't try as hard against VP.Prodigy, but I would not be so fast to side with VP just yet. In fact, I would not side with either team on the outright market, as this match can easily go both ways. Instead, it's the over 2.5 map met that looks far more appealing. VP.Prodigy looked too solid to lose without winning a map, while NaVi won't let an academy team defeat them with a clean sweep.
