Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) has long been known as the legendary shooting game of the world and is considered the “backbone” of eSports with thousands of tournaments each year and millions of followers.
FACEIT London Major – one of the largest CS:GO events in 2018, is located in the prestigious Major League system of CS:GO. Organized and produced by FACEIT, the copyright of FACEIT London Major is offered at no cost and with many strict conditions attached. The competition qualifiers began at the start of 2017. Now it’s been two weeks since the start of the competition. After an exciting Legends Stage that lasted for five days, the 2018 FACEIT Major is back. From the possible 24 contenders for the title, only 8 teams remain in the competition. The 16 teams failed to deliver decent results which got them eliminated early from the competition. Now the competition is in the last stage and hosts some of the biggest teams.
This last stage of the competition is labelled as Champions Stage. This will be played in the single elimination, best of three format. So it means that no team will get a second chance and will have to say goodbye to the $ 500,000 prize. This stage will continue from 20 to 23 September. So just sit back and enjoy the action that is set to take place at the famous Wembley Stadium.
The reason to why we have picked this match between Liquid and HellRaisers is that it is a battle between one of the strongest teams against the team that defied all odds. Liquid have exhibited some of the eye catching performances on the competitive level. Meanwhile, HellRaisers, might not be amongst the top 10 teams in the world but are possibly the strongest 2nd tier teams at the moment.
Liquid vs HellRaisers
Team Liquid
The legendary e-sports organization Team Liquid was founded in 2000 in the Netherlands. In addition to its extensive eSports web portal, Team Liquid is well-known for its representation in StarCraft 2 and Dota 2. Their Dota 2 roster captain “Kuroky” is the richest eSports athlete in the world.
In Dota 2, Team Liquid was ranked fourth in The International in August. Their CS: GO Division is also good – despite the fact that it was only launched in 2015. In the World Ranking, the line-up of Team Liquid is currently at second place behind Astralis.
In London, Liquid shared the first place in Challengers Stage with Ninjas in Pyjamas. In the Legends stage, it proved to be a force to be reckoned with as they beat: Team Winstrike (16-7), NiP (16-10) and world-class Astralis in a tight match 19-15. So that makes Team Liquid the only unbeaten team in the competition so far. This will be a huge boost for them as they come up against one of the surprises of the competition.
Players
- Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella, USA
- Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski, USA
- Russell “Twistzz” Van Dulken, CAN
- Keith “NAF” Markovic, CAN
- Epitaph “TACO” de Melo, BRA
- Wilton “zews” Prado, BRA (coach)
HellRaisers
HellRaisers is a European e-sports organization that focuses mainly on Counter-Strike and Hearthstone. HR’s CS: GO was founded on the foundations of the late Astana Dragons team in 2014, after which HellRaisers have been the standard visitor of the world’s CS tournaments.
In London, HellRaisers survived by winning the CIS, i.e. Russia and former Soviet Union qualifiers. In the ‘Challengers Stage’ team proved to be in tune with the recent arrival from Stockholm DreamHack Masters. They won against some of the most renowned teams, North, Gambit Esports, and OpTic Gaming. But they were beaten by Team Liquid.
Then in the Legends Stage, HellRaisers initially lost to G2 (20-22) and BIG (9-16). But they bounced back by winning against Cloud 9 (19-16) and then beating TyLoo (16-10). In the decisive tiebreaker, they beat Fnatic 2-1 to secure their spot in the quarterfinals.
HellRaisers might be coming to the quarterfinal with a good confidence but it looks like their fairytale is about to come to an end.
Starman
The man that could shine for HellRaisers is woxic. In the past 38 games, the young starlet holds a decent .80 kills per round average. He has also shined for the team is 1v3 situations a lot of times. He joined his team during the group stages due to the visa issues. Due to that reason, HellRaisers got eliminated in the early stages. So, if Liquid wants to win then they should be aiming for woxic. Team Liquid has done that before as they beat them in the first week of the competition.
Players
- Issa “ISSAA” Murad
- Özgür ”woxic” Eker
- Bence ”DeadFox” Böröcz
- Kirill “ANGE1” Karasov
- Vladyslav “bondik” Nеchуроrchuk
Maps
Let’s have a look at the possible picked and banned maps of this upcoming best of 3 series. The first map could possibly be Cache since both teams have a high win rate on it. On Cache, Team Liquid holds 81.8% win-rate compared to 69.2% of HellRaisers. Meanwhile, the map to be first banned will be Mirage since both teams just have an over 50% win-rate. Despite both of these sides have played on this map on so many occasions. Inferno is the next possible pick since it is the most played map for both line-ups. These two maps, Inferno and Cache might be enough for Team Liquid to end the quarterfinal. Lastly, Overpass will also be banned by Liquid since this is the most successful map of HellRaisers in the competition.
Final Verdict
Team Liquid 2 – 0 HellRaisers
Odds on bookmakers
| Bookmakers | Team Liquid Odds | HellRaisers Odds | ||
| European | American | European | American | |
| EGB.com | 1.14 | -714 | 4.03 | +303.00 |
| Betway | 1.20 | -500 | 4.00 | +300.00 |
| Loot.bet | 1.20 | -500 | 4.70 | +370.00 |
| GG.bet | 1.19 | -526 | 4.73 | +373.00 |
| Bet365 | 1.16 | -625 | 4.50 | +350.00 |
Shehryar is a professional eSports analyst with a particular affinity for CS:GO, LoL, and DOTA. He covers major eSports events across the world for WagerBop.
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