StarLadder Berlin Major 2019: New Legends Stage Opening Odds & Preview

* Odds taken 08/04/19

The Picture of Perfect CounterStrike

Team Liquid is currently perfect. They had their time of finishing in second but as of late they can’t be stopped. They’ve run off five straight tournament victories and completed the IEM Grand Slam by winning four straight events run by ESL or DreamHack.

They’ve shown no signs of slowing down either. Team Liquid has five players who can each take turns carrying the game and even if someone is having an off day, someone will pick up the slack. The combo of Stewie2K, Nitro, Twistzz, NAF, and EliGE should not be bet against right now. It’s that simple.

A Simple Case

Natus Vincere is always a team to watch simply because of their star player S1mple. He’s currently the best CS:GO player in the world and puts up multiple highlight plays per map. The problem with Na’Vi is that the team is wildly inconsistent after S1mple. Their story for the longest time has been a lack of secondary fragging. At times, Electronic and Flamie have been able to accomplish that, and they’ve had a lot of success when it happens.

They’ve also added Boombl4 in place of Edward to try and help out S1mple. Regardless, it’s not enough to compete against Team Liquid. At ESL One: Cologne in early July, TL knocked out Na’Vi in a relatively close 2-0.

The Challenger Stage Teams

Out of all the teams competing at the Berlin Major, Team Vitality is the most intriguing. According to HLTV, they’re currently the second best team in the world, and it’s hard to argue after their recent ascension. At ESL One: Cologne they got huge wins over ENCE, NRG and Astralis before losing to Liquid in the Finals.

With Zywoo exhibiting star player potential, Vitality has quickly risen to the top of CS:GO. All they’re lacking is that big tournament win over the likes of Liquid. Team Vitality have odds of -10000 to make it to the Legends Stage and their odds of winning the whole tournament aren’t currently listed. However, it might be worth waiting to see what kind of odds Vitality will have of winning the whole thing. This team could still be rising.

Outside of Vitality, the only team that has any chance of making noise against the big dogs is G2. The all-French team has been on the up and showed a lot of strength during the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals. In the playoffs they advanced to the grand finals with big wins over Faze and NRG. They then lost 3-1 to, you guessed it, Team Liquid. G2 has shown improvements and the ability to take down teams that are ranked higher than them, but that’s still not enough to challenge the best team in the world.

Pick: Team Liquid (+165)