Ok so for those of you that are new to this I will do my best to explain how the system works. This major is using something called the "Swiss System". What that means is that each team will play in BO1's (Best of Ones) until they either make it into the quarterfinals (need to win 3 games and lose no more than 2 games) or they are eliminated in the group stage (need to lose 3 games before they can win 3 games) and knocked out of the tournament. *A quick correction - for this major, the teams that go 2-2 will face each other in a BO3 (Best of Three), instead of a BO1.

In addition, this major will also have us picking teams for the Prelims. Basically, its the exact same thing as what was stated above, but for the teams that are yet to secure their spot in the major.

Once the prelims and group stage are over, the matches will be played in a normal bracket, meaning quarterfinals, semifinals and the finals.

In the old pickem challenge, you would pick the winner of each individual match (which is what you do in the bracket stage of this tournament) but for the group stage, you pick seven teams you think will go through, one team that will go undefeated and one team that will be knocked out without winning a single game (just a side note there will be 2 teams that are undefeated and 2 teams that are completely wiped out).

With the player break just ending and a quite suprising DreamHack Masters finish, the major will be a great way to end the summer season. Like always, we see a few new faces around but lets start off with some of the big hitters:

First We Have Our 8 Legendary Teams:

-Cloud9
-Faze
-Navi
-Mibr
-Mouse
-Winstrike
-G2
-Fnatic

Next Up We Have Boston's Fallen Challengers:

-Gambit
-Vega
-Space Soldiers
-BIG
-Astralis
-Liquid
-North
-VP

And Lastly We Have The Minor Champions:

-NIP
-Compexity
-HellRaisers
-Renegades
-Optic
-Rogue
-Team Spirit
-Tyloo

My Picks:

3-0 (Undefeated Team) - Astralis
0-3 (Eliminated Without a Win) - Space Soldiers (Changed from Spirit)

7 Remaining Teams That Will Advance:

-Liquid

-North

-BIG

-Renegades

-NIP

-HellRaisers

-Rogue

***Changed my 0-3 Pick from Team Spirit to Space Soldiers because SS will be playing with their coach as a permanent stand-in (on top of their already underwhelming performance). Also Spirit was a high risk pick because their first match is against Vega Squadron, a team that they have beat in the recent past.

Now that I have shown my picks for the Prelim Stage, I thought it might be a good idea to discuss some of my reasoning on who I picked.

Astralis for 3-0:

Astralis for me seems to be the clear pick for the 3-0. It's not that I don't think other teams can't beat them, especially with North being in this bracket as well (they just beat them in a BO3 in a grand final). However they just have the best chance of getting the 3-0 in my opinion, especially with them facing complexity in the day 1 matches, a game that they should 100% be able to win (knock on wood).

Team Spirit (CHANGED to SPACE SOLDIERS) for 0-3:

This is a risky one, the day 1 match for Spirit is them vs Vega, a team that they have been able to beat in the past before. However, the BO3 that Spirit did beat Vega in was in May of 2018, so a lot has changed since then. This is one of the times where I will say go with your gut and not with me. I think its a coin toss. ***Changed my Pick to Space Soldiers, for me the Spirit pick was to risky, it was such a 50/50 between them and Vega. And now with the news coming in that ngiN will not be able to play with SS and will be subbed in by their coach, I think there is a good chance that SS will go down 0-3 if they let this get to their heads.

Team Liquid:

Team Liquid is looking incredibly strong as of late and I doubt they will have much trouble battling out of this stage. Taco seems to have truly have found his place on this roster and the team as a whole looks fantastic playing together.

NIP:

NIP is another team that I have personally liked the results of. The team seems to be unlocking some of that early 2014 NIP magic again with the players such as Rez and Leckro. I am actually very excited to see what they bring to the table.

BIG:

BIG is a team that I picked mostly based off their results at ESL Cologne 2018. Although they lost in the grand finals against Navi, the performance was above and beyond what I was expecting.

Renegades:

As far as Renegades goes, I don't have to much reasoning behind them, mostly because the most recent results for them are the major qualifiers. I do think that they are a talented team when ALL of them show up on the server. So this might be a more risky move but I think they will make it through.

North:

North was going to be nowhere near my picks for the 7 teams to go through, that was until DreamHack Masters Stockholm. North managed to not only make it to the grand finals, but they even managed to overcome Astralis in a B03 to win the whole tournament, and this was only a couple of days ago, making this victory much more relevant in terms of past results compared to most other teams considering we just came out of a player break.

HellRaisers:

HellRaisers haven't been having good results recently, however they have also been facing much harder opponents, such as MIBR, MouseSports, etc.. This is one of the teams that I don't have much backup info to support the pick. More of a gut choice then a thought out one. If there is another team that you were thinking instead of HellRaisers, you might be ok to switch them out.

Rogue:

Rogue was my final pick. I wasn't quite sure who I wanted to fill the last slot but after reviewing all the remaining teams, I felt confident with them. I was up in the air between them and Complexity but since Complexity is facing Astralis on Day 1, I think they will start with a 0-1, where as Rogue is facing Space Soldiers, and I think they have a chance to knock them down one.

Here are all of my Day One Match Predictions (regardless of who I picked):

Space Soldiers vs Rogue - Rogue (✔)

VP vs NIP - NIP (✔)

Gambit vs Tyloo - Tyloo (✔)

BIG vs Renegades - BIG (✔)

Vega vs Spirit - Vega (✔)

North vs HellRaisers - North (❌) - Extremely close game

Liquid vs Optic - Liquid (✔)

Astralis vs Complexity - Astralis (✔)

So day one wen't quite well for me in terms of predictions (Astralis vs Complexity got postponed until day 2 so we won't know the results of that game tonight but other than that we got 7/8 correct). Moving on, here are my predictions for day 2:

NIP vs Tyloo - NIP (✔)

BIG vs Vega - BIG (❌)

Liquid vs HellRaisers - Liquid (✔)

Astralis vs Rogue - Astralis (✔) (***If Astralis lose vs Complexity for the day 1 match than it will be Rogue vs Compexity in which case I pick Rogue***)

Renegades vs Gambit - Renegades (❌)

North vs Spirit - North (❌)

Optic vs VP - Optic (✔)

Complexity vs Space Soldiers - Space Soldiers (Coin Toss) (❌) (***Like stated above if this ends up being Astralis vs Space Soldiers than I pick Astralis***)

All in all not a bad or good day for predictions (and the pick'em). Ended up going 4/4 in predictions and then three of my teams (being BIG, Renegades and North) lost their matches, setting us back ithe pick'em.

Coming into today's matches, I have to say, we got pretty lucky with the draws. They worked out as well as the could have with who I have picked. Anyways here are my predictions for day three:

Liquid vs Vega - Liquid (✔)

Astralis vs NIP - Astralis (❌) - Quad Overtime cost us the 3-0 RIP

Complexity vs BIG - BIG (❌)

Spirit vs Rogue - Rogue (❌)

Gambit vs HellRaisers - HellRaisers (✔)

Tyloo vs Optic - Tyloo (❌) - Another Quad OT

Renegades vs Space Soldiers - Renegades (✔)

North vs VP - North (✔)

Personally I think the closest games today will be Renegades vs Space Soldiers / Astralis vs NIP / and Gambit vs HellRaisers. However I am also looking forward to Spirit vs Rogue and Liquid vs Vega. All in all I think almost every game today will be incredibly exciting, hopefully we all get to see some good CS.

Mid-Day Update - Well that didn't go well. The Astralis game is one of those "what can you do" games. I don't regret picking them for my 3-0 because they almost did it, and lost in quad overtime. However, BIG and Rogue both failed horribly today, and that worries me a lot for our chances in this stage. The light at the end of the tunnel is that these picks are only worth one point each. So if we are going to lose a lot, I would rather it be in this stage.

Day 4 is going to be rough. No matter what we are probably going to lose 2-3 teams. The best we can hope for is 3 of our teams making it out of the 1-2, and HellRaisers making it out of the 2-1.

Here are my predictions for Day 4:

Astralis vs Spirit - Astralis (✔)

Tyloo vs Renegades - Renegades (❌)

HellRaisers vs Optic - HellRaisers (✔)

Gambit vs BIG - BIG (✔)

Vega vs Complexity - Complexity (✔)

North vs Rogue - North (✔)



Both Tyloo vs Renegades and Gambit vs BIG are very close matchups. If BIG and Renegades don't find some form, I think they will get shut out. Both teams are capable of winning, I think pistol rounds will be more of a deciding factor than they already are.

Update: Tyloo vs Renegades was hard to watch, Renegades had so many blunders, especially them losing the round where they forgot the bomb (in my opinion that cost them the game).

So today's matches are all going to be BO3's (best of three's). This makes each game a bit more interesting. Less chance for upsets and reliance on one map. Here are my predictions for our final day in the challengers stage of the major:

Spirit vs Tyloo - Tyloo (✔)

Optic vs BIG - BIG (✔)

Vega vs North - North (❌)

Alright so for all who followed my guide in full, you should have 5 out of 9 of the picks correct. This is not the best, nor the worst case scenario but in the end I am happy with the results. So let's break down what happened.

So for the 3-0 pick, Astralis came as close as possible to get this pick right for us. They ended up going 3-1 and the only game they lost was against NIP in quadruple overtime. So NIP and Liquid ended up being the teams to go 3-0, which are the other two teams I would have considered for that pick, but not much we can do about it now.

My 0-3 pick went exactly as planned. Space Soldiers really had no chance to pull through to the next stage, let alone take a single map. I have to admit though, they came very close to upsetting a game here and there, which makes their defeat so heartbreaking, if they had there full roster, I think they would have made it out of the challengers stage with ease. (Their coach Hardstyle deserves a huge amount of respect for the effort he put in <3)

NIP and Liquid performed as I expected, not much else to say about them, two easy points earned from them. (Both played extremely dominating Counter-Strike).

HellRaisers and BIG struggled a little bit but in the end both made it through and earned us two more points.

Rogue, North and Renegades unfortunately all went out in the challengers stage. Rogue was looking quite well but ended up getting knocked out by North (who was also one of my teams). North then proceeded to get eliminated in a BO3 match against Vega Squadron in a surprising 2-0 loss. As for Renegades, they underperformed this major and probably were my worst pick. Looking back it at now, Complexity would have been a much better pick but that is all in hindsight. One thing they did for us was take out Space Soldiers and secured the 0-3 pick.

Anyways it's been a good week of CS and I can't wait for the Legends Stage. I will update the guide with my picks sometime before Tuesday night (EST).

My Picks:

3-0 (Undefeated Team) - BIG
0-3 (Eliminated Without a Win) - WinStrike

7 Remaining Teams That Will Advance:

-Liquid

-NIP

-C9 (Hear me out)

-Astralis

-NAVI

-Faze

-MIBR

Ok so I already know that a lot of you are going to be concerned with the picks I showed. Let me clarify some things for everyone:

BIG for my 3-0:

I choose BIG for my 3-0, not because I think that they have the best shot at going 3-0, but becasue I didn't want to waste a team that I thought would definitely make it through on the risky pick like this. For example, a lot of people are picking NIP or Liquid to go 3-0, and while I agree that these are solid choices, if either of them lose once, they are no longer good for us and I think that is a waste of points. BIG is pretty much my Darkhorse pick for the Legends Stage.

WinStrike for my 0-3:

This one doesn't need to much explaining. For those of you who don't know, this is QBF. They haven't had any good results as of late and I can't see them posing a threat to anyone except maybe 2-3 teams. Also there first matchup is against Liquid which they will most likely lose in a convincing fashion.

Team Liquid:

Pretty standard choice, I favor these guys to be one of the top contenders for winning the major and I don't think there is much else to say.

NIP:

Same as Liquid, NIP look incredible. These guys showed some true strength in their quadruple overtime match win against Astralis and convinced me that the 2014 NIP magic might be making a comeback.

Cloud 9:

OK. Before you start laughing, hear me out. First off, anyone who has been following me for a while knows that I do have a NA bias. C9 have not been looking good in their past tournaments. There is no hiding it. However I do believe that if their bootcamp went well, they would be capable of knocking out some of the lower tier teams that advanced to this stage. THIS IS A RISKY PICK. If you do not want to go with C9 I understand. I would recommend that if you want to replace them with another team, it be HellRaisers or maybe even BIG. (Mouse may also be a good replacement team if you don't like the other two options).

Astralis:

Even though they didn't win us the 3-0 pick in the prelims, they did still manage to go 3-1 and all there games were rather convincing. Another team that I feel you would be foolish to go against.

NAVI:

NAVI always seem to be battling it out to try and claim the #1 spot in rankings. They hardly ever disappoint under pressure and S1mple has shown no problems leading this team to greatness.

Faze:

Another risky pick in my opinion is Faze clan. They haven't shown great results recently and it's hard to predict how things will go for them. This pick is really dependent on the teams bootcamp. If they manage to win their first game against BIG (rip my 3-0), I think they will make it out of the stage.

MIBR:

MIBR has been looking fantastic lately. Tarik and Stewie look like they have adapted to the team and with the bootcamps just finishing, they will probably look even better as a unit. This is a team that I think will be firing on all cylinders this major and I look forward to seeing them play.


These picks are a little bit odd because I wen't with the top teams in the stage. Usually this is not a good idea because most of these teams will knock eachother out. However, I think it is better to get some definite points this way instead of gambling on some more risky teams.

Here are all my predictions for the day one matches:

G2 vs HellRaisers - HellRaisers (❌)

Winstrike vs Liquid - Liquid (✔)

Faze vs BIG - BIG (✔)

Fnatic vs Complexity - Complexity (✔)

MIBR vs Tyloo - MIBR (❌)

Mouse vs NIP - NIP (✔)

NAVI vs Astralis - Astralis (✔)

C9 vs Vega - C9 (❌) - Uh oh

Day one was rough, two upsets occured that I didn't expect (C9 getting destroyed by Vega and MIBR losing against Tyloo). These two losses put me in a dangerous position, we might be looking at 2-3 of our teams leaving early with the lower bracket being so stacked. Here are my predictions for all of the day two matches:

BIG vs Tyloo - BIG (✔)

Winstrike vs Fnatic - Fnatic (✔)

Vega vs Astralis - Astralis (✔)

C9 vs HellRaisers - HellRaisers (✔)

Complexity vs G2 - G2 (❌)

NIP vs Liquid - Liquid (✔)

NAVI vs Faze - NAVI (✔)

Mouse vs MIBR - MIBR (✔)

My day two predictions went as planned, getting 7/8 correct with the exception being Complexity beating G2. In terms of my Pick'Em, we are going down a bumpy road. C9 and Faze (two of my seven teams to advance) are in elimination matches tomorrow. BIG, Liquid and Astralis are all in matches to advance so thats good news for us. MIBR, NIP and NAVI are all in mid level matches, all being 1-1. Here are my predictions for day three:


Vega vs Fnatic - Vega (❌)

Tyloo vs HellRaisers - HellRaisers (✔)

Winstrike vs C9 - C9 (✔)

Complexity vs BIG - BIG (❌)

NAVI vs NIP - NIP (❌)

G2 vs MIBR - MIBR (✔)

Astralis vs Liquid - Liquid (✔)

Faze vs Mouse - Faze (✔)

Here are my predictions for day four of the legends stage:

BIG vs HellRaisers - BIG (✔)

Vega vs NIP - NIP (✔)

Tyloo vs Faze - Faze (✔)

NAVI vs Fnatic - NAVI (✔)

G2 vs C9 - C9 (❌)

Astralis vs MIBR - MIBR (❌) (❌) (❌) - Got 16-0 (First time in Major History)

Final day of the group stage, could have gone better for me, but I guess it could have been a lot worse as well. The last day is still important for me in terms of picks, out of the three matches that are left, I have three teams fighting for survival. Unfortunately, two of them (MIBR and NIP) are against each other, so only one of those picks will be correct. The last team is Faze and they are against G2, so this will be the most important match of the day. Here are all my predictions for the day five matches:

Fnatic vs HellRaisers - HellRaisers (✔)

G2 vs Faze - Faze (✔)

NIP vs MIBR - NIP (❌)


Just for fun, I am going to predict the map outcomes for the matches today. Without knowing the maps that are going to be played this is pretty difficult but just wanted to give my input on how I feel the day will go.


I think that HellRaisers will take Fnatic 2-1 with each map being very close.

I think that Faze will take G2 2-1 (the one map that G2 wins being close)

I think NIP will take MIBR 2-0. NIP has had some of the worst draws this tournament. They have had to face some extremely difficult opponents, I believe that they have the power to beat MIBR in their current form, especially after MIBR fell 16-0 against Astralis.

Will post my thoughts about this stage within the next day or so, then sometime early this week I will release my picks for the bracket.

The playoffs are just around the corner and they are not going easy on me in terms of picks. Although I have gone through the stats and looked over match histories, I am very torn on a couple matches. I guess a good place to start would be with the quarter-final matches.

MIBR vs Complexity

NAVI vs BIG

HellRaisers vs Liquid

Faze vs Astralis

Let me start where I feel more comfortable. Liquid vs HellRaisers. I love HR and I think they have shown some great CS this major, but a Liquid pick is just the most logical choice, both in terms of stats and my gut feeling.

Faze vs Astralis is a tricky one, but for me, Astralis is still a favored team in this match. I think their map pool is much stronger than Faze and they have looked much more solid throughout the entire major. Faze can obviously win a BO3 against Astralis but in order to do so I think all Faze players need to be playing at 110%.

NAVI vs BIG is a mind game within itself. NAVI has the raw firepower to win this matchup, however, they are also vulnerable to BIG in terms of anti-strats. BIG is strong in every area that NAVI is not. BIG has a incredible tactical side to them (thanks to Gob B) and has a great chance to upset NAVI if the map veto goes in their favor. Also worth noting that NAVI is very reliant on a certain two players, and if they don't have great games, NAVI almost always suffers.

MIBR vs Complexity is probably the hardest match for me to predict. Complexity is such a darkhorse in this tournament. Their map pool is well hidden, nobody really knows where their strengths are, for example, Complexity destroyed BIG on Nuke after BIG left it in the map pool not expecting them to pick it. I think they have a really good chance at just completely stunning MIBR if they come out swinging, especially after MIBR lost 16-0 to Astralis, showing that they do run the risk of being shut down out of a match. MIBR has looked much better looking past that 16-0 and of course if they show up like they did vs NIP they should take this match with ease.

Now for those of you who don't like to read, here are my predictions for the quarter-finals:

MIBR vs Complexity - MIBR

NAVI vs BIG - NAVI

Liquid vs HellRaisers - Liquid

Astralis vs Faze - Astralis

MIBR vs COL and NAVI vs BIG are my two big potential upset matches. I really feel like both BIG and COL will show up strong but I just can't see them winning in a BO3. These are the picks that I feel are the most logical.

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Ok so now we need to talk about the Semi-Finals:

MIBR vs NAVI - NAVI

Liquid vs Astralis - Liquid

Now this is only assuming that my first picks are correct, so this may never even happen, but we need to make all of our picks now so I have to assume this is what will happen.

I'll keep this shorter, I think MIBR vs NAVI is a absolute brawl, but NAVI has had better results and looked more consistent that MIBR has. NAVI is my pick for this one.

Liquid vs Astralis (AKA the game that should be a final). I picked Liquid to win this one, they managed to win against Astralis once already in a BO1 this major (although it was extremely close), and they have looked dominant all together for the past couple weeks. Astralis also look very good and (in my opinion) have a better map pool than TL, however, I think TL will be more than prepared for the map veto and have counter-strats ready for whatever they end up playing.

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That leaves us with the Grand Final:

NAVI vs Team Liquid - Team Liquid

I think this might be the back to back NA major. Team Liquid had my prediction to potentially win the entire major since the prelim stage, and I think I am sticking with them all the way for this one. If Liquid can beat Astralis, I don't think they would have a problem beating NAVI. To me, the semi-final will be the real challenge for TL. Not saying that NAVI will be anything remotely close to a pushover team, I just don't think a team can rely on two star players forever.


***PLEASE READ - I WILL FINALIZE ALL MY PICKS BEFORE THEY LOCK ON THURSDAY, I AM NOT 100% ON THE PICKS I LISTED, AND I MIGHT CHANGE ONE OR TWO OF THEM OUT. THANK YOU AND GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE, I WILL WRITE THAT THE PICKS ARE FINAL DIRECTLY UNDER THIS PARAGRAPH.***

UPDATE: I decided to keep the picks that I made, so there will be no changes made to what I posted above. I am still very unsure about some of the games but at this point, I think I will feel this way no matter what I choose. Once again good luck to everyone!

If you have been following this guide from the very start, you should have just earned enough points for your Gold Pick'Em Trophy! Thank you to everyone who has been following, it's been a great major so far and we still have one semi-final and the final matches left. I will post some closing thoughts after the final on Sunday.

Once again thank you to everyone who has been sticking around and congrats to those who earned the gold already.