Esports action continues around the globe this Tuesday night with a great slate of CS:GO matchups in the ESL Pro League Europe and North America divisions. As usual, our gaming expert Michael Lee is on the case with a full preview and betting tips for his favourite matchups below.
ESports Betting Tips: Tuesday, September 8th
ENCE vs GODSENT
ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe
Since the player break, ENCE played only two matches and claimed some pretty big scalps. They first defeated the reigning ESL Cologne EU champions Heroic (2-1) and later crushed the best CIS team Natus Vincere with a dominant 2-0 win. Aleksi "allu" Jalli was the man to watch on ENCE in both of their wins, as he managed the highest marks on the series, which suggests he might have found his old form.
GODSENT, on the other side looked very promising before the player break when they managed notable victories against the likes of Ninjas in Pyjamas, fnatic and G2, but have since cooled down significantly. Since the break has ended, GODSENT played two games against Natus Vincere and G2, and lost both (0-2). Granted, both G2 and NaVi are two of the strongest teams in the world at the moment, and since GODSENT managed to keep three out of four maps played relatively close, they perhaps deserve some slack for their losses.
ENCE have certainly started their ESL Pro League campaign better than GODSENT, but to be fair, I don't believe there is a large gap between these two teams. ENCE haven't shown enough just yet so I believe this match can turn out to be very close. Expect all three maps to be played!
G2 vs Heroic
ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe
We are in for an exciting rematch of the ESL One Cologne 2020 Europe semi-finals, where Heroic managed to take the better of G2 in a very close 2-1 bout.
Heroic started the last meeting with G2 by claiming the series lead with a triple-overtime 25-23 win on Vertigo, yet struggled to keep their wheels spinning in the second map. G2 tied the series 1-1 with a close 19-16 win on Nuke but fell apart on Mirage (16-7) thus failed to complete the reverse sweep.
In all honesty, Heroic had a chance to win the said match 2-0, but they fell apart in a few crucial rounds on Nuke. Still, it was a solid effort from them which proved to me that Heroic can compete with the best Europe has to offer.
The H2H record between Heroic and G2 shows only three matches played and all three went the distance, which suggests we are in for another three-map thriller. Last time out, Heroic were entering the match as the favourites and won, which makes me wonder why are G2 now priced at around 1.50 to win.
It might have something to do with Heroic's coach Nicolai "HUNDEN" Petersen getting banned for exploiting a coach spectating bug, which is obviously not optimal and is the main reason why I would avoid betting on the winner here. With that in mind, the best bet looks to be over 2.5 maps.
Gen.G vs Chaos
ESL Pro League Season 12 North America
Gen.G and Chaos last met about two months ago in the Group B elimination match of the cs_summit 6 North America, where Gen.G where Gen.G secured a comfortable 2-0 win with 16-8 on Mirage and 16-9 on Inferno.
Timothy "autimatic" Ta was the best player for Gen.G that day with a total of 38 frags and 1.33 HLTV rating across the series, while Erick "Xeppaa" Bach shone the brightest for Chaos with 40 frags and 1.13 HLTV rating. It is also worth noting that Chaos have gone through multiple roster changes since then and are now without Anthony "vanity" Malaspina, Joshua "steel" Nissan and Matthew "mCe" Elmore.
Due to Chaos' roster changes, the betting odds offered on this match make completely no sense. They have lost their IGL steel who was arguably the most important part of this team and with Edgar "MarKE" Maldonado as his replacement, I don't believe this roster has a bright future. On a positive note, Chaos still have some firepower thanks to Erick "Xeppaa" Bach and Nathan "leaf" Orf, but without a proper IGL, Chaos won't be able to achieve much at this level of play.
Since steel left the team, Chaos played two games against Team Liquid and lost both. While some of the maps were close, Chaos looked completely lost at times which is obviously a byproduct of losing an IGL.
Gen.G are by no means at the same level as Team Liquid, but they should still be more than capable of defeating the current version of Chaos. Bet on Gen.G to win!
