This article is part of our CS:GO series.
After nine weeks of regular season play, six European and North American representatives have earned the right to participate in the ESL Pro League Season IV Finals starting Wednesday. The action will start off in a Round Robin group stage with the top three teams from each group moving onto the single-elimination playoffs. The winner of the playoffs will then take home their share of the $750,000 prize pool.
Now let's take an in depth look at who will likely be advancing out of each group:
Group A: Immortals, mousesports, OpTic Gaming, Team EnVyUs, Team Liquid
Who Advances: Team EnVyUs, Team Liquid, mousesports
Fnatic was originally supposed to be in this group, but a personal problem arose with Dennis "dennis" Edman that forced his team to back out of the tournament. Rather than replace it, ESL has decided to just move forward with five teams in the group.
Team EnVyUs will likely come out of this group as the top seed, which will play it straight to the semifinals. This is a team that has finally started to click and gel well as a team. Kenny "kennyS" Schrub is performing at such a high level with his AWP that EnVyUs are routinely winning games based on his skill alone. Its last significant tournament action was at the Gfinity Invitational where it came out on top over mousesports. EnVyUs also made it to the semifinals of DreamHack Bucharest before being taken down by Cloud9. Without high-caliber teams like C9 in the group portion, EnVyUs should prevail fairly easily.
Team Liquid should be able to come out of the group as the two or three seed, as it has been playing at the top of its game over the last few months. It made it all the way to the grand finals of ESL One: Cologne before falling to SK Gaming. Liquid then advanced to the semifinals of ESL One: New York where it lost to eventual champions Natus Vincere. The success is even more impressive given the loss of star player, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev, who left for Na'Vi in August. Liquid may have just squeaked into the Finals, only making it due to Renegades dropping out, but it should be able to do some damage once the group stage starts up on Wednesday.
The final team that should make it through Group A is mousesports. This is a team that has started to come on strong in recent months. It made it to the semifinals of ELEAGUE Season 1 where it fell to the eventual champions, Virtus.pro, and was runner-up at the Gfinity Invitational. Just last weekend it took wins off of Immortals and Cloud9 to lock up a spot in the playoffs of ELEAGUE Season 2. Frankly, it's hard to ignore this high level of play combined with its 18-8 Pro League record in an incredibly stacked EU region. Should it come out playing like it did last weekend in Atlanta, mouz should be able to earn a spot in the playoffs.
If there is one team that would be able to force its way into the playoffs, it would be Immortals. While it did fizzle out of ELEAGUE Season 2 with a 0-2 record in the group stage, It did enjoy a big win over Cloud9 at the Northern Arena in September. There is certainly plenty of talent on this team to pull off a nice run in Brazil. Besides a solid run at ESL One New York, OpTic Gaming hasn't enjoyed much recent success and faces some pretty slim odds to make it out of this group.
Group B: Cloud9, Ninjas in Pyjamas, SK Gaming, FaZe Clan, NRG eSports, Team Dignitas
Who advances: Team Dignitas, SK Gaming, FaZe Clan
Team Dignitas got by under the radar for quite awhile in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive scene, but it has resurfaced in a big way with some huge wins in recent weeks. It may have only posted a 14-12 record in the regular season, but Dignitas went 11-7 in the final five weeks and took down the Polish juggernaughts, Virtus.pro, in the sixth-place decider match to secure its spot in the finals. It then took EPICENTER: Moscow by storm with convincing wins over Na'Vi in the semifinals and Virtus.pro agian in the finals to come out on top. With this team playing at such a high level, it's hard to see it not coming out of this group.
While SK Gaming certainly hasn't performed at the same level as it was earlier this year when it won back-to-back Majors, as well as ESL Pro League Season 3, the team still is no slouch. Not to mention the fact that its main Achilles heel, Virtus.pro, will be nowhere near Brazil this week. This should allow SK to get back on the horse and show the world that it's still one of the top teams in the game. Having the home-crowd advantage should definitely help them out, too.
The final team coming out of groups should be FaZe Clan, but it's not a slam dunk by any means. FaZe is coming into the Finals as the fourth seed from Europe after posting an 18-8 record. It also finished the season strong with a 7-1 record in the last four weeks of the season. But that strong finish doesn't hide the fact that FaZe was sitting comfortably on top of the standings for the better part of the regular season. And considering the team has already locked up its spot in the ELEAGUE Season 2 playoffs, it's not hard to imagine a scenario where FaZe relaxes a bit too much and succumbs to fatigue.
It may seem odd that Cloud9, a team who went 25-1 during the regular season, isn't being pegged to advance through the group. The reason for that is two-fold. First, it amassed that record in a North American region that quite simply isn't as strong as the European region. Outside of SK Gaming, who was playing without Fernando "fer" Alvarenga for most of the season, there just aren't many threats. Couple that with the fact that when facing international competition in Group A of ELEAGUE Season 2, Cloud9 crumbled under the pressure and couldn't even make it out of groups. They certainly have a shot to make it out of groups here in the Pro League Finals, but it's got its work cut out.
Ninjas in Pyjamas used to be one of the premier teams in CS:GO, and they still are to an extent, but until it makes some positive strides, it's hard to put much faith in the group. Outside of its win at StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 2, NiP hasn't advanced past the quarterfinals of a tournament since June. They are certainly ready for a resurgence, but this group likely won't be where it happens.
And let's not even discuss what could happen to Shaq's team in this murderer's row of a group.
