?BIG played well at the European Masters Spring, where they made it to the quarter-finals only to be eliminated by their regional rivals mousesports. Regardless, they’re still the reigning Prime League Pro Division champions and one of the top teams heading into the summer split.

BIG enter the second split of the season with a slightly changed roster. Star top laner Enzo “SLT” Gonzalez left for Team Vitality last week, while jungler Karim “Karim kt” Aubineau returned to France to play with GamersOrigin.

Replacing the two are ex-Illuminar Gaming top laner Dawid “Melonik” ?l?czka and jungler Philippe “Akabane” Le. While we don’t know much about these two, it’s fair to say that BIG are now much weaker and will need some time to establish a strong synergy.

EURONICS were the worst team in the league last term, but they fielded an entirely new roster at the time. The all-German side should look better now that they have established some synergy, and since this is a best-of-one (Bo1) match, a small play on the outsiders is worth a shot.

?We can use the same approach here as we did for the BIG vs EURONICS Gaming match. This is the opening fixture of the split and a Bo1, so there’s a high chance we might see an upset.

And it’s not like one team is that much better than the other. SK Gaming Prime were excellent last split, finishing fourth in the regular season, but they fell flat in the opening round of the Prime League Pro Division playoffs. E WIE EINFACHT E-SPORTS were second-to-last with a 6-12 record last split, but as was the case with EURONICS, that was a freshly built roster.

EWI don’t lack individual talent, seeing how their jungler Daniel “D4nKa” Golzmann posted the second-best individual stats in the league last term. Similarly, Florian “Glowing” Loferski finished the season as the fourth-best mid laner in the league.

EWI have the talent to match SK Prime and offer great value to win the match, but we are satisfied with the LoL betting odds on a +9.5 kill handicap.

?GamerLegion were one of the strongest teams in the league last season and should have finished inside the top three, but they did not make it past Unicorns of Love Sexy Edition in the first round of the playoffs. They now enter the summer split as one of the few teams that have not made any roster changes.

PENTA 1860 haven’t made any notable changes to their roster besides the signing of substitute support Arno “Uloper” Schmidt. It’s unclear whether Uloper will start for them this split.

These sides halved their two meetings last term, but it was PENTA who won their last clash in March. While that win came when GamerLegion were struggling, it shows that PENTA have the tools to match them. Expect a close fixture.

?Mousesports made it to the semi-finals of the LoL European Masters, whereas Schalke 04 Evolution failed to make it out of the group stage. Still, we shouldn’t overreact to international results, primarily because S04E were placed in a group with finalists BT Excel and eventual champions Karmine Corp.

The LoL betting odds for this match favour mousesports, but we think they look a little bit short. It seems like the esports bookmakers are putting too much weight on mouz’s deep run at EUM Spring, but as we said before, that doesn’t mean much.

Both teams parted ways with their star players ahead of the summer split. Mouz lost Adam “LIDER” Ilyasov to Team Vitality and replaced him with Pawe? “Czekolad” Szczepanik, whereas S04E promoted Ilias “NUCLEARINT” Bizriken to their main roster and signed Artur “Zwyroo” Trojan as his replacement.

Mouz seem lightly stronger, but S04E are good enough to keep this one within eight kills.

CDA-FDC Professional Championship

Invictus Gaming find themselves in a downwards spiral which seems to have no end. The only two teams IG managed to defeat in their last 10 fixtures were Phoenix and Sparking Arrow Gaming, while they severely underperformed even against some weaker sides – including Team Aster (0-2).

While it would be hard to say Aster are comparable to the likes of PSG.LGD, ViCi Gaming and other Chinese Dota2 juggernauts, Jiang “天命” An and co. are playing some solid Dota. Aster went 6-4 in their last 10 and forced ViCi to three maps (1-2) en route to the OGA Dota PIT bronze medal, which suggests they are more than capable of defeating the struggling IG again.

ESL One Germany

Natus Vincere ended the group stage with a slightly disappointing 3-2 record. While they defeated Cyber Legacy (2-0), Winstrike (2-0) and Yellow Submarine (2-1), they underperformed against Team Liquid (1-2) and mudgolems (0-2).

OG came out of the group stage with a slightly better 3-1 record. Their only loss came against Alliance (1-2), but that does not take away from their 2-0 sweeps of Winstrike Team, Vikin.gg and Yellow Submarine.

OG are not nearly as strong as they were in 2018-2019. NaVi have already bested them twice this year, so we could be in for another close match. A bet on NaVi to win 2-1 is worth considering, but over 2.5 maps is the safer bet.

Team Secret are priced as massive favourites over Team Nigma for the opening round of the ESL One Germany playoffs. That is no shock considering how dominant Secret have been not only throughout the group stage (3-0) but for a good portion of 2020.

To put Secret’s supremacy into a perspective, they have not lost a single match since June and have dropped only nine series out of 86 played since the turn of the year. However, three out of those nine losses came against Team Nigma.

Although Nigma have an extremely talented roster, their lack of consistency makes it hard to trust them as a longshot bet. Still, the odds on the +1.5 handicap are high enough for us to take a punt.

Prime League Pro Division 2020 Grand Final

Team GamerLegion have been performing extremely well this tournament. That especially holds true for their top laner, Christian “Phones” Sieg, who is averaging the third-highest KDA (8.8) in the competition.

However, those efforts are overshadowed by the performances of the mousesports players, who occupy five of the top six spots in the KDA standings. Top of the pops is their support, Hampus Mikael “promisq” Abrahamsson, with an absurdly high 28.0 KDA.

GamerLegion have beaten mousesports before, but that does not convince us they can do it again. Mouz’s individual quality seems to be far above any other team at the tournament, so we are confident they can seal this series with at least two maps to spare.

Intel Extreme Masters XV New York Online – CIS

?These teams will clash for the first time since late June, when Nemiga swept HellRaisers 2-0 during ESEA Season 34 Premier Division Europe. Nemiga have since cooled down and have recently put up some very concerning results, including a 17-19 loss to Crazy Killerz and a narrow 22-20 win over Chocojapaskat – both semi-amateur teams.

Nemiga are 3-4 since the start of October, which is only slightly worse than HellRaisers’ 5-3 record. Like Nemiga, HellRaisers have not impressed of late, particularly with their losses to Sangal Esports (10-16) and HauntedFamily (11-16).

Neither team is in good form, which suggests we are in for a scrappy match that could go either way. A bet on the outsiders can be considered, but we have no faith either team will manage a clean sweep.

?Team Spirit last met with Gambit Esports’ current roster (then Gambit Youngsters) in August in the Nine to Five #3 semi-finals and won 2-1. The match was relatively close, with Gambit taking the series lead (16-9) only to lose the next two maps 12-16 and 15-19.

Since Gambit promoted their reserves roster, Abay “Hobbit” Khassenov and co. have produced a very impressive 7-1 record. Meanwhile, Spirit are 5-5 from their last 10, although they played most of those games in ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe against some of the best CS:GO esports teams in the world.

Spirit are the stronger team, but their lack of playtime – only nine games since September – is a concern. However, at the offered odds, we have to side with the favourites.

?As the reigning IEM Katowice champions, Natus Vincere are the clear favourites to win this tournament. We have to consider, however, that NaVi are notorious for sloppy performances in the opening stages of any tournament, which is our biggest concern for their group stage fixtures.

K23 (formerly Syman Gaming) enter IEM New York on a 10-match winning streak, but eight of those wins came against amateur and semi-amateur teams. Despite K23’s strong form, they have only looked good against weaker opponents and will likely struggle to leave a dent in the current no.3 team in the world.

Prime League Pro Division 2020 Grand Final

?The last time we saw GamerLegion and Schalke Evolution on the Rift was during European Masters 2020 Summer. While GL reached the grand finals, S04E failed to make it out of the group and ended the tournament in 12th-13th place.

Despite Schalke’s underwhelming result at the EU Masters, this is still a very stacked team who reached the grand finals of Prime League Pro Division 2020 Summer in August. They swept GamerLegion 2-0 during that campaign, so it’s fair to say they’re more than capable of defeating their regional rivals.

If the previous meetings between these two sides are anything to go by, we are in for another exciting and close affair. They have each won two of their four battles since June, but Schalke Evolution have looked more stable in best-of games and should have no trouble covering the +1.5 line in this one.

Master League Portugal Season 6

?For The Win Esports have managed only one win (16-11 against ZEROZONE) in their eight games at Master League Portugal S6, putting together a disappointing -40 map differential. While eXploit Esports look to be in a much stronger position at 4-4, they have yet to face any of the tournament’s top dogs.

The betting odds on FTW are inflated due to their poor record, but they’ve had a tougher schedule and were fairly unlucky in some of their losses. FTW have met with eXploit nine times in 2020 and won six games (including a 16-6 win in September), so we have no problem backing them for the win.