Ninjas In Pyjamas vs Hellraisers

StarSeries i-League Season 5,

Star Series i-League will be an abundant resource for this coming week of Counter-Strike betting tips. In this tip, we will be looking at the group stages for Star Series and picking apart teams Nip and Hellraisers who will be battling it out in a best of three series. Both of these teams have been taking alternate routes in terms of competitive gaming the last few weeks, so we will break down the recent forms of each team and decide who the likely of the two to come out on top.

NiP :

The most recent form of Nip came at the ESL Pro League Season 7 finals in Dallas, Texas. Where NiP, came in an overall placing of 13-16th after losing in the first round to the newly formed Optic gaming line up. Too much of my and many others surprise, NiP would not claim a single map. I take this best of three loss to Optic as a slight misdirection of how NiP as a team actually plays. This was the first offline event that the newly formed Optic would play at, and because of this NiP did not have any film to study and had to go into the game with no information of the opposition. Because of this, the prep time was basically non-existent. I know in my mind that NiP are better than the newly formed Optic, however, with no information on a newly established team, it can often lead to poor results.

NiP's map pool looks like this; Inferno is 11-8, Train is 9-5, Mirage is 5-8, Overpass is 6-2, Nuke is 1-4, Cache is 3-1, and Dust 2 is 1-1

Hellraisers :

In the most recent form for Hellraisers, they played very recently on the 26th of May, where they would beat Space Soldiers and Gambit in a best of three to then lose out to North in the finals of the ESL One Cologne 2018 European Closed Qualifier. This was upsetting for the members of Hellraisers, considering the caliber of players they went against to reach the finals just to lose. Hellraisers are on the rise in terms of competitive play and I feel they will soon hit their stride if they continue to dig deep and play some well-rounded Counter-Strike.

Hellraisers's map pool looks like this; Inferno is 11-7, Mirage is 3-8, Train is 5-3, Overpass is 4-4, Cache is 3-2, Dust 2 is 3-0, and Nuke is the permaban

Map Pick/Ban :

This is a best of three series and so each team will pick one map, ban two maps, and the leftover map will the decider if the game goes to three maps. NiP will basically get two free bans since the map pools for both teams are similar, however, NiP has better win rates and matches played. NiP will ban out Inferno and Train, while Hellraisers will ban out Nuke and Dust 2. The remaining maps will be Cache, Overpass, and Mirage.

Final Thoughts:

When I look at both of these teams I want to root for the underdog of Hellraisers, but with the map choices and the amount of practice time that NiP have had while Hellraisers have been trying to qualify for other events is staggering. NiP will come into this match with a heavy advantage and I feel they will take the series. Medium bet on NiP.