Valiance vs Hellraisers

LOOT.BET Cup 2,

I apologize for my absentee as of late, recently moved into a new apartment and finally got my internet set up.

Today we are analyzing the match up between Hellraisers and Valiance in the quarter finals of the LOOT.BET Cup. The winners of the LOOT.BET cup get a trip to "CsSummit2". An event in which was last playing in Los Angeles, US. Where did we not only see great CS, but also was a very well organized and funny event that the entire community enjoyed. Both team will be going full force to attempt to seize this moment.

Hellraisers:

Hellraisers got autoplaced in the upper bracket of this event, not having to go through the group stages. This effect was also similar with the teams: Heroic, Mousports, and GODSENT. Hellraisers have been playing surprisingly well as of recent, in their ESL Pro League Finals, they put up a surprisingly good fight against some of the best teams in the world. Defeating Fnatic, Team Liquid, and Astralis. With the pick up of their newest member: Kristjan 'FejtZ' Allsaar, Hellraisers have gotten a more solidified team.

Maps for Hellraisers look promising. "Inferno" is number one with 11 wins to 7 losses. "Cobblestone" follows with the only negative record in the pool of 7-10. "Mirage" is at 10-5, "Overpass" at a whopping 12-3. "Cache" at 8-6", "Train" at 3-2, and finally "Nuke" at 1-0.

Valiance:

Valiance looks like a team with a lot of potential. they have solid stats across the board and have a great map pool. I have written about this team in the past and I believe I predicted AGO to defeat them. Which they did, however Valiance pushed the first map into a 3x overtime and lost on "Train" 9-16. This team is good but has a lot to work on, Hellraisers will be a good testament of their skill.

Taking a look at the map pool we find that "Inferno" is the number one map with 11 wins and 7 losses. "Cache" sits at 9-3, "Train" at 6-4, "Mirage" at 7-2, "Nuke" at a comfortable 6-0, and finally "Cobblestone" at 3-2.

Map Pick/Ban:

Map bans are going to be a little more tricky than usual, Valiance have a secret weapon up their sleeve and that is the map "Nuke". Having such a good record on the map it force the other team to ban it, allowing Valiance to choose another one of their strong maps. "Overpass" is a perma ban for Valiance, following that ban, Hellraisers are likely to ban out "Nuke". "Cache" and "Inferno" will be the picks. "Cobblestone" and "Train" will be the remaining bans and "Mirage" will be the decider.

Final Thoughts:

Even though it looks as though Valiance has a better map pool and winnings on each map, the level of the teams they have been playing are sub par. I hope that they can get at least one map off of HellRaisers to show that they can compete, but I don't see them overcoming the European squad. Hellraisers, will likely advance to the next stage and I would go as far as to say that they might earn that spot to CS-Summit as well.