?It’s difficult to make a case for Extra Salt here, and not least because Team Spirit have been playing extremely well for the past month. Extra Salt are essentially the former Cloud9 core plus Edgar “MarKE” Maldonado, formerly of Chaos Esports Club.

Extra Salt enter this match with a 30-3 record since late January, which should catch anyone’s attention, but most of their wins have come against weaker sides at ESEA events and the DreamHack Open. On the other side, Team Spirit are 13-3 since late January, and that record includes wins against some of the best European sides.

Extra Salt field capable players who were relatively successful while playing under Cloud9, but it’s been a while since they last faced a top-20 team, let alone the no.7 side in the world. Team Spirit are just too good at the moment, so we are backing them to cover the map line.

?Going from one mismatch to another, we have NASR Esports taking on Gambit Esports in the second fixture of the day. A quick look at the odds reveals just how one-sided this match should be, with esports bookmakers giving NASR only a 6% chance to defeat the reigning IEM Katowice champions.

The betting odds don’t surprise us, considering NASR are a UAE squad featuring four unknown players and former Budapest Five in-game leader Atif “gejmzilla” Mustafa as their captain. What’s more, NASR have yet to face a top-tier team since World Electronic Sports Games 2018, where they fielded a completely different squad.

Betting on Gambit to win 2-0 at $1.16 offers no value, but we are happy to take a shot with NASR at the +1.5 map handicap. This is a complete long shot, but the odds make it worth a stab for two reasons.

Firstly, Gambit might not take this match too seriously and could be overconfident, which could turn around and bite them. Secondly, NASR are an unknown opponent for Gambit, whereas the underdogs have more than enough film to analyse and figure out how to play this one. Whether that will be enough remains to be seen, but at $4.81, we are ready to pull the trigger on NASR getting on the board.

?Once a Classico of the LATAM CS:GO scene, this fixture is now regarded as more of a warm-up match for FURIA. The latest CS:GO betting odds don’t seem too wrong at first, but we have to consider that this is still a match between two local rivals who know each other well.

It’s no secret FURIA overtook MiBR as the best Brazilian CS:GO team last year, but we are reluctant to believe Andrei “arT” Piovezan and his crew will walk away with a clean sweep. That is despite their 2-0 win against MiBR at ESL Pro League Season 13 last month.

These Brazilian derbies can be quite volatile, which is a good enough reason for us to believe MiBR can make something happen. The outsiders have a better win rate on Dust II, Mirage and Overpass, and as long as Raphael “exit” Lacerda can continue playing as well as he has for the past month, MiBR should be able to make FURIA sweat.

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Astralis enter this tournament off a disastrous run at ESL Pro League Season 13, where they lost against Gambit Esports (0-2) and FURIA (0-2) to finish in fifth-sixth place. It marked Astralis’ third consecutive tournament of the year where they finished outside of the top four, after running seventh-ninth at BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2021 and fifth-sixth at IEM Katowice.

OG were even less convincing at the ESL Pro League, where they crashed out of the group stage and ended in 13th-16th place. Their only notable tournament placement of the year so far came in February when they won a SteelSeries Invitational Showmatch, which is not exactly something to write home about.

OG recently decided to freshen up their roster by signing Shahar “flameZ” Shushan as a replacement for Issa “ISSAA” Murad. It remains to be seen how much of an impact he will have, but he will definitely add some much-needed firepower to this team.

Astralis haven’t been playing like themselves of late, so you have to believe OG can cause some damage despite their own lack of form. A win for the underdogs is not entirely unlikely, but we are satisfied with the betting odds on OG with a +1.5 map handicap.

We would have considered taking a shot on Endpoint had this match been played a few weeks back, but the departure of flameZ to OG makes the British squad look far less appealing. Not only was the 17-year-old one of their best players, Endpoint have yet to announce a replacement and so may have to field their coach, Ross “RossR” Rooney, for this bout.

We aren’t too excited about teams that play with their coaches, and we don’t believe RossR will improve Endpoint’s chances to cause an upset here. He wasn’t exactly a top-tier player during his career, so it’s highly unlikely he will bring much to the table as a stand-in.

G2 Esports are just a better team overall, and while they have been very hit-or-miss for the past month, their star-studded roster should have no issues against opponents like Endpoint.

We don’t need to analyse this match too much to establish that Team Liquid are a better team than Dignitas – the latest CS:GO betting odds do that job for us.

Team Liquid enter this match off a somewhat disappointing ninth-12th place finish in the ESL Pro League, where they looked very good during the group stage (4-1) but fell short against G2 (1-2) in the first round of playoffs. On the other side, Dignitas haven’t attended a single high-profile tournament since cs_summit 7 in January and haven’t faced any tough opponents since the Snow Sweet Snow #3 playoffs, where they lost to Evil Geniuses (1-2).

Dignitas are nothing more than a mediocre second-tier team, whereas Liquid are no.5 in the global CS:GO rankings. Anything less than a 2-0 sweep would be a massive disappointment for the North American side.

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MIBR vs CHAOS ESPORTS CLUB CS:GO BETTING & MATCH DETAILS

MIBR vs CHAOS ESPORTS CLUB BLAST PREMIER: SPRING 2020 AMERICAN SHOWDOWN BETTING PREVIEW

MiBR and Chaos Esports Club will meet for the fifth time this year when they face off in Group A of the BLAST Premier: Spring 2020 American Showdown this Tuesday.

MiBR enter the tournament following an underwhelming run through DreamHack Masters Spring 2020: North America, where they lost against FURIA (0-2) and Team Liquid (0-2) but managed to outperform Chaos (2-0) to secure a spot in the playoffs. The Brazilians also struggled at ESL One: Road to Rio – North America, where they beat YeaH (2-0), Bad News Bears (2-0) and Envy (2-1) but fell flat against Liquid (0-2) and FURIA (0-2) again to finish in seventh-eighth place.

Due to a lack of any notable success since they reached the FLASHPOINT finals in April, MiBR opted to make some roster changes last month. Former Team One player Alencar “trk” Rossato came in as a replacement for Ignacio “meyern” Meyer, who was bumped down to the inactive roster.

To date, trk has played only three games with MiBR and averaged a poor 0.84 rating. While we can give the 24-year-old Brazilian esports pro some slack, as he needs some time to adjust to his new team, his performances are far from what MiBR need to re-establish themselves as one of the top CS:GO teams.

Chaos Esports Club enter the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown on a six-game winning streak, although most of those results came against considerably weaker teams. Throughout the last week, Chaos defeated Team One (2-0), Recon 5 (16-10), Infinity (16-9), New England Whalers (16-14), Blood, sweat, and tears (16-7) and picked up a forfeit win against Big Frames.

While Chaos have proven they can deliver against weaker teams, they tend to fall flat when facing stronger opposition, as seen in their journey through DreamHack Masters Spring 2020: North America. Nevertheless, Chaos showed some promise in that event with a 2-1 win over Liquid and a three-map loss against FURIA.

Joshua “steel” Nissan and co. have not achieved any notable results this year, which is no surprise given their roster instability since January. Star AWPer Owen “smooya” Butterfield left the team at the end of March, while Hunter “SicK” Mims announced his retirement from CS:GO esports in April to pursue a career in VALORANT with Sentinels.

Chaos made their last roster change on Tuesday, May 12, when the North American esports organisation parted ways with Nathan “leaf” Orf, who failed to impress during his trial, and replaced him with former Bad News Bears player Jonathan “Jonji” Carey. While Jonji has starred with a 1.22 average rating across 13 fixtures, he has not yet been offered a permanent contract.

MIBR vs CHAOS ESPORTS CLUB BLAST PREMIER: SPRING 2020 AMERICAN SHOWDOWN BETTING PREDICTIONS

Chaos Esports Club (61.2%) and MiBR (60%) hold similar win rates across the last three months. Those numbers don’t mean much, however, considering Chaos faced much weaker opponents in that time.

Esports bookmakers have installed MiBR as favourites for this match, which is not surprising given they recently defeated Chaos at FLASHPOINT (2-1) and DreamHack Masters Spring 2020: North America (0-2). Having said that, the Brazilian have been struggling of late, especially since the Counter-Strike esports scene transitioned to online play.

This bout will be played as a best-of-one (Bo1) contest, which brings the underdogs right into the contest. While we are not will to back Chaos outright, over 26.5 rounds is a very tempting option. Chaos reached double digits on both maps in their last meeting with MiBR, and there is no reason to believe they can’t do it again here.

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