by ESL Pro League Season 10 Europe enters its seventh day on Tuesday, October 15, which will also mark the second day of Group C fixtures featuring Astralis, Fnatic, North and Aristocracy.
Those four teams are competing for a ticket to the finals, where the top side will join Group A winners mousesports and Group B champions Heroic.
The teams that finish second and third will proceed to the second round, while the bottom side will pack their bags and head home.
Results so far:
Astralis 2-0 Aristocracy
Fnatic 2-0 North
Fnatic vs Aristocracy
Tuesday, October 15 – 17:25 BST
Fnatic (-500) are, alongside Astralis, one of the favourites to finish as the top seed in Group C, and rightfully so.
The Swedish outfit impressed everyone with their run at DreamHack Masters Malmo at the start of October, when they won their first tournament in over a year, indicating they are back and ready to compete at the highest level.
Fnatic opened the tournament on Monday with a win over North, where they got a chance to flex their muscles and earned a well-deserved clean sweep.
Aristocracy (+333) enter their second fixture of the group stage as heavy underdogs, which is fair when you consider they are objectively the weakest team of Group C.
Their first-up clash with Astralis went exactly as expected, with the Danish powerhouse securing comfortable victories on Vertigo (16-9) and Nuke (16-12) to produce a clean sweep.
On that day, Jacek “MINISE” Jeziak emerged as the best performing player in Aristocracy with a 1.12 HLTV Rating, whereas Karol “rallen” Rodowicz severely underperformed with a rating of 0.69.
Prediction:
Fnatic have better individual players, better leadership and ultimately more experience compared to the Polish outfit.
The map handicap is set at +1.5, making it very appealing to back Aristocracy to take at least one map off Fnatic, but all evidence suggests the favourites are a good chance of claiming a 2-0 sweep.
Fnatic -1.5 maps – -111.11 at BetOnline
Astralis vs North
Tuesday, October 15 – 21:15 BST
As the odds suggest, Astralis (-833.33) are huge favourites to win their clash with North and we can’t argue with that.
It would be fair to say Astralis failed to impress at DreamHack Masters Malmo, where they were the outright favourites to claim the title but fell flat against Fnatic in the semi-finals.
While we can go and judge Astralis for their poor show against Fnatic in Malmo, it won’t change the fact the Danish juggernauts should breeze their second fixture in Group C.
North (+450) will enter the clash with a 0-1 record following a terrible defeat against Fnatic on Monday.
They have found themselves in a downward spiral and have now reached their all-time low in the CS:GO esports world rankings (no.18), which is miles from their top-10 position this summer.
From what they have shown, North lack the needed quality to stack up against Astralis. The fact they have only managed to defeat Astralis once in their last five meetings does not help their case.
Prediction:
If North performed better against Fnatic on Monday, we would consider backing them at the +1.5 map handicap, seeing how Astralis can be slightly inconsistent at times.
However, North looked very choppy against the Swedish outfit, which leads us to believe they are not ready to impress.
All things considered, we are confident Astralis can produce a clean sweep against North and build up some more momentum before they meet with Fnatic on Wednesday.
Astralis -1.5 maps – -163.93 at BetOnline
