A Preview to the Summit

April 19, 2017 | 0 | 2183| |

BeyondTheSummit is a well-known organisation in Dota2. They have been behind some successful tournaments in Dota2. They announced their venture into CS GO on December 16, 2016.

The CS_Summit tournament will be held from 20th – 24th April 2017 at Los Angeles. It will feature eight teams with a $150,000 prize pool. Hosted by Machine, the tournament features some of the best teams in the competitive scene. It presents a mixture of the top teams and some of the most loved teams such as NIP.

With a few days left for the tournament to begin, we take a look at the initial match-ups that have been released.

SK Gaming vs Team EnVyUs

The last LAN tournament that EnVyUs attended was the Eleague Major. Since then they have not had a good performance in their matches since then. Even in the ongoing ECS matches, EnVyUs have been been losing almost all their matches online. The second best French team has a lot of upcoming and veteran talent, but the mixture is not yet clicking. With the likes of RPK, Scream, Happy and XMS; this team looks in a weird spot.

They have the firepower of Scream and Sixer, but that is pretty much balanced out by some other members within the team. Happyś IGL has always been with a bunch of extremely talented individuals. While he might have achieved results, the team roster for the previous versions of EnVYUs looked as volatile as they could be.

SK Gaming on the other hand are a top level team who are still finding their way. While we cannot call them dominant in any meaning of the word, their performances have been slowly picking up. One of the biggest reason for contention has to be Fallen and his interaction within the team. It seems something is definitely off in the way Fallen plays his game and leads the team. This tournament will be a litmus test for the Brazilians who are so used to world dominance regularly.

Prediction: This match should be won by SK Gaming. They are undeniably the better team and a Best of three group stage match means that their chances of being upset are definitely much lower. The Brazilian roster is capable of playing throughout all the maps and they can definitely put forth a good performance against the second tier French roster.

Gambit vs Godsent

Gambit showed the rest of the world their prowess when they burst onto the scene back in Jan – Feb. The team which seemed mediocre were simply undefeated on Cobblestone. Their dominance against the best teams on Cobblestone is something that is a marvel even today. However their dominance on Cobblestone, Overpass was balanced out with the team not being as good on other maps.

As a result, Gambit got the notice of the best teams in the world, but they definitely did not were a bigger threat as they were unable to make deep runs into tournaments due to lack of a viable wide map pool.

Godsent has taken a dive. The roster change which saw the original Fnatic boys move back together in Fnatic left Godsent ( the org they created) high and dry. As a result, Godsent´s rank fell through the net and is all the way down at 24 right now. This is a team that has some players with talent, but together the team falters really bad. They might have 1 or two individual performances which are highlight-worthy, but in a team game, they simply are unable to replicate the level of cohesion and synergy of Gambit.

Prediction: Gambit will win this match. They are the much better team comparatively. If the maps are Cobblestone/Overpass the Gambit roster will be much better off, but even on the other maps, Gambit should be able to win based on their experience and roster synergy.

Optic Gaming vs Cloud9

The match between Optic Gaming and CLoud9 is the closest match in the initial Group stage matches. Optic Gaming and Cloud9 are right at the top of the NA scene and their performance has been quite similar to each other.

Cloud9 has won the last four matches against Optic Gaming. However, this does not specify how close the matches were both in-game and even in terms of score. At the recently concluded IBP tournament, Optic Gaming lost to Cloud9 on the second map in Overtime.

While Cloud9 and Optic both equally poised to take this match-up, it comes down to who has the better map pool. Remember this is a best of three match and each team has to have a wide map pool in order to be able to compete against their opponents. Cloud9ś dominance on Cobblestone, Nuke is dominating. At the same time, Cloud9 are proficient on Strong maps for Optic such as Mirage.

This definitely puts CLoud9 at a higher chance of possibly taking away this series. They are also under the tutelage of Valens as their new Coach for this tournament. Valens will be looking to test their hard work till now at this stage.

Prediction: While this is an extremely difficult match-up to predict, Cloud9 have a slight advantage coming into this match. They are extremely strong in their current lineup and stability is something that matters a lot to this team. With the addition of Valens, it brings a different perspective to their roster.

NIP vs Liquid

NIP recently underwent a roster change with the addition of Draken to the lineup. Draken fills a void in the team which has been non-existent since the start of the team. NIP simply have never had a dedicated AWP player. While the high calibre of the players during their better days meant that Forest could always act as the stopgap AWPer without a significant change to their results. However as the other teams got better, NIP stagnated. Their confidence went underground and they are not even a top ten team right now.

Team Liquid has always been the team that can be. They have consistently been one of the best teams in NA, but making it big in the world scene has only come in bursts for them. They have failed to be consistent with their performances and have become prone to the NA roster change bug.

They faced the biggest challenge for them roster wise when Hiko departed the team in February. Ultimately Team Liquid managed to get another player in his part, but losing hiko from any NA team changes the dynamic of the entire industry in North America. Team Liquid dropped down to Rank 20 on the HLTV rankings on April 2nd. This is definitely a big letdown for a team which was amongst the top teams in the world at a point in their history.

Prediction: Coming into this match-up it will be extremely interesting to note how well NIP play with the addition of Draken as a consistent AWPer on their roster. While online games are not a correct indication, it does seem NIP is able to hold their own against the better top tier teams.

This is however a LAN. Simply looking at the stability of the team rosters.it would seem NIP has the upper hand. Of course, I am apprehensive about trying to hype NIP after a roster change, but the core of the team has been together and they are simply better placed than Liquid right now.

The CS_Summit is a different take to how tournaments are run in the current competitive scene. While most of the tournaments have a serious take on their casting and presentation aspect, Beyond the Summit is extremely well known for their casual approach to gaming and esports presentation. It provides a fresh take at the event, one which is widely appreciated by the fans. It will be extremely interesting to see how the CS GO Community welcomes Beyond the Summit.

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Rohan

The author

Esports journalist. An esports fan, former wannabe pro and occasional angry young man. You can find him trying to climb the Dota 2 MMR or just chilling in Rocket League. Or maybe building an entire city in Cities: Skylines. The current mood is always a surprise.