ESL Pro League S18 Group A predictions

ESL Pro League S18 is scheduled to start on August 30 and the first group that will be played will be group A. The process will last for an entire week. After that, group B matches will begin.

The competitive format of the group stage of EPL S18 is relatively forgiving. There are eight teams per group and four of them advance to the playoffs. But because of the high number of participants and groups (32/4), there aren’t that many formidable teams who are fighting for those four spots.

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Group A participants and favorites

The eight teams who will compete in group A are listed below:

• Team Vitality
• Astralis
• Ninjas in Pyjamas
• FURIA Esports
• Movistar Riders
• Grayhound
• GamerLegion
• ORKS

The first four of these teams are considerably stronger than the rest. In the case of Vitality, their most recent result from Gamers8 confirmed that they are the strongest team in the world at the moment.

Astralis and NiP are not that far behind them in strength, but unfortunately for them, they will start the tournament by fighting against each other for a spot in the upper bracket semifinals.

For teams like ORKS and Grayhound, the path to the playoffs seems nearly impossible. ORKS will start the tournament with a match against Team Vitality and the format is best-of-three.

So even if ORKS get lucky on one map or prepare some incredibly advanced strategies that catch Vitality off-guard, the odds of them accomplishing this twice against the number 1 team in the world are almost zero.

In the case of FURIA, everyone in Brazil and other parts of the world wants to see whether the transfer of Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo was smart or not. Last year, FURIA finished 3^rd-4^th at IEM Rio Major. This was one of the best results in their history. But after that, things started to go in the wrong direction.

Ultimately, FURIA’s management decided to make two important changes. They brought in FalleN as the new IGL, and Marcelo “chelo” Cespedes for the rifler and entry fragger role. Both of them were bought from Imperial Esports.

In principle, FURIA should qualify for the playoffs. If they don’t, the implications would be dire for their new roster. It’s hard to get an easier set of conditions at an S-tier CS:GO tournament. There are four available spots and half of the teams are relatively weak.

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