IEM Dallas playoffs favorites

The group stage of IEM Dallas is getting close to the end. In both groups, two of the three qualified teams are already known. The only question is: who will advance to the semifinals and who will advance to the quarterfinals? As for the third qualified competitor, the last lower bracket matches will determine the winner.

In group A, Heroic and G2 Esports are about to compete in the upper bracket Final, while OG and MOUZ will play in the lower bracket Final.

In group B, the top two teams are ENCE and Astralis. In the lower bracket, three more matches need to be played and most of the teams are formidable: Cloud9, Complexity, FaZe Clan, and Team Liquid.

Playoffs favorites

Based on what we’ve seen so far, it’s clear that Heroic, G2 Esports, and Astralis are the big favorites. We don’t know at this point who else will compete in the playoffs. The most likely answer is Cloud9 and MOUZ, excluding ENCE.

Heroic need no introduction at this point. Their performance at IEM Katowice, IEM Rio, and BLAST.tv Paris Major clearly demonstrated that they are easily one of the best teams in the world. They’re currently ranked 2^nd, which means that in the absence of Team Vitality, they are the highest-ranked team in this tournament.

For G2 Esports, IEM Dallas represents an opportunity to regain some of the prestige they lost at the Paris Major. This team was expected to finish in the top four, which made their result a huge disappointment. When you finish 12^th-14^th while your fans are hoping that you’ll lift the trophy, that is not good at all.

So far, neither Heroic nor G2 have truly been tested at IEM Dallas because their first two opponents were relatively weak. The match between them will tell us a lot about their strength. In principle, Heroic should win. But historically, G2 have often been the better team in direct confrontations.

In the match against Cloud9, Astralis finally looked like their former selves again. Nicolai “device” Reedtz and Benjamin “blameF” Bremer played incredibly well, ending the match with a K-D score of 47-23 and 43-20 respectively. The rest of the team did well enough to allow Astralis to win very comfortably: 16-8 on Ancient and 16-8 on Mirage.

Thanks to this performance, Astralis qualified for the playoffs, where they will likely get a top four result.

Header: ESL