Preview of ICE Challenge 2020

Main favorite

mousesports (position in the HLTV rating — #2)
Win odds: 3.75

mousesports is the main favorite of winning the event both in our opinion and according to the experts from sportsbook companies. The Europeans have the lowest odds and they deserve it. For the last four months, the players have been in a great gaming shape. They took prize places at five tournaments and four out of them resulted in the first position for the esportsmen. Since mouze took second place at EPICENTER 2019, the team has not been present at any official match. Nevertheless, we are sure that the team is to perform as well as the player did it in the last months of the previous year. mouze is represented by some of the best players in the world. We can see two mousesports’ representatives, ropz and woxic, in the rating of the best esportsmen in the discipline. If we take a look at the other participants in the tournament, we can see that the Europeans contrast to any other team that is going to play with them so it means that mouze deserves to be called the main contender for winning ICE Challenge 2020.

mousesports roster and rating of the players:

Chris ‘chrisJ’ de Jong — 1.02
Robin ‘ropz’ Kool — 1.20
Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen — 0.95
Özgür ‘woxic’ Eker — 1.13
David ‘frozen’ Čerňanský — 1.17
Allan ‘Rejin’ Petersen — coach

Teams that have a chance to win

NAVI (position in the HLTV rating — #9)
Win odds: 3.75

Natus Vincere’s win odds are the same as mousesports’ at sportsbooks. We think that it is connected with a huge army of fans throughout the world that make bets on NAVI’s win. If we compare game and team skills of ‘Born to WIn’ and mousesports, in our opinion, NAVI will lose against the Europeans. The latter, as it has already been mentioned, had very good results in the last few months when Natus Vincere became the winner of the tournament that happened almost a year ago. Also, we should not forget that on 24 January Perfecto moved to the ‘Born to Win’ from Syman, so it means that the team leaves room for improvement. If we compare their possible singularity as a team with mouze that completed their roster in March last year, NAVI loses this parameter. That is why we do not treat Natus Vincere as the main favorite of the competition. We should mark that NAVI is located on the ninth place in the list of the best CS:GO teams according to HLTV while mousesports holds the 2 position. If ‘Born to Win’ makes it to the grand final, we will not be very surprised but the change of the players in the roster is unlikely to help the team to rehabilitate so fast.

NAVI roster and rating of the players:

Egor ‘flamie’ Vasilev — 1.04
Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev — 1.30
Denis ‘electronic’ Sharipov — 1.28
Kirill ‘Boombl4’ Mikhailov — 1.06
Ilya ‘Perfecto’ Zalutskiy — 1.25
Andrey ‘B1ad3’ Gorodenskiy — coach

ENCE (place in the HLTV rating — #12)
Win odds: 5.00

After the reshuffle in ENCE and suNny taking the place of Aleksib who left the team, the roster has not been able to return to the level of their previous results. suNny’s transfer to ENCE was treated not only as the most ineffectual transfer in the team’s history but also as the worst transfer of the decade. The amount of hate towards suNny got decreased when ENCE took second place at CS:GO Asia Championships 2019, however, after the tournament everything went wrong again. At the European qualifiers for IEM Katowice 2020, the team lost taking fourth place there. As a result, we think that the Finnish team is in too bad shape to win the tournament but it is still too good to make it to the playoff. In our opinion, they can only get to the 3-4 place in the tournament bracket in the best of cases.

ENCE roster and rating of the players:

Aleksi ‘allu’ Jalli — 1.06
Jere ‘sergej’ Salo — 1.06
Jani ‘Aerial’ Jussila — 0.97
Sami ‘xseveN’ Laasanen — 0.97
Miikka ‘suNny’ Kemppi — 1.05
Slaava ‘Twista’ Räsänen — coach

Virtus.pro (position in the HLTV rating — #19)
Win odds: 7.00

After the players that performed as AVANGAR moved to Virtus.pro, their results got declined. Maybe the reason is that now they have big salaries and they cannot make themselves work hard to achieve excellent results. Maybe their glory days are behind. This championship can change everything but we do not think so. At several previous competitions when everything had to end up with success, VP let their fans down and performed poorly. Now their chance to win is bleak in comparison with mousesports, for example, so we are sure that the Kazakhs will not be able to make it even to the grand final. If they keep the tendency that we could see at the last two tournaments, their participation in the championship will end up after the group stage.

Virtus.pro roster and rating of the players:

Timur ‘buster’ Tulepov — 1.10
Alexey ‘qikert’ Golubev — 1.12
Ali ‘Jame’ Dzhami — 1.18
Sanjar ‘SANJI’ Kuliev — 0.92
Dauren ‘AdreN’ Kystaubayev— 0.93
Dastan ‘dastan’ Akbayev — coach

Heroic (position in the HLTV rating — #14)
Win odds: 9.00

Heroic is a rather stable team. The Danish perform on the Tier-2 and Tier-1 level and win prize places regularly. For example, the last tournaments Heroic participated in, which are EPICENTER 2019, GG.Bet Winter Cup, and DreamHack Open Leipzig 2020 resulted in the third, the first and 3-4 places for the team correspondingly. It can lead us to the conclusion that the likelihood of passing to the playoff is high for the Danish. Heroic got to Group A together with MAD Lions, mousesports, and Virtus.pro. Snappi and his teammates can be stronger than MAD Lions and Virtus.pro for sure. We are almost sure that Heroic will make it to the playoff. This team can make surprises. If the Danish try herd this time, the players will be able to make it to the grand final but we are likely to think that Heroic will take 3-4 place in the tournament bracket.

Heroic roster and rating of the players:

Patrick ‘es3tag’ Hansen — 1.10
Martin ‘stavn’ Lund — 1.14
Johannes ‘b0RUP’ Borup — 1.06
Marco ‘Snappi’ Pfeiffer — 1.05
Casper ‘cadiaN’ Møller — 1.16
Frederik ‘LOMME’ Nielsen — coach

OG (position in the HLTV rating — #24)
Win odds: 11.0

OG has got assembled quite recently. It happened on December and since that moment the players have been able to show themselves only at cs_summit 5 where they took 3-4 place. Two months have passed since assembling and it must be enough to achieve good teamwork. The roster was joined by famous NBK-, Aleksib, valde, ISSAA, and mantuu. The team got to Group B together with ENCE, Natus Vincere, and GODSENT. Theoretically, OG can try hard and make it to the playoff beating GODSENT and ENCE, but practically, the esportsmen are likely to let their fans down and to not meet the expectations about them. In our opinion, in the best case OG will take 5-6 place and if they make it to Top-4, it will be a good outcome for them.

OG roster and rating of the players:

Nathan ‘NBK-’ Schmitt — 0.95
Aleksi ‘Aleksib’ Virolainen — 0.86
Valdemar ‘valde’ Bjørn — 1.10
Issa ‘ISSAA’ Murad — 1.04
Mateusz ‘mantuu’ Wilczewski — 1.26

Outsiders of the championship

MAD Lions (position in the HLTV rating — #16)
Win odds: 21.0

MAD Lions have been playing together for more than five months and the players have already achieved good teamwork in a way and it gives the an advantage over the other teams. Despite this and a pretty high position in the world rating, the experts from sportsbook companies defined the Danish as some of the main outsiders. We do not quite agree with this opinion and think that HUNDEN and his teammates are able to surprise us and pass to the playoff as it was done at the recently completed DreamHack Open Leipzig 2020. The chance of that may be not so high as we would want it to be but we should not ignore it. If we take into account the fact that MAD Lions got to Group A, our confidence about their participation in the playoff grows even more. Apart from the players, this quartet is represented by the favorites, mousesports, and also Heroic that is approximately on the same level with MAD Lions, and Virtus.pro that could have much better gaming shape.

MAD Lions roster and rating of the players:

Nicolai ‘HUNDEN’ Petersen — 0.80
Frederik ‘acoR’ Gyldstrand — 1.16
Rasmus ‘Sjuush’ Beck — 1.08
Lucas ‘Bubzkji’ Andersen — 1.16
Fredrik ‘roeJ’ Jørgensen — 1.19
Luis ‘peacemaker’ Tadeu — coach

GODSENT (position in the HLTV rating — #25)
Win odds: 26.0

And the main outsider according to the experts of sportsbook companies is GODSENT. Maikelele and his teammates got to Group B where the players are going to play ENCE, OG, and Natus Vincere. Apart from the latter, the opponents are not so frightening for GODSENT and the chance for the players to make it to the playoff exists, however, to proceed to the grand final and to fight for the championship title, the Swedish will have to work really hard. In total, we will agree with the fact that GODSENT has a little chance to win the championship but it is not so big as there are at least two main contenders for winning the event that are NAVI and mousesports.

GODSENT roster and rating of the players:

Kevin ‘kRYSTAL’ Amend — 0.89
Mikail ‘Maikelele’ Bill — 1.02
Martin ‘STYKO’ Styk — 1.11
Jesse ‘zehN’ Linjala — 1.07
Pavle ‘maden’ Bošković — 1.08
Jonatan ‘Devilwalk’ Lundberg — coach