by ESL Pro League Season 16 kicks off on August 31 with 24 of the best Counter-Strike Global Offensive teams embarking on Malta for the month-long tournament. In Malta, there will be 14 of the top 15 teams in the ESL world rankings, with the winner of the event taking home US$175,000 and booking their place in the BLAST Premier World Final for 2022 in Abu Dhabi in December.
Below are www.behindzioncurtain.com’s best bets for ESL Pro League Season 16 with all of our tips for each group winner and our best bet and best value bet to take out the entire event, with odds from the best online bookmakers.
Group A Winner
Group A has the number one team in CS:GO, Natus Vincere, who were recently promoted from the number two spot in the ESL world rankings after their very impressive run at the BLAST Premier Fall Groups. NaVi will have to compete with; Ninjas in Pyjamas, Vitality, Fnatic, Spirit and Endpoint, but none of these teams have the firepower to really challenge the Ukrainian juggernaut, and that is why they are our tip to take out Group A.
NaVi – Group A Winner
Group B Winner
The second group of the ESL Pro League contains the reigning PGL Major, IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne winners, FaZe Clan. FaZe may have been relegated to the no.2 team in the world rankings but they are still one of the most feared team in CS:GO. With G2, BIG, Outsiders, MiBR and FTW in Group B with FaZe, there isn’t a lot of competition here to stop FaZe winning this group and they deserve to be $1.72 favourites to take out this group.
FaZe Clan – Group B Winner
Group C Winner
Group C looks to be one of the better groups of the ESL Pro League Season 16 as four of the six teams could win this group. Heroic, Astralis, ENCE and MOUZ have all had their time inside the top five in the ESL world rankings over the last 12 months, showing that this group could be considered the “group of death”. However, we are going for some value here and taking the highest ranked team in this group, Astralis at $3.25 with BetOnline.
Astralis – Group C Winner
Group D Winner
Group D holds four teams inside the top 10 of the world rankings, Cloud9 (#3), Movistar Riders (#6), Liquid (#8) and FURIA (#10). The other two teams, Eternal Fire and Evil Geniuses, will be clear second-last and last in Group D. After the IEM Cologne and BLAST Premier Fall Groups events that Liquid had, it is very hard to see them losing many series in this group, so we will be siding with the North American team to win Group D.
Liquid – Group D Winner
Best bet – Natus Vincere
Natus Vincere are the second favourite to take out ESL Pro League Season 16, even though they are the number one team in the world. After adding Viktor “sdy” Orudzhev to the full-time roster, NaVi have been working on their cohesiveness, as always when you add a new player to the roster, but now NaVi are back at the very top of their game.
NaVi were nearly perfect in all but one of their series at the BLAST Premier Fall Groups where they only lost one match to Complexity. However, they then went onto win their group and then destroyed Vitality 2-0 in the last round to qualify for the BLAST Premier Fall Finals. NaVi will enter ESL Pro League Season 16 well rested after a week off and they should be taking Group A with a near perfect record.
Natus Vincere – Outright Winner
Best Value – Liquid
The biggest rise in the rankings and the most surprising qualifier into the BLAST Premier Fall Final was Liquid. Liquid has risen from no.14 to no.8 in the world rankings over the last month and the main reason behind this rise up the rankings is that their new signing, Mareks “YEKINDAR” Ga?inskis, has been outstanding so far since joining the North American organisation.
We have tipped Liquid to take out Group D and if they can salute with very little blips on the radar throughout, they could be a dark horse to take the whole event at $26 with BetOnline.
