Astralis vs MiBR – Blast Pro Series Istanbul

Istanbul welcomes you to one of the most exciting competitions of the year, BLAST Pro Series 2018. The competition will take place from 28th to 29th September. The participants include six most renowned teams of the world. They will play back to back games to be crowned the champion of Istanbul. Apart from being crowned champions, the winner will receive the lion’s share of the $250,000 USD prize pool.

The reason why we have picked this match for you since it is the battle between reigning champions and the current No.1 team in CS: GO. MiBR players, when played for SK, won this title last year. While Astralis a week ago won the biggest tournament of 2018, FACEIT Major London. It is a battle between two incredibly strong teams and we would love to tell you how this match will end after comprehensively looking the recent statistics of both teams.

Astralis vs MiBR (BLAST Pro Series: Istanbul 2018, September 29, 2018 – 06:40 PDT, Best of One)

Astralis

Astralis is a force to be reckoned with at the moment. They are undoubtedly the best CS:GO team in the world. They have proved it on so many occasions in these past few weeks. Astralis have beaten some of the most recognized teams in the world. In the playoffs of FACEIT Major London, they didn’t drop a single map. They even beat their upcoming opponents MiBR 16-0 without conceding a single round. This has never been done in the competitive history of the major tournaments.

The brilliant form of the team cannot be credited to a single player. Their entire team has been in playing brilliant style, even though Nicolai “device” Reedtz deservedly took the MVP title of the tournament. The duo of dupreeh and Xyp9x got a total sum of 36 kills in the first game of the Grand Finale. Most teams in CS:GO rely too much on their stars players like Natus Vincere’s s1mple or HellRaisers’ woxic. Both players are quite phenomenal and s1mple is arguably the best player in the world. But no one player is perfect enough to win a team the biggest competition in the world. Titles are won with incredible teamwork, dedication, and hardwork from not only a single player but the entire team.

Apart from beating MiBR 16-0, Astralis has accomplished another great milestone. They are unbeaten on the Nuke map in CS:GO. This star studded lineup was formed in January 2018, and since that period they haven’t lost a single game on Nuke. The Danish side holds an impressive 18-0 record on this map. They even thrashed Na’Vi 16:6 in the grand final on this map. So Astralis will be quite confident coming into this game.

In 2018, FACEIT Major London is the 6th title of Astralis. They won the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2018, a few weeks ago before that. They were also victorious in the ESL Pro League Season 7 – Finals. They also won ECS Season 5 – Europe (regular and final season), while also lifting the title of DreamHack Masters Marseille 2018.

MiBR

Four of the players of MiBR were part of the former SK lineup that was the champion of the BLAST Pro Series: Copenhagen 2017. So it can be said that MiBR is the reigning champions of this competition but it seems like they are not ready to mount a strong title defense. The only title the team has lifted this year is the Zotac Cup which they won after winning just two games. So Zotac Cup is not a big deal in the competitive world of CS:GO. In Major tournaments, the team has repeatedly failed to live up to the expectations. They were defeated by Astralis in the quarterfinals of the DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018. They were comprehensively beaten by Na’Vi last week in the semifinals of FACEIT. Now they will be up against their worst nightmare. Just a couple of days ago, the team was defeated in the qualifiers of the ECS Season 6 – North American Challenger Cup.

Blast Pro Series is the last competition of the month for MiBR players to redeem themselves. However last year four of the players that were playing under the SK banner were defeated by Astralis 16:3 on Inferno. It seems like Astralis know how to deal with these players. MiBR has never beaten Astralis in 2018 in all of their four meetings. It’s not like that MiBR is a poor team. The Brazilian team under the ownership of Immortals includes some of the most talented players in the world. But it seems like they have ego problems, since there five players have a tough time coordinating. The individual stats of these players are phenomenal but when they play together as a team, they fail to perform. This is the most probable reason to why they lost to AZIO, a team that is ranked 62 places below them a couple of days ago.

The fans of MiBR are tired of seeing their five-star team getting beaten by 2nd tier teams. It looks like if they fail to show a decent performance in this upcoming tournament, the organization will be looking to change its lineup. This is quite possibly the need of the hour for MiBR to achieve something next year.

Final verdict

The Map on which these two teams will be playing on is Dust2. The odds are also against MiBR on this map since they just have a 67% win-rate on this map with six games played. While Dust2 is statistically the second strongest map of Astralis with around 88% win-rate while playing it on eight occasions. Therefore, things are definitely not looking well for the Brazilian team against the kings of Denmark.

Astralis 1 – 0 MiBR

Odds on bookmakers

Bookmakers	Astralis Odds		MiBR Odds
	European	American	European	American
EGB.com	1.29	-344	2.98	+198.00
Betway	1.35	-285	2.95	+195.00
Loot.bet	1.36	-277	3.05	+205.00
GG.bet	1.34	-294	3.22	+222.00
Bet365	1.40	-250	2.75	+175.00