By Tomi “lurppis” Kovanen

This weekend in New York will mark what might be the second-best CS:GO tournament of the year following ESL One Cologne (other than IEM Oakland, which should trump New York, much like the Knicks stand no chance against Golden State). Though it lacks some star-power, it still promises to be a great tournament with some interesting storylines as top-tier teams such as SK return to action after a lengthy hiatus.

Which teams might surprise?

G2 made top two at SL i-League StarLadder Season 2 Finals, marking shox’s career-first grand final loss to Ninjas in Pyjamas, who played with Maikelele in pyth’s place. Prior to that, the team had almost two months off, having crashed out of the Group of Death at ESL One Cologne in early July followed by an ousting by NiKo – I mean mousesports – at ELEAGUE.

But the result in Kiev only featured meaningful wins over FaZe, EnVyUs and Dignitas, which does not make ScreaM’s team clearly favored against anyone (save for the North Americans ) on the team list for ESL One NY. The potential is there, and to be honest, G2 went out in groups in Cologne in part due to Valve’s horrible seeding system; otherwise their record would be better. New York will mark another test for G2, who need a strong result to hold onto their top three placing in HLTV.org’s world ranking.

Contrary to G2, Astralis have seemingly all the right personnel to be a juggernaut, but none of the results to back it up. While shox’s team is a quiet Doberman, karrigan’s Astralis is one of those small dogs that make up for their lack size by barking at everything that moves. I thought grabbing Kjaerbye from Dignitas was a steal, device is a top five player, dupreeh is one of the best entry fraggers in the game, and Xyp9x does his job. So what’s the deal?

Without knowledge of the inner workings of the team, I cannot help it but blame karrigan for their woes. He’s the leader, and the buck stops there (as Wells Fargo’s John Stumpf can attest). They need every chance to get some results before the players become too unhappy to co-exist, and ESL One NY provides another chance for that. The players have equity in the organization, but how valuable is constantly exiting in groups?

Finally, there is OpTic, the team tarik joined after his departure from CLG and who took down Cloud9 on Tuesday to claim their spot in Brooklyn. OpTic had already improved significantly in 2016 with mixwell on the team, and tarik replacing daps should give them the added firepower to improve…at least in theory.

Online they have done well, beating the likes of Cloud9, Immortals, and SK in best-of-three series. But offline is a different beast; OpTic are definitely not favored to make the playoffs this weekend. And still, given their promising results throughout the year, this is yet another team who should be improving – and who have, online, clearly gotten better – and for whom every new chance offline could be The Breakthrough. Do not sleep on OpTic here, though qualifying mere days prior to the event means a lack of preparation time.

View photos Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev (ESL) More

Was s1mple’s decision to leave Team Liquid a mistake?

Hiko’s team has the second-best record at the majors this year behind SK, and s1mple is a big reason why.

s1mple had just relocated to Los Angeles before the Columbus major, and in Cologne he re-united with his previous team, having left the squad between the events. Liquid instantly came back from irrelevance once s1mple teamed up with Hiko again, beating both Fnatic and Na`Vi in best-of-three series to make the grand final. That shows the kind of impact the Ukrainian superstar can have on a team. Once he left, so did Liquid’s winning ways, as they put up forgettable performances one after another online with Danish player Pimp having replaced s1mple on the team.

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