ARTICLE WRITTEN BY GUEST AUTHOR UMESH "KRIPZ" KRIPALANI

The first day of ESL One Cologne had some surprises in store for us. A bunch of upsets at the hands of NiP and Heroic spelled a bad start for teams like Vitality and Ence, who were one of the favourites to win the entire tournament.

While these two teams surely had a negative impact on our prediction rate - it was equally entertaining to see some underdog glory and #NiPMagic.

Tomorrow all the matches will be best-of-three affairs, hopefully the results will be more consistent with the predictions. Without further ado, let’s dive in.

This match is a scenario which should never have existed in the first place. Both these teams were handed an upset and were expected to make it to the play-offs. Sadly, one of the two will be getting eliminated tomorrow.

The two teams have faced each other in 4 tournaments in the last few months. Two of those have been in ESEA MDL Europe - Season 30 and 31. Both of those times, they played Nuke and Vitality won both (19-17 and 16-13)

However, CS_Summit paints a different story altogether for both the teams. Ence won Nuke when they played at this tournament.

Vitality has faced Ence in bo3s twice, once in StarSeries iLeague Season 7 and CS_Summit 4. The French team won them both. Maps like Mirage and Train are really strong for Ence, while the others work in the favor of Vitality.

The Finnish squad has picked Mirage both the times in these bo3s and won them whereas Vitality responded by winning Inferno each time it was picked. If we assume the same to happen tomorrow; a scenario where both Mirage and Inferno are picked and the respective teams win it, the matter will boil down to the third map.

Head to head - Vitality have won 7 maps, and Ence have won 3.

Even though according to HLTV, Ence is the second best team in the world, I believe that Vitality can win this.

Predicted winner - Vitality

HIGH UPSET WARNING

: Match is really close and can go either way.

ESL Cologne last year was a big deal for BIG wherein they finished second. The German squad has faded away to obscurity now, but Cologne might give them the much needed ‘home turf advantage’.

Ironically, the only time that MIBR has faced BIG was last year in Cologne. BIG came out on top last year as they defeated a lot of teams. Hence, we cannot give MIBR any flak for it.

Last year, the two maps that BIG won were Inferno and Cache. However, we need to keep in mind that BIG were the first ones to use the crouch-jump bug at the banana half-wall on Inferno, last year.

A pretty big controversy surrounding the bug resulted in Valve patching it up. That one particular bug helped them establish dominance on Inferno.

Secondly, cache is no longer in the map pool. That means, both of their trump cards have been blown away. This statement debunks the head-to-head statistics.

Currently, MIBR stand at the 12th spot of the HLTV leaderboard, but BIG are not even in the top 30. Due to this vast difference in ranking, I pick MIBR for the win.

Predicted Winner - MIBR

Upset potential - Low

According to the HLTV Rankings, FaZe is on the 5th spot whereas Mousesports sits on 10th. However, do not let that affect your judgement.

Mousesports beat Faze 2-0 at the ESL Pro League S9 finals just last week. Moreover, they had a stronger run than Faze at IEM Sydney.

These facts lead me to believe that mousesports have a good chance of defeating FaZe, especially since the latter is struggling to perform with Neo.

Some extra information that might spice things up: Karrigan was pretty rude, and there was some spicy twitter banter going on between him and his ex-teammates in Faze.

Tomorrow he faces the team he used to play for, right after a controversial public argument with his opponents. Regardless of the outcome, this match will be fun to watch simply because of the rivalry.

Predicted winner - Mousesports

Upset potential - Medium

Astralis are pretty much the final boss of the tournament. If you face them anytime before the grand finals, it means that your journey in the tournament is about to be cut short. Fortunately, fnatic will only fall to the lower bracket if they lose tomorrow.

Out of the total of seven maps that they have played in the recent past -- one bo3 and three bo1s, fnatic have only won one map. Aside from Mirage and Train, fnatic don’t really have a chance at winning any other maps against Astralis.

Of course, the Danes are feared to have a deep map pool, so fnatic might be well out of their depth here.

Predicted Winner - Astralis

Upset Potential - Low

Both the teams have surprised us by upsetting some of the biggest names in the tournament. Which means, they have obviously prepared well, and must not be underestimated. Ranked 16th and 14th globally, the two teams aren’t far apart in terms of skill.

Head to head, NiP beat Heroic last time at the ESL Pro League S9 Europe last time 2-1.

However, if blameF continues to play as well as he did today, Heroic have a good chance of defeating NiP. Either way, it will be fun to see friberg play against his old teammates.

Predicted winner - NiP

Upset Potential - Medium

Furia witnessed a meteoric rise to the top when they had top three finishes at ECS S7 and DreamHack Masters Dallas. Defeating Astralis was a cherry on top of the cake. All of this points to Furia being a strong contender with the potential to beat anyone and everyone at the tournament.

However, they recently lost to eUnited at ESL One New York NA Qualifiers. This casts a shadow of inconsistency across their win streak.

Natus Vincere on the other hand have had plenty of time to rest since their last tournament, which gives them plenty of time to settle down with their latest recruit boombl4. Today, Na`Vi were ALMOST able to beat Liquid; one of the favourites to win the entire tournament.

While these two teams have never faced each other before, they are the complete opposite of each other. Furia are the kind of team that likes to go off-meta and play loose.

Na`Vi on the other hand are super slow and methodical, which might just be the undoing of the Brazilians. Not to forget, they have a beast called s1mple who dropped a 40-bomb yesterday.

Given these facts, I would choose Na`Vi, even though Furia are ranked higher than them on the HLTV boards.

Predicted winner: Natus Vincere

Upset potential - High

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