ESL One New York 2017 is currently underway at the Brooklyn Barclay’s Center. With a prize pool of $250,000 and the world’s top teams attending, this event has generated a lot interest the event. It remains one of the biggest North American CS GO LAN tournaments in the CS GO calendar year. As you are reading this, the first day of ESL One New York has come to an end and we have four teams with a stake to win the tournament.

Some of the biggest names in CS GO have already been eliminated in the Group stage of the tournament. We have Astralis joining Virtus Pro, Na’Vi and EnVyUs as they were unable to make it with Team Liquid in the final match of Day 1. However these so called upsets have only been fun to watch because the underdog teams are improving significantly and pose a greater challenge to the top teams. With the likes of Liquid, Cloud9 being the two teams who have caused huge upsets we have two North American roster teams in the semifinals.

ESL One New York has seen something that has not been witnessed in a long time. We have two North American teams in the semifinals of a premier CS GO International LAN event. The last time this happened, CS GO was just going mainstream. It was the July of 2015 when we saw Cloud9 and CLG make the semifinals of a premier CS GO tournament with a prize pool of at least $250,000. The two teams reached the top four of the inaugural season of ESL ESEA Pro league Season 1 finals.

The two teams had a very different look back in 2015. Cloud9 was probably the only North American team who could potentially pose a challenge to the European CS GO dominance. They had a very successful roster which made several semifinal appearances in 2015. Under the guidance of Sean Gares, it almost seemed that their next big tournament victory was just around the corner. However they always fell short, mostly to some really close matches against the then EnVyUs. Sadly the two NA teams were matched against each other in the semifinals and as a result we saw CLG being eliminated in the semis.

Coming back to the present we can have the potential of a NA vs NA Grand finals at the Barclay’s Center. But in order to get to the semifinals, both the teams face off against stiff opposition. Liquid are matched against the World No.1 team, SK Gaming while Cloud9 will be against a star studded Faze Clan roster.

SK Gaming vs Liquid

SK Gaming have gone back to their dominant form in this tournament. After several successive disappointing finishes at their previous tournaments, we will be witnessing the SK gaming which dominated the scene for much of 2017. Coldzera has come alive with really dominant performances so far at ESL One New York 2017. His form has been reminiscent of the old SK Gaming which saw Coldzera with strong individual performances. His aggressive gameplay ensured that the rest of the team would have a lot of pressure lifted off their shoulders. Individual brilliance by the SK Gaming players are what resulted in them being a dominant team and ensuring that Fallen can freely maneouver his tactics accordingly.

Liquid have actually defeated SK Gaming once before in a Best of Three. Obviously the setting was quite different and it was another event ( ESG Mykonos), however the dominant fashion in which Liquid won that series is definitely a warning for the Brazilian roster. One notable difference between that match and this upcoming semifinals, was the absence of Coldzera from the scoreboard. He had a quiet match ( and tournament in general ) and SK Gaming looked very uncoordinated and a much weaker version of themselves.

In terms of vetoes, SK Gaming have always removed Nuke as their first ban. They simply do not want to play this map and removing it definitely strengthens their map pool by a significant margin. On the other hand we have Liquid who just played two Best of Three matches. Their first match saw them veto Cache against Virtus Pro. This seemed to be mind games over Virtus pro, especially since the Poles have shown an affinity towards Cache as their map pick ( without tangible results ). However the NA team got thrashed on Nuke and as such they resorted to Nuke for their match against Astralis to be their veto.

Both the teams dislike Nuke as a map and they tend to veto Nuke whenever possible. This does change the dynamics of the veto as we might see one of the teams taking a risk and allowing Nuke through to the map pool. Of course it still does not mean that either team will be picking the map, but it’s presence definitely has an impact on the confidence for Liquid.

Liquid have a decent chance of winning this match. Their map pool is quite similar to that of SK Gaming and they have strong presence on maps such as Overpass, Mirage etc. They have a decent record on Inferno as well and are comfortable playing on it. But the two players who will have the biggest impact in this match are Twistzz and Stanislaw. Both the players form the opposite spectrums of the scoreboard. Their performance is crucial to the overall performance of the Team. The Canadian player, Twistzz has definitely been a big addition for Liquid. He has been consistently topping the scoreboard and is without doubt the reason for their success in consecutive tournaments. Stanislaw however is a player who sets up the team and his leadership definitely goes a long way in helping the team recoup itself after a very bad start.

Team Liquid definitely have the potential to win the semifinals, they have done it before. It will be a close match but we expect Liquid to edge it out against SK Gaming.

Faze Clan vs Cloud9

The second semi-final seems to be a tall order for North America. While Cloud9 have been consistent with their performances, it has never seen a significant rise for the team. They have maintained their status quo and we are able to roughly estimate their success as a team.

Among the two NA rosters, Cloud9 have had a much easier path to the semis. They were matched against teams such as NaVi and EnVyUs. While NaVi as a team is still in the process of defining themselves, SK Gaming have not really struck a chord with any of their recent matches.

EnVyUs has finished last place in their last three LANs, winning only 1 out of 8 maps. The definition of onliners. — Thorin (@Thooorin) September 15, 2017

As referenced in this tweet by Thoorin, EnVyUs have placed last in their last three LAN events. This is definitely a new low for the famed organisation which was once the strongest team in CS GO.

Cloud9 have shown signs of brilliance followed by tournaments where they would not make the top four. We have seen them reach the finals of ESL One Cologne, but then they had several tournaments where they were not able to make any impact. It’s a very difficult situation for Cloud9 as they could not make any progress with the team as a whole. Even in this tournament, their success is sort of marred by the quality of their opposition which remains weak till now.

Faze Clan however are a team that is definitely on the rise. Their results so far point to an upward trend and that is not even with Guardian or Olofmeister going off. These two players have the potential to single handedly shut down an opponent. The recent transfers of the two players has only bolstered the Faze roster, but the heavy lifting right now is being done by Rain and Niko. These two players complement each other so well and the individual performances result in huge wins for the team. Under the able guidance of Karrigan and with the vast experience on Olofmeister and Guardian, this team is much stronger than it looks.

They are still understanding their own map pool, and the map pool might be a disadvantage for Faze in this match. They do have the option of playing on Train , Cobblestone. However these are strong maps for Cloud9.

Finally we don’t expect Cloud9 to win this match. They have reached the end of the road at ESL One New York after a pretty easy group. But they can prove to be a big challenge if Skadoodle gets going with his AWP.

Final Thoughts

This is the first time in 26 months that we are witnessing two North American rosters make it into the semifinals of a big tournament. On previewing the two matches, it seems only one team has a decent chance of making it through. Can they win the tournament? It’s difficult to say right now.

You can catch the semi finals live on Twitch.