The CS:GO events in April – what to expect from three hot battles in Belgium, Rio, and Sydney

After a tough week of StarSeries i-League 7, which was hosted in Shanghai, the CIS CS:GO fans can’t stop being happy for the loud victory by Natus Vincere in the final. Na’Vi has shown an incredibly spectacular play, having won three maps in a row against the Swedes from Fnatic. This is an obvious application for a good performance at the tournament ESL One Cologne, which will be carried out in July.

While teams are preparing actively for the summer playing season, we can follow mini-Majors, which promise to be equally spectacular: the row of events Charleroi Esports, DreamHack Open Rio start in one week, after which the prize pool will be up for grabs at Intel Extreme Masters in Sydney.

The French overdrive in Belgium

Charleroi Esports will take place in 50 kilometers from Belgium in the city Charleroi on April 12-14 where the meeting of eight good teams will happen, among which Vitality and G2 will be the headliners. According to preliminary predictions, the whole event will the outrunning game between these two French CS:GO stars, however, many people don’t want to write off LDLC and Virtus.Pro, which are quite able to perform decently on a prize place.

The rest of teams, which are announced for participation, include Sprout and Epsilon, which have passed the European qualification, the Malaysians from FrostFire and the promising GamerLegion, which roster has a good rookie in the face of «the headshot-machine» ScreaM and the experienced captain Ex6TenZ. The prize pool of the event will amount €100,000 where €50,000 will be given to the team to place first.

The general prediction

Supposedly, we will see a battle between Vitality and G2 in the final - both teams are way better than the opponents in terms of playing level. GamerLegion, which is not fully team played, might show something interesting but it’s not worth to bet a bank on the unstable Adil - the guys need time to build an inside communication and gain momentum.

AVANGAR in Rio

DreamHack Open will be hosted with two group stages and the playoff series in a bo3 format will take place in Rio de Janeiro on April 19-21. The Brazilians W7M Gaming and FURIA and also the Portuguese Sharks Esports have been considered as the outsiders of the event the underdogs is eUnited, which were showing good results once.

The favorites include the young blood from Kazakhstan AVANGAR, which, by the way, is predicted to place first by analysts, followed by AGO, Valiance, and Luminosity. There are reasons for this: AVANGAR performed well at the IEM Major in Katowice, having held the 9th place, after which achieved two bronze places at European tournaments. As a result, eight teams will play at the tournament, six of which have made it with a help of direct invitations - eUnited and W7M have taken slots as the winners of regional qualifiers. The prize pool of the tournament will be in the sum of $100,000.

The general prediction

DreamHack promises to be a profitable event because there are at least three obvious outsiders and two clear favorites - AVANGAR and AGO. According to preliminary predictions, the second place will be taken by AGO, the third one will be achieved by Valiance and the top four will be closed by Luminosity.

The heat in Australia

Being hosted from April 30 to May 5, the Australian event will offer an interesting battle between 16 top teams, which will compete for their part of the general prize pool, which is equal to $250,000. The group stage will be carried out from April 30 to May 2, after which six teams will be qualified to the playoff stage with a bo5 final at Qudos Bank Arena.

MIBR, Renegades, Faze, and Liquid are the headliners of the Sydney heat, they are followed by the guys from mousesports, NiP, BIG, Heroic, and Fnatic. There are two home slots for teams from Australia and New Zealand, which will be given to the winners of IEM Sydney Derby and the local qualification.

The general prediction

It’s difficult to judge the results of the event because the home slots are still free and there are a lot of unstable teams in terms of performance among the favorites. However, despite the diversification of predictions, many analysts tend to the final between Faze and Fnatic.