In North America’s fragmented Counter-Strike: Global Offensive scene, the top dogs might no longer be the most interesting teams to watch. While organizations like Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses struggle to put up wins in today’s online tournaments, two teams in FURIA and Chaos Esports Club are turning heads.
There’s no denying that FURIA is the best team Brazil has to offer right now. If they had competed in the recent Road to Rio’s South American region they’d be an instant winner, set to take one of the region’s places at the upcoming CSGO Major ESL One Rio. Even competing in North America, FURIA is no pushover. They’ve aimed for the top of the CSGO pyramid, toppling North America’s top teams in Liquid and Evil Geniuses while running down their compatriots in MIBR. If one thing is for sure, FURIA isn’t a team to mess with. Even with their 2-1 loss to Gen.G in the Road to Rio grand finals, FURIA is going places.
FURIA’s main strength is its map pool. The team currently owns a 100% win rate on Overpass over the past three months, making it a strong pocket pick against most teams outside CSGO’s top 10. Their prowess on the map also helps them against teams that do play the map inside the top ten, leaving them a ton of options when vetoes start.
FURIA’s other top map, Mirage, is a mainstay of lesser teams. These two options are arguably the best two maps a team can have in their pool in the current competitive climate, giving them options against teams of all calibers.
While its map pool is strong, FURIA’s players are playing their hearts out, too. Henrique “HEN1” Teles, Yuri “yuurih” Santos, and Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato are all pulling in ratings close to 1.20 over the past three months, and that’s more than enough firepower to make up for the underperformances of teammates Andrei “arT” Piovezan and Vinicius “VINI” Figueiredo.
Simply put, FURIA is explosive. They lack the communication issues that fans have seen from fellow Brazilian team MIBR over the past few months, and they’re performing much better as a result.
Chaos Esports Club has a chance to bounce back from a 2-0 defeat against MIBR. Despite FURIA stealing MIBR’s throne, the Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo-led team still has some life in it and they showed it earlier this week against Chaos.
The North American squad’s real strength comes from Joshua “steel” Nissan, the lone survivor of an iBuyPower team from a different age. Despite Chaos’ struggles, with several players signing and then leaving after choosing to play Valorant, steel has managed to form a coherent group of players, who for once all seem to be on the CSGO train.
That said, FURIA holds the upper hand in this matchup, especially when it comes down to the vetoes. In addition to being FURIA’s best-practiced maps, Overpass and Mirage are also home to Chaos. It’s just that FURIA is just better at them than Chaos is.
Expect FURIA to take this match from Chaos, most likely in 2-0 fashion. Chaos’ 2-0 win over Liquid earlier in the tournament was encouraging, but until Chaos proves itself against a fully-functioning online team like FURIA, it’s hard to recommend backing them in any betting capacity. WINNERS.bet agrees, with lines overwhelmingly in FURIA’s favor at 1.16 to Chaos’ 4.57. Line-wise, this is probably as safe as a match bettors will find this week. Chaos is simply overmatched against a FURIA team that is running on all cylinders.
That said, if Chaos is good at one thing, it’s pistol rounds. Their 53% overall pistol round win percentage is actually better than FURIA’s 52%. Here, the toss-up is much more appealing. It’s perfectly acceptable to take both for pistol round winners on separate maps. As always, sometimes a decidedly weaker team has lines that can be exploited by the experienced bettor, as is the case here.
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