
Three spots in the PGL Astana playoffs are up for grabs but only one of them are available to Virtus.pro and MIBR, so who is advancing?
Just six teams are left in the PGL Astana group stage. Five teams, including tournament favorites like The MongolZ and Team Spirit, have a playoffs spot locked up. Others, like the unheralded HOTU and North American qualifier winner M80, have already been eliminated.
Virtus.pro and MIBR both have a 2-2 record and need three wins to advance. Who should you bet on taking this match, though?
WINNER TO PLAYOFFS! Astralis vs Virtus.pro – HIGHLIGHTS – PGL Astana 2025 | CS2
Both Virtus.pro and MIBR have a 2-2 record in PGL Astana’s group stage, and they will face off to decide which team advances in the tournament. The match is a best-of-three that will take place on May 13, 2025.
Virtus.pro took a surprising loss at the start of PGL Astana, falling to Ninjas in Pyjamas to a 2-1 score. The team pulled itself together from there however, beating both M80 and BIG to advance towards the playoffs. A close loss to Astralis in round four put the team in a do-or-die position.
The full Virtus.pro roster is in attendance for the tournament, albeit with a relatively new coach:
Virtus.pro has been struggling on Ancient, Anubis, and Mirage, with a sub-40% winrate on all three maps. The team has kept itself relevant by going 11-6 on Dust 2 in 2025. VP bans Nuke.
MIBR kicked off PGL Astana with a surprise win over G2 Esports, but didn’t convert that into any momentum. The team took a 2-0 loss to The MongolZ in round two of the group stage, then fell to regional rival Furia. This put MIBR on the brink of elimination, but it reached the final round of the group stage by beating fellow Brazilian squad Pain Gaming.
The MIBR roster includes these players:
MIBR is 9-5 on Anubis but past that, it’s not particularly great. Mirage and Nuke are close to a 50-50 win-loss, but the team’s most commonly played map is Inferno, where MIBR is 4-11. The team has a sub-30% win rate on Ancient and Train, too. MIBR’s permaban is Dust 2.
MIBR and Virtus.pro have only played once in 2025. This was a play-in match in IEM Katowice, which VP won 2-0. Despite both organizations having quite a bit of history, they haven’t played too often over the years.
VP is a betting favorite against MIBR, with the moneylines standing at 1.55 against 2.41. The Russian side of this match has a much stronger and larger body of work at a high level, so this isn’t a particularly surprising line.
LOSER IS OUT! MIBR vs paiN – HIGHLIGHTS – PGL Astana 2025 | CS2
Virtus.pro should be able to defeat MIBR to advance to the PGL Astana playoffs. VP may have taken a tough loss at the start of PGL Astana but since then, the team has generally been as good as what fans would expect. That’s bad news for MIBR.
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