On October 31, 2023, Heroic Denmark will play against BIG Germany in the Thunderpick World Championship 2023 at 13:00 CEST. The winner of the match will go straight into the championship playoffs.
Individual form
Previously, it was said that Heroic and BIG are not the same teams and that the Danes should easily beat the Germans. But, not everything is as obvious as it seems at first glance.
At the moment Heroic is in a nightmare, as three players have left the team in the last two weeks:
After that the organization signed a Danish legend in the person of Peter dupreeh Rasmussen, who was inactive for some time after his departure from Team Vitality. But at the moment, the team is playing with two players in the roster of the German organization MOUZ NXT. Namely with:
But, and BIG is still doing well and no replacements during the whole fever that started after the release of CS2 - they didn't make any.
If you look at the numbers of course - BIG's individual level of play is 2-5% better by almost every metric except headshot percentage. Heroic players do 4% more headshot kills. It would be foolish to underestimate that particular metric.
If you look at the last meetings of the two teams, the last time the teams met at EPL Season 18 and then BIG easily defeated their opponents with a score of 2:0, but that was back in CS:GO. But, rumors about Heroic's replacements have already been circulating.
Map pool
But when it comes to the map pool of this meeting, of course, BIG is the trump card here. But why?
Well, it's simple. Let's take Anubis and Mirage out of the picture, because these two teams don't like sand maps and they are the first ban for them.
In this tough match for both teams, we should expect Ancient from the BIG team, as this map is less about silly shooting than it is about teamwork and the right calls from the captain.
On the other hand Heroic would like to pick Nuke, and as we all know this map is much more about team chemistry and chemistry. But where it will come from when you have constant substitutions in your team and you don't know who you will play tomorrow. Therefore, it will be more or less adequate to see Heroic peak Overpass, even though the last two times on this map the guys were beaten by Aurora. To say that BIG has a strong Overpass is also inadequate.
So we are left with Nuke, Vertigo and Inferno. Heroic will take Vertigo, as BIG already has a big win streak on this map, namely 8 wins in a row! And with a high probability the teams will go to Inferno.
Prediction
Heroic players have mixed feelings right now and don't understand if it's worth trying if tomorrow someone new will come and you will have to train all over again. And for BIG it's another Tier-1 tournament, where the guys have to get really involved and show a very good game. Moreover, the winner of this match will go straight to the playoffs.
Our prediction is that BIG will beat Heroic 2-1 in the group stage of the Thunderpick World Championship 2023 and advance to the playoffs.
At the time of writing this prediction, the championship bracket was as follows:
Thunderpick World Championship 2023 takes place online from October 27 to November 5. Teams play for a prize pool of $500k. You can follow the schedule and results of the tournament at the link.
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