Who’s going to climb the cs_summit 4? - Rivalry's event preview

The fourth cs_summit event is upon us, sporting a brand new format and an interesting selection of teams. Two from the top three, two from the top ten and two below will provide a unique cross-section of the scene – this, coupled with the event’s uniquely laid-back atmosphere in a team house, makes it must-watch entertainment. Here are our betting suggestions and the storylines to keep an eye out for:

A new format on the horizon

For a fun and friendly event, the cs_summit tournaments all featured a very robust competitive format with a best-of-three double elimination bracket throughout. This time, it’s a round robin setup where everyone plays everyone else in two best-of-one games (which is not necessarily ideal for a multitude of reasons). However, this group stage is only used to cut off the bottom two of the six invited teams, heading into a single-elimination best-of-three playoff. This means that every team will get two chances against the opposition, which should provide some interesting upset potential and many opportunities to bet on the tournament! Especially because your first bet is on the house with Rivalry – take a look!

Can Renegades arrest the slide?

This is perhaps unfair to ask considering how well the Aussies performed since kassad’s return and the re-jig of their roster, but questions have to be asked about their subpar IEM Sydney showing and their repeated failure against MIBR in the ESL Pro League groups. From unexpected top five contender to barely hanging onto a top ten spot, Gratisfaction’s visa issues will only make things worse before they have a chance to be better. Without a statement showing, this brief period of greatness will likely be considered a byproduct of jks’ individual good form – it would be a shame. It says a lot that they’re even less likely to win the event than NRG (at 6.90 instead of 6.40), only ahead of Ghost in this particular department (a whopping 20.00).

Is ENCE really a top three team?

It’s ridiculous that this is a legitimate question to ask, isn’t it? The Finns meteoric rise in the servers and the corresponding nation rankings seems to suggest so, but there actually aren’t that many results to look at against fellow top ten sides that aren’t from the BLAST Pro kerfuffle. Of course, this has a lot to do with their rapid growth that just happened to coincide with today’s fragmented tournament scene – and the best-of-one group stages will also limit our information gathering somewhat –, but their matches against Liquid are quickly becoming one of the spiciest occurrences in the CS:GO servers with their shock victory at Katowice and contentious tiebreaker loss at São Paulo. Their three-for-three against Astralis at Madrid is clearly their biggest accomplishment to date – anything but a finals appearance would be a disappointment here. ENCE are offered 2.04 in their head-to-head matches against Liquid and are earmarked at 3.25 for an outright win – it’s definitely worth taking a look at!