Evil Geniuses
Evil Geniuses will be looking to get back on track after going out in the group stage of ESL One: Road to Rio with a 2-3 record, with their 3 loses all being close 2-1 defeats. As the 9th Ranked team on the HLTV rankings, Evil Geniuses have been underperforming recently, losing to GenG, 100 Thieves and even Cloud9, teams you would expect them to beat. They now have a chance to redeem themselves as all three of these teams are in their group in this tournament.
Evil Geniuses have some incredibly talented individuals which can carry the team if anyone is underperforming and they have now had over three weeks to prepare since their last official match meaning that Evil Geniuses should be in good form and prepared for this match. Evil Geniuses will not want to go out in the group stage of two tournaments in a row so will look to start their DreamHack Masters journey with a win in this opening game.
Cloud9
Cloud9 have had not as long to prepare for this match as Evil Geniuses as they reached the playoffs of ESL One: Road to Rio where they placed 3rd after beating Liquid in a 3rd/4th decider match, which is an impressive result for Cloud9.
Despite Cloud9 placing 3rd at ESL One: Road to Rio, Cloud9 had some matches which makes you question how consistent they, including losing to Triumph and only just beating Orgless 2-1. It is hard to know what version of Cloud9 will show up in this match, however it will be hard for them as individually Cloud9 have weaker players compared to Evil Geniuses
My Bet Reasoning
I think EG are really over priced here and have spiked way too high, EG have the talent to be a top 3 team in the world, they haven't had a great year so far but I still think the skill on the side is EG and the individual talent is much higher than that of Cloud9. Cloud9 in recent months have had some very stand out wins vs some of the best teams in NA but i'm still not sold on them because on the other side of it they have some ridiculous losses vs teams they should never lose against. I simply just think people are under rating EG here and over rating C9 from a very small sample size considering this year especially in the last 2 months or so has really dried up with everything switching to online.
Bet: Evil Geniuses -1.5 @ - Evil Geniuses -2.5 Map 2 @ 1.83
League: Dreamhack Masters
Bookmaker: Pinnacle - bet365
Units: 1/3 - 1/3
