Astralis vs. Spirit, Preview and Prediction-Free 8/16 CS: GO

Both teams will come back into competitive events after a long break. They will play their first match at Group A this Monday to square it out for the top prize of $175,000 plus a spot at the BLAST Premier World Final 2021.

Astralis Stats and Latest Results

Astralis is ranked fourth on the global ranking and has been among the top 30 teams on the world ranking for 242 weeks. Besides the impressive rank globally, the team is clearly on the downswing because they have never won any tournament since February. They were part of the DreamHack Masters Spring 2021 in May and finished 5-6th. At the same time, they were part of the Flashpoint 3 and finished 6th, and came 3-4th at the IEM Cologne 2021. They have won 4 matches in the last 8 events and currently have a win rate of 41.7%.

Considering their map performance in the last 3 months, the Danish team has achieved a decent win rate on Vertigo (66.7%), Dust2 (60.0%), and Nuke (57.1%). On the other hand, they failed to impress on Inferno (40.0%), Overpass (40.0%), and Ancient (0.0%). Their line-up consists of Xyp9x (1.00), dupreeh (1.13), gla1ve (1.00), Magisk (1.13), Bubzkji (0.99).

Spirit Stats and Latest Results

Spirit is ranked 12th on the world ranking and has been among the top 30 teams for 88 weeks. The Russian team has posted quite an impressive performance since the year started because they won the DreamHack Open January 2021 Europe, the Winstrike CIS Spring Cup 2021 - BLAST Premier Qualifier, and the recently concluded Pinnacle Cup II. At the same time, they finished third at the StarLadder CIS RMR 2021 in July. Considering their performance in the last 8 matches, they have won 5 matches and lost 3. Meanwhile, they have a win rate of 62.5% and a 3-match win streak.

Map win rate in the last 3 months shows that they have been impressive on Dust2 (77.8%), Overpass (70.0%), Mirage (66.7%), Ancient (60.0%), and Nuke (57.1%). On the flip side, they failed to impress on Inferno (20.0%), Train (0.0%), and Vertigo (0.0%). They have maintained one squad since January that consists of chopper (1.02), mir (1.20), sdy (1.12), degster (1.19), magixx (1.04).

Astralis vs. Spirit H2H Record

Both teams have met on 4 occasions and so far, the advantage of their head-to-head meetings is on the side of Astralis who has 3 victories. The last encounter was at the IEM Katowice 2021 tournament where Spirit won 2:1.

Astralis vs. Spirit Betting Preview

Many sportsbooks have given odds of almost the same coefficients. This is based on the fact that they are coming back after a long pause (4 weeks). Nevertheless, Spirit registered an impressive performance before the break and had a 3-match win streak. At the same time, the Russian side leads on Dust2, Mirage, Overpass, and Ancient. For this reason, we predict Spirit to win but Astralis will snatch one map.

The Pick: Spirit to win/ Over 2.5 maps