Best Picks For The Perfect World Shanghai Major Pick’Em — Opening Stage

The second Counter-Strike 2 Major is starting on the 30th of November, and with it, the official in-game Pick’Em challenge. All this challenge consists of is making the correct predictions for which team will win the tournament, and if you’ve bought the Viewer Pass and manage to do all of the quests, most of them being getting correct predictions, you will get the diamond Major coin — which is basically the ultimate flex for a CS player. Just like the last Major, the possible predictions are: who will advance 3:0, who will advance 3:1/3:2, an who will be eliminated 0:3. As always, these predictions are only my opinion and not fact, but I’ve done my best to be as accurate as possible.

3:0

Team Liquid — Although they lost their first RMR match against Wildcard, this North American team has done really well in the rest, winning 13:2 and then 13:4 in their other matches. Since most of the European Tier 1 teams have skipped right to the Elimination Stage, it’s natural to expect Liquid to easily make it through the Opening Stage 3:0.

Virtus.Pro — Similar to Team Liquid, Virtus.Pro also lost only one match in the RMR — except they participated in the European RMR, which is considered the hardest since Europe is full of Tier 1 teams. Managing to win against so many of the oldest and best teams in Counter-Strike is an indicator of their skill, and it’s not a surprise if they manage to go 3:0.

3:1/3:2

FURIA — With a pretty easy opening match against GamerLegion and a fantastic performance in the last Major, this South American team has amazing chances of making it into the Elimination Stage. The only reason they’re not in the 3:0 prediction is that they’re too good to be used for a risky prediction.

MIBR — After a literally perfect performance in the RMR, not losing even once, MIBR is sure to make it past the Opening Stage. Their opening match against Virtus.Pro makes it unlikely they’ll go 3:0, though.

Cloud9 — Possibly the safest possible prediction, Cloud9 will probably either go 3:0 or 3:1, depending on the outcome of their first match against Liquid. I can’t recall the last time they didn’t make it past the Opening Stage of a Major.

paiN Gaming — Although paiN is a pretty reliable team, they haven’t done very well in the RMR, so it’s unlikely they’ll get through with anything better than 3:2, much less with 3:0.

The MongolZ — Given their performance in the last Major, and the fact they didn’t lose a single one of their matches in the Asia RMR, The MongolZ is a sure prediction to make it into the next stage, although they’re surely not going to have a perfect 3:0.

Complexity Gaming — Usually a reliable prediction, Complexity had a pretty lousy RMR, but as we’ve seen from previous Majors, that doesn’t mean they’ll do bad in the tournament itself. This is the prediction I am the least sure about, though, and if I’d have to replace it, I’ll pick Fnatic.

0:3

Rare Atom — Whilst every single player on this team could easily kick my ass, it’s hard to imagine this team that’s not even in the top 100 teams on HLTV winning any of their matches here, especially with such a hard opening match against The MongolZ.

Flyquest — Although not a bad team at all that did surprisingly well in the RMR, their opening match is almost certain to be a loss since they’re up against Complexity, and compared to the other teams participating in the Opening Stage, it’s hard to imagine them winning even one match.

Conclusion

Well, this is possibly the hardest Major to predict yet, even harder than the Copenhagen Major. Even the RMR was unpredictable, with Team Spirit losing to Passion UA in one match. These are the best predictions I could make, but I’m definitely not sure about them. If you’re wondering what happened to all the Tier 1 European teams, they made it right to the Elimination Stage, so they’re irrelevant until the Opening Stage finishes.