IEM Katowice starts on Tuesday with 8 games. However, Draftkings has cut off the first 3 matches since they apparently start too early, leaving us with a 5 game slate that locks at 7:00 am EST. We’ll delve into why it’s important in a bit, but it’s important to note that these games are all Best of 1. The games are:
Mouz (83% implied win probability) vs Renegades
VP (86%) vs Wisla Krakow
Complexity (58%) vs NiP
Fnatic (58%) vs OG
Liquid (69%) vs MiBR
Sub Risk/Roster Changes
Karrigan has officially left Mouz (to rejoin Faze), and Dexter has replaced him. Dexter previously played for Renegades and will ironically be making his debut for Mouz against his old team. Renegades filled Dexter’s spot with Alistair, the best player in the Australian scene who wasn’t already on Renegades. However, he is an AWPer and Renegades already has an AWPer (Sico) so it’ll be interesting to see who is going to main AWP. Also, there is some question about who is IGL. Apparently, Hatz said on stream it was going to be him, but that’s not confirmed. Note that INS tweeted it was Alistair but he was trolling, Alistair himself replied “wait, what” to the tweet. You can ignore that INS tweet.
Wisla Krakow has recently dropped mynio in favor of Goofy, which I suppose is a small upgrade.
None of the other teams have made roster changes since we last saw them, and none have 6+ players so there’s no risk of playing someone who ends up sitting out the map.
Slate Analysis
Before I jump into the slate itself, a quick note about best of ones. Essentially they are going significantly increase the randomness of outcomes. Let’s say Team A has a 75% chance to beat Team B on any given map (this is obviously an oversimplification but bear with me). In a best of 1 it’s quite simple, Team B will win 25% of the time. In a best of 3, Team will only win the series about 15.6% of the the time if they have a 25% chance to win any given map. To phrase it another way, think of the NCAA tournament vs the NBA playoffs. There are always crazy upsets in the NCAA tournament because it’s a best of 1, while the NBA playoffs are possibly the most predictable playoffs of any major sport.
For DFS, in addition to the outcomes of the games being more random, which are of course correlated highly to player performance, it also takes the DFS game from an NBA like game to a more NFL like game. What I mean by that, it in a best of 3 CSGO series it’s impossible to have 1 round make your day for DFS. Just like how in NBA it’s impossible to have a good game based off 1 play, even for the cheapest players. In best of 1 however, a 1v3 ace with a 1st kill for example is worth 15 points. I’d compare it to an 80 yard TD in NFL. It’s really rare and for your studs it’s not quite enough to be a good game on it’s own, but that 1 play makes a huge difference. A 4k is kind of like a receiver catching a 30-40 yard pass. You only need 2 or 3 of those to have a good game. This opens the door a lot more for 3rd-5th fraggers to “get hot” on a map and put up a big score.
The last piece of the Bo1 puzzle, for me at least, is stacking. Now when I looked at the data it showed 3/2/1 could work on 5 game slates, but that was for Bo3. With no 20 points for sweeping, there are only so many kills to go around, so I’m unlikely to use a 3 stack unless there is blatant mispricing. I’m going to build either 2/2/2 or 2/2/1/1 (no opponents in either build) almost exclusively.
Now, let’s jump into the actual slate. There are a few pretty major mispricings, some that will probably attract massive ownership and some that will probably go overlooked. I’ll quick breakdown of each game, who’s mispriced in that game, and my favorite plays from each game.
Mouz vs Renegades
This is a really strange game. Normally I’d say Renegades might be able to catch Mouz by surprise since no one outside of Australia has played against them, but by pure chance Renegades first game outside of Australia just happens to be against the team that just took their IGL, and took their coach back in November. Expect Mouz to be plenty ready for Renegades here. Now we have seen teams have moderate success coming from Australia to international competition, the jks 100T roster was actually the previous iteration of Renegades before they went to 100T, but the most likely outcome is that Renegades struggle a bit. They were so dominant in Australia that across the industry their projections are going to be too high, even on sites that heavily weight Vegas lines (our projections do not heavily weight Vegas, so their projections will definitely be too high on our site). Ownership might not be that high, as their prices aren’t too low.
Overall I expect Mouz to win fairly handily here. Pricing within Mouz is very odd. Dexter is WAY too expensive. His stats look great, but keep in mind they also come from playing for Renegades, where over the past 3 months they won 80% of the maps they played. He is definitely a high fragging IGL, but I’d expect that fragging potential to decrease substantially moving to Mouz. I won’t be playing any of him in this spot. Interestingly, it’s actual been Frozen who has been top fragging for Mouz of late. He’s far ahead of Ropz in DK points/round over the past month and has even passed him over the past 3 months. I’ll of course play Ropz as well. I think acoR is going to end up with quite a bit of ownership, and I think that could be a trap. I mentioned this I believe in Discord, but acoR tends to shrink when surrounded by strong players. Perhaps is because the team doesn’t play around him as much, but back when Mouz had Bubzkji acoR’s stats were very mediocre. The same has been true since he joined Mouz, where he has a team low .41 fp/r over the past month (I’d consider .6 or higher to be “good”). I expect his $6.4k price tag and Mouz’ status as a massive favorite to draw lots of ownership, and I’ll likely have a little bit, but I’m mostly going to focus on Frozen and Ropz in this spot. Bymas is also worth a look as he has outscored acoR of late but will likely have significantly less ownership.
I’m likely to fully stay away from Renegades, but if you do go that route, INS and Alistair are the players to target. They aren’t cheap, but if Renegades keeps it close or wins it will likely be on their backs.
VP vs Wisla Krakow
After a long write-up for Mouz vs Renegades, this one will be very short. VP has been beating up on T3 teams for months now, and I expect much of the same against Wisla Krakow. I don’t plan on playing anyone from WK. All 5 members of VP are in play. Sanji is cheap enough at $5.8k that one or two big rounds from him should be enough for him to put up a solid point per round score assuming VP handles their business. The other 4 players are all priced pretty much appropriately, Qikert is probably a tiny bit too cheap at $7.0k, and all have strong upside.
Col vs NiP
This is fun matchup because both teams recently made a roster change and saw instant results. For Col, it was simply getting Poizon back from medical leave, while for NiP, it was promoting ztr from their junior team. Both teams had impressive wins in Blast, NiP beating Astralis and Big before ultimately losing to Big in the group finals, and Col beating Vitality (before Apex went on break), G2, and finally EG on their way to winning their group. All 5 wins between the 2 teams were 2-0’s (NiP’s loss to Big was also a 2-0). Honestly, I don’t know what to make of the game itself, it’s a total toss-up to me.
What I do know though, is NiP’s pricing is crazy. Nawwk is arguably their best player, yet he is the 2nd cheapest player on the entire slate at $4.2k (SZPERO from WK is $4.0k). He has struggled a bit over the past month, but for only $4.2k you don’t need much out of him. Beyond that, ztr is only $5.4k. Now, his hype definitely got a little out of control after his debut match against Astralis, as he’s still inconsitent in his youth. However, that’s they type of player we want to target on a 1 game slate and hope he gets hot. Plopski and Hampus are also underpriced at at $6.0 and $6.8k respectively.
All that said, Complexity are decent plays themselves. I’ve mentioned it before, but Poizon being in the lineup seems to unlock K0nfig. He’s a better play than even his projections indicate as much of the past few months he and the rest of Complexity struggled as they cycled thru stand-in AWPers. He and BlameF will garner a good bit of ownership, but both have top score on the slate upside. I’m not particularly interested in Poizon, Rush, or jks. None of them have great numbers and will likely attract some ownership as part of Col stacks.
FNC vs OG
This game could go either way and both teams often play close, and frankly disgusting for DFS, games. That said, there’s some strong plays on both sides here. From FNC, it’s the Krimz and Brollan show. Krimz in particular is underpriced at only $7.8k while is frankly a bit overpriced at $9k. Both are strong plays from a raw points perspective. Jackinho is slightly interesting, but he’s priced about right at $7.0k. JW is the type of player who I likely wouldn’t consider if this were Bo3s, but in a Bo1 he can definitely get hot and put up a big score.
On the OG side, they’re pretty much all underpriced. Issaa is down in the basement with Nawwk priced at only $4.8k. He was struggling at the end of 2020 but actually has the 2nd best fp/r on the team over the past month, trailing only Valde. His best game of the year so far was also against this same OG team. Speaking of Valde, he’s also a great raw points play, and is probably also a bit underpriced. Mantuu may end up going overlooked in this spot, I actually like the idea of using him + Valde and ignoring Issaa, as I think most OG stacks will feature Issaa since he’s so cheap. The outcome of OG winning or losing close with Issaa struggling and Valde + Mantuu doing the heavy lifting is definitely plausible. AleksiB also averages a surprisingly decent fp/r for a 4th fragger at .52 over the past month (and .53 over the past 3 months), boosted in part by his very high assist rate. He is another interesting pivot off of Issaa within OG.
Liquid vs MiBR
This is a rematch from just a couple days ago, as these teams met in a Bo3. Liquid crushed MiBR 2-0. I didn’t really love MiBR’s decision to play Vertigo, as this roster had only managed to beat Cloud 9 on that map since coming to Europe. That said, I still think this matchup is closer than MiBR showed on the 13th, but that result will likely leave MiBR with virtually no ownership. I like them quite a bit as GPP plays. Yel is underpriced at $5.2k, and shz has put up the best numbers on their team since getting to Europe. He is only $6.8k. I’ll definitely have a few MiBR lineups.
On the other side, Naf and Elige have been jockeying for the position of top fragger. Elige is .01 fp/r ahead of Naf over the past 3 months, but Naf is .01 fp/r ahead of Elige over the past month. Naf is $600 more expensive, but both are near the top of the pricing charts. I think both are fine plays but I’ll likely come in under the field on each, as my preference is the top players on VP and Mouz. I’m not particularly interested on anyone besides Naf and Elige in this spot for Liquid.
Top Captains
This is definitely a slate where I’m looking for my captain up the most raw points, with maybe 2 exceptions. My favorite plays, in order of their games not how much I like them, are:
Frozen
Ropz
Jame
Yekindar
K0nfig
BlameF
Krimz
Valde
Naf
Elige
Now, I mentioned a couple of exceptions to looking for raw points at captain. Those exceptions are Nawwk and Issaa. Both players are so cheap that they allow you to stack the rest of your lineup with studs.
Since it’s best of 1s I’ll likely leave a few more players in my captain pool than I otherwise would, but the 12 I just listed will make up the vast majority of my lineups.
That’s it for me, good luck on Tuesday!
