The preview of iBUYPOWER Masters IV

The $200,000 championship by iBUYPOWER will start on January 19. We will tell you about the event in details.

The general information

The tournament will be hosted on January 19-20. The prize pool, as it was said before, will amount $200,000 and eight teams from various parts of the world will take part in its distribution. All teams have received an opportunity to go to the championship with a help of direct invitations. The event will take place in Los Angeles and AVALON Hollywood will be a venue.

The analysis of teams

Group A

Astralis — the odds on the victory: 1,70(a place in the rate by HLTV — #1)

Astralis is the team, which doesn’t need to be presented. This CS:GO roster was considered to be the most successful in the history of CS and the five Danes enter the five richest CS:GO players. Astralis has achieved victory at four tournaments in a row and if we consider Intel Grand Slam, gla1ve and his team have a series of five won championships. Astralis prevailed at BLAST Pro Series: Lisbon 2018 a month ago and it seems that they are not going to stop on the achievement. The team has the biggest chance to win the upcoming iBUYPOWER Masters IV and will probably grab the main money prize in the sum of $100,000.

The roster of Astralis and the players’ rate:

Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz — 1.17Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen — 1.14Andreas ‘Xyp9x’ Hojsleth — 1.14Lukas ‘gla1ve’ Rossander — 1.11Emil ‘Magisk’ Reif — 1.16Danny ‘zonic’ Sorensen — a coach

Fnatic — the odds on the victory: 17(a place in the rate by HLTV — #9)

After Brollan joined the Swedes, the team was not able to find its play for some time. A month ago, Fnatic showed a great result at PLG Grand Slam 2018, having beaten all their opponents, and achieved victory at the championship. In fairness, it’s worth to notice that Fnatic was the strongest and the most titled participant of the event. Almost all the rest of the teams were representatives of the tier-3 class. Opponents will be much stronger at this tournament than they were at the previous event. It will not be easy for Fnatic to win but they are likely to advance to the playoffs. They will face Team Liquid or FaZe Clan in the semi-final of the playoff stage. The match against one or another team will probably be the last one for Fnatic and as a result, the Swedes will hold the 3rd-4th place in the standings and continue following the tournament as a spectator.

The roster of Fnatic and the players’ rate:

Freddy ‘KRIMZ’ Johansson — 1.05Jesper ‘JW’ Wecksell — 1.01Richard ‘Xizt’ Landstrom — 0.95Simon ‘twist’ Eliasson — 1.08Ludvig ‘Brollan’ Brolin — 1.07Jimmy ‘Jumpy’ Berndtsson — a coach

Cloud9 — the odds on the victory: 17(a place in the rate by HLTV — #15)

Cloud9 are unlikely to show decent results at the championship. The reason is their long-running bad streak. Besides this, it’s worth to remind that the roster of C9 was renewed only a couple of weeks ago when Zellsis joined the team on a trial period. The important factor is that the esportsman doesn’t have an experience of playing for famous organizations, so the experience of playing on a big stage is minimal. EPICENTER 2018 was the biggest LAN final, in which he competed, but Zellsis held the last place there. It’s worth to notice the fact that Zellsis has the highest rating in C9 at the moment.

Will Cloud9 be able to show a good result with the American newcomer only a couple of weeks after his accession to the team? They are probably not. In our view, Cloud9 will not be able even to advance to the playoffs. There are Astralis and Fnatic in Group A, which are way more presentable than C9.

The roster of Cloud9 and the players’ rate:

Timothy ‘autimatic’ Ta — 1.04Will ‘RUSH’ Wierzba — 0.97Robin ‘flusha’ Ronnquist — 1.05Fabin ‘kioShiMa’ Fiey — 0.95Jordan ‘Zellsis’ Montemurro — 1.11Soham ‘valens’ Chowdhury — a coach

compLexity Gaming — the odds on the victory: 17(a place in the rate by HLTV — #30)

compLexity is an obvious underdog of Group A and the tournament in general. The reason is in bad results of the Americans during a long time. The fact that compLexity made changes to its roster on December 29, having signed Rickeh who is famous for his performance in Renegades, CLG, and Rogue, can be added as one more serious argument against coL. The fifth member of the team is n0thing who has joined the team as a stand-in. If the team, which hired two players a couple of weeks ago, advances to the playoffs, it will be very unexpected. compLexity Gaming will probably finish their participation in the 7th-8th place.

The roster of compLexity and the players’ rate:

Rory ‘dephh’ Jackson — 1.04Peter ‘stanislaw’ Jarguz — 1.08Shahzeeb ‘ShahZaM’ Khan — 1.05Ricardo ‘Rickeh’ Mulholland — 1.09Jordan ‘n0thing’ Gilbert (a stand-in) — 1.04

Group B

Team Liquid — the odds on the victory: 3.80(a place in the rate by HLTV — #3)

Team Liquid is the main favorite to advance to the playoffs from Group B and one of the contenders for a victory at the tournament. Liquid placed second at the last large championship of 2018, in which the Americans took part. They earned a money prize in the sum of $110,000 for their efforts at ESL Pro League Season 8 - Finals and the team had held the first place at SuperNova Malta 2018 a week before. The roster is a good moral state, a nice gaming shape and is one of the best in the world. All these make the American team one of the main favorites to advance to the playoffs from Group B. Moreover we think that they will get to the final of the tournament and will probably place second again. Eric Hoag joined the players as a coach on December 22 who will likely help them to reach the grand final.

The roster of Team Liquid and the players’ rate:

Nicholas ‘nitr0’ Cannella — 1.08Jonathan ‘EliGE” Jablonowski — 1.12Russel ‘Twistzz’ Van Dulken — 1.13Keith ‘NAF’ Markovic — 1.16Jacky ‘Stewie2K’ Yip — 1.08Eric ‘adreN’ Hoag — a coach

FaZe Clan — the odds on the victory: 6(a place in the rate by HLTV — #7)

FaZe Clan’s main problem is that AdreN joined the team on January 6 who didn’t have an experience of playing in the roster. Due to the stand-in has become a part of FaZe recently, it’s not worth to expect a phenomenal play by NiKo and his team. However, the roster is still one of the best in the world and the famous Kazakh esportsman is going to reinforce it to allow FaZe perform on a decent level at the upcoming tournament. YNk, who is famous for his analytics, has joined the team as a coach together with AdreN. He has an experience of coaching a team. He has recently worked with the players from MiBR.

Due to there are such opponents as Ghost Gaming and Luminosity Gaming in Group B, FaZe Clan looks strong enough to advance to the playoffs. The players from Team Liquid will be the most serious opponents for them. If the Europeans manage to get to the final stage, they will probably finish their way at the tournament, having stopped 3rd-4th.

The roster of FaZe Clan and the players’ rate:

Havard ‘rain’ Nygaard — 0.99Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovac — 1.16Ladislav ‘GuardiaN’ Kovacs — 1.04Olof ‘olofmeister’ Kajbjer — 0.96Dauren 'AdreN' Kystaubayev — 1.21Janko ‘YNk’ Paunovic — a coach

Ghost Gaming — the odds on the victory: 81(a place in the rate by HLTV — #20)

According to bookmakers, Ghost Gaming is the most obvious underdog, which has the lowest odds on the victory. We don’t agree with this and think that this team is stronger than two participants, at least: Luminosity Gaming and compLexity Gaming. Ghost Gaming managed to reach the top eight at the last large tournament of 2018, ESL Pro League Season 8 - Finals, having placed 7th-8th in the standings and earned a money prize in the sum of $24,000. However, it’s difficult to talk about Ghost Gaming’s gaming shape because their last efforts to qualify for a tournament were in the middle of December. If they prepared hard for iBUYPOWER Masters IV, they will have a chance to make it to the playoffs but it’s very small. It’s worth to remind that the Canadian-American team came to ZOTAC Cup Masters 2018 with the prize pool in the sum of $300,000 as an obvious underdog but they entered the top four even with stand-ins on the roster, having defeated a favorite before that. They signed the fifth player on September 25 and hasn’t changed the roster for almost 4 months.

The roster of Ghost Gaming and the players’ rate:

Matthew ‘Wardell’ Yu — 1.14Yassine ‘Subroza’ Taoufik — 1.01Joshua ‘steel’ Nissan — 1.06Kenneth ‘koosta’ Suen — 1.05Jason ‘neptune’ Tran — 0.95James ‘JamezIRL’ Macaulay — a coach

Luminosity Gaming — the odds on the victory: 45(a place in the rate by HLTV — #29)

Luminosity Gaming held the second place at DreamHack Open Atlanta 2018 in the middle of November but this result can be considered a good one with great reserve because all teams that were competing in the above-mentioned tournament were weak enough. On December 12, Luminosity Gaming signed boltz and a month has passed since then. Such a practice was not enough for the Brazilians to compete with the world-level teams, especially like FaZe Clan and Team Liquid, with which LG were put in one group. It became known on January 14 that Ricardo 'boltz' Prass will not be able to play for Luminosity at the championship. The representative of W7M, Filipe 'Pancc' Martins will play on the roster of LG instead of him. All these make Luminosity Gaming one of the main underdogs both in its group and at the tournament in general. We think that Luminosity Gaming will place 7th-8th in the standings.

The roster of Ghost Gaming and the players’ rate:

Gabriel ‘NEKIZ’ Schenato — 0.89Lucas ‘steel’ Lopes — 0.98Henrique ‘HEN1’ Teles — 1.05Lucas ‘LUCAS1’ Teles — 0.91Ricardo ‘boltz’ Prass — 1.21Rafael ‘zakk’ Fernandes — a coach

In our view, the results of the tournament will look in the following way:

1st place — Astralis2nd place — Team Liquid3rd-4th place — FaZe Clan3rd-4th place — Fnatic5th-6th place — Ghost Gaming5th-6th place — Cloud97th-8th place — compLexity Gaming7th-8th place — Luminosity Gaming

There will be predictions for the matches of iBUYPOWER Masters IV on our site. On EGamersWorld, you will also find broadcasts of all matches of the upcoming tournament. Let’s follow the event together!

If you are interested in the information about other CS:GO tournaments, you will can it here.