2019 IEM Beijing Recap

IEM Beijing, while not the most important tournament in the grand scheme of things, still has some important things to teach interested CS bettors. Take a look at our breakdown of the most recent S tier CS:GO event.

IEM Beijing has drawn to a close, which means the CS:GO betting scene is drawing to a close for the year. With just a handful of S Tier tournaments left in 2019, these tournaments are becoming exponentially more important, at least in terms of their importance on end of the year rankings, team legacies, and potential roster moves before the next Major, in May of next year.

But that’s a long way off yet. We have plenty of important things to talk about now, like Astralis’ domination, ENCE’s continued disappointments, and 100 Thieves surprising performance.

Astralis

I believe this qualifies as a Tour de Force for the Danes. A +62 round differential in the group stage, they won the event without dropping a map, they had four players in the top five highest Rated.

I had a point I wanted to make there, but we have to do this first. Gla1ve had a Rating of 1.48 over 9 maps. Do you have any idea how insane that is? He’s In Game Leading maybe the best team in the world, matching up against top 10 teams and putting up better stats than ZywOo did.

Anyway, like I was saying, this might be the best performance any team’s had in a single tournament this year. Gla1ve and device both had Ratings above 1.48, with Xyp9x and Magisk following behind them with a 1.31 and 1.29 respectively. Dupreeh had the worst tournament of the team, and still posted a better Rating than coldzera, shox, CeRq, Brehze, and BnTeT.

They had wins on five different maps over their nine maps played. They held opponents to an average of 5.7 rounds per map, including a 16-0 over FaZe. I know it sounds like I’m gushing here, and I am. These guys are unbelievable, that they can still pull performances like this out over a year after their era started in 2018.

My point is, this was an indescribably dominant performance. Device had a 1.66 K/D, like come on. If they can keep up this form, I can’t imagine them ever losing a tournament again.

ENCE

Astralis’ success story, and the way they got there, present a brutal foil for ENCE’s failings in the back half of this year. Obviously, I’m talking about Aleksib. Astralis’ IGL put up a dominating performance, carrying his team to a victory both in and out of the server. Cut to ENCE and you see a group of players struggling to play cohesive Counter Strike, bombing out of tournament after tournament.

Since adding suNny, they’ve come in fifth, fifth, ninth, and fifth. They have map wins over Fnatic, Vitality, and NiP, with series wins over eUnited and ViCi. That’s really ugly, especially for a team that was a contender just six months ago.

The most disappointing thing about ENCE, for me at least, is that they aren’t even a high powered team. The highest Rated player on the team since the addition of suNny is allu, who has a Rating of 1.03. That’s abysmal. Aerial is averaging 0.80, and suNny has just a 0.95. The upside of this move, the whole reason this team exists, is their supposed firepower.

In Bejing, their highest Rated player was suNny, at a 1.08 with a 1.00 K/D. He had a worse Rating than jkaem, jks, Liazz, and RpK. That’s just not acceptable for a guy that was supposed to turn this team from contender to world beater.

100 Thieves

What an entrance for the Aussies. In their first tournament with their new Org, ex Renegades made a run to the finals, before losing to the transcendent Astralis.

The stats are kind to 100 Thieves, with two of their players solidly in the top 10, Liazz and jks. While they did go 0-5 in maps against Astralis, they dominated ENCE and put away Vitality without much trouble.

To be honest, their win over Vitality might be the most impactful part of this tournament. We knew that Astralis could really good (although maybe not this good). We didn’t know that 100 Thieves were this good. While they have beaten Vitality before in the last three months, they need to keep it up if they want to be a fixture of the top 10.

While I have you here, and while we’re talking about 100 Thieves, I think there are some things I should mention. First off, these guys are going to get a lot better, pretty quickly. Improved infrastructure, which means better facilities, potentially hiring an analyst, better accommodations, all these things will improve their performance. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, there’s a chance that they could make some roster changes. These guys have been together since late 2018, and while it’s working well so far, 100 Thieves (presumably) increased budget could lead to buying out top level talent to bolster the team.

FaZe Clan

You know, I really thought things were looking up. I really did. I mean, I knew Copenhagen was a relatively small sample size, and they were all best of ones. But it’s almost impressive to win an event and then immediately get 16-0’d in a dominant 0-2 loss. Not to mention getting nearly shut out in the decider game against Vitality, and a near loss to Evil Geniuses.

What’s weird is, no one on the team has like, abysmal stats or anything. Lowest Rated is broky with 0.98, which isn’t terrible. I mean, certainly not great, but not awful either.

FaZe’s lackluster result is, obviously, due to their run in with Astralis in the semifinals. In fact, FaZe looked not bad in the group stage, besides their third map collapse against Vitality.

The stats for their best of three against Astralis are abysmal though. Everyone on the team at 60 ADR or under, not a single positivie K/D, no Ratings over 0.75. It was a tough game, obviously.

That all being said, I think the best thing to do here is look at that beating like it’s an outlier. It’s easy to forget, but FaZe beat EG soundly twice in the group stage, which is no small feat. As coldzera continues to get more comfortable with this roster (and presumably with speaking English, although I don’t know how good his English is) their results will continue to improve.

Evil Geniuses

This was a tough outing for EG. They went 1-4 in maps against FaZe, and that was that for the tournament. Well, that’s not entirely true. They also stomped all over TyLoo, but that doesn’t even feel worth mentioning.

There really isn’t much to say about EG at this tournament. CeRq was their best performer, although not by much, with the rest of the team’s stars going negative.

Overall, this wasn’t a very indicative tournament in my opinion. The sample size was pretty small, with 100 Thieves playing the most maps at 12. Still though, Astralis blew my socks off. Keep an eye on them moving forward, especially if you can get them at plus odds.