ESL Challenger Katowice 2024 tips & predictions – Friday, Oct 25

The ESL Challenger Katowice 2024 group stage begins on Friday, October 25, as Eternal Fire face off against B8, SAW clash with Team Falcons, paiN Gaming cross swords with Monte, and MiBR meet with Legacy. Here are our free betting picks for the four fixtures, with esports odds courtesy of the best Counter-Strike bookmakers in United States.

Eternal Fire and B8 last met at the end of August, when the Turkish side came away with a 2-0 victory. The rematch should play out similarly, as Engin “MAJ3R” Küpeli and his crew have shown great form in the months leading into their trip to Poland.

Eternal Fire reached the final four at Skyesports Championship 2024 in July and have since added two silver medals from BetBoom Dacha Belgrade 2024 #2 and ESL Pro League Season 20. While their Intel Extreme Masters Rio 2024 campaign was cut short early, EF still picked up a big scalp with a 2-0 victory against G2 Esports.

B8 have not attended any significant events this season, although they finished CCT Season 2 European Series #9 in second and won Series #10 just over a month ago. Even though this is a best-of-one clash, B8 have not shown enough to suggest they can upset Eternal Fire.

Team Falcons enter ESL Challenger Katowice 2024 off an early exit from Thunderpick World Championship 2024, where they lost against 3DMAX and Virtus.pro. Adding Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyljev to the lineup has not led to any notable improvements; however, the Ukrainian was the team’s best-performing player over the two series.

SAW have had their moments over the last three months, with semifinal runs at Intel Extreme Masters Cologne 2024 and ESL Challenger at DreamHack Atlanta 2024. However, the departure of coach Danny “BERRY” Krüger is not something to take lightly, as he was the man behind SAW’s resurgence in the second half of the year.

Team Falcons are not a very trustworthy team, but this is a stacked roster that should do well against a weakened SAW.

Monte travel to Katowice with seven wins from their last 10 series; however, they have not beaten any great teams over that stretch. Their most notable accomplishment was reaching the final four at YaLLa Compass Summer 2024 at the end of September, albeit on an easy road with wins against Passion UA, EYEBALLERS, Sashi Esports, PARIVISION, and BIG.

The Brazilian team exited Intel Extreme Masters Rio 2024 in 13th-16th place at the start of the month, but they had to face MOUZ and FaZe Clan. Since then, paiN Gaming have picked themselves up and won ESL Challenger League Season 48: South America.

Even though siding with favourites in a best-of-one match is not always the smart play, paiN Gaming are in solid shape and have a much deeper map pool, boasting at least a 64% win rate on all maps but Ancient.

According to the top Counter-Strike betting sites, MiBR should not struggle to beat Legacy on Friday; however, there is little evidence to support that. Even though André “drop” Abreu and co. are much higher rated (#15) than Legacy (#34), the underdogs are not to be underestimated.

Legacy made the lower-bracket finals at ESL Challenger League Season 48: North America last weekend and have shown good things over the last couple of weeks. MiBR, meanwhile, are 6-4 over their last 10, with their only notable victories coming against RED Canids and Imperial Esports.

In addition, MiBR have a better win rate on just two of seven maps — one of which is Ancient, where MiBR have a 75% win rate over 12 maps compared to Legacy’s 65% over 23 maps. The value is with the outsiders.

Esports betting tips