?The first series of day two of the quarter-finals brings us a matchup between the number one seed in Group B, FURIA, and the third seed out of Group D, Astralis. FURIA finished with a 4-1 record above ENCE on map difference and therefore passed through to the quarter-finals, whilst Astralis beat Entropiq 2-1 in their first round playoff series to get them to the quarter-finals.

FURIA will enter these playoffs as the number 11 ranked team in the world. The Brazilians have been very good throughout their pool matches and seem to be back at the level they were once at in late 2020 and early 2021 when their world ranking peaked at number three. Going through the pool matches with only one loss would have been a surprise to many people, considering they, much like ENCE, were one of the lower ranked teams in Group B but they both finished equal first only separated by round difference.

Astralis is back. The new roster is really starting to gel during this ESL Pro League and they are back playing the way that saw the Danes win a lot of tournaments during 2020 and 2021 when their ranking peaked at number one in world. Their new players Benjamin “blameF” Bremer and Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke are starting to show their same talent that they showed with Complexity, now that they are comfortable with the rest of the Astralis team.

The number nine and number 11 ranked teams will battle it out for a spot in the semi-finals and we expect this to be a really fun series to watch. We suggest taking the over 2.5 in the total maps market, which currently sits at -120.48.

?The last quarter-final could be the best series we may see in these playoffs. We have the number one ranked team in the world, NaVi, taking on the number two ranked team in the world, FaZe. NaVi finished as the top seed and the clear best team from the group stages with a perfect 5-0 record, whereas FaZe had a rough group stage finishing third in Group B with a 3-2 record.

NaVi have been the best team in the ESL Pro League so far by a fair margin. They breezed through their pool matches with an unblemished record of 5-0 and only lost one map out of their 11 maps played so far. Even with their stand-in player Daniil “headtr1ck” Valitov, NaVi won all of their five games with relative ease and didn’t look to be tested outside of their match against Astralis, who were the only team to a win a map against them. If NaVi keep us this high level of play there doesn’t look to be a team left in the tournament that can beat them at this stage.

FaZe are the number two team in the world and the reigning IEM Katowice champions. They didn’t look like that early in their pool matches, but since losing their first two series in a row they have been much better. FaZe have rattle off four straight series wins to get to the quarter-finals so they now look to back in that IEM Katowice form. They will have to be in that type of form and some to beat this Ukrainian juggernaut in NaVi.

NaVi are short favourites at -188.68 with BetOnline, and there is no reason to think they shouldn’t be. We suggest taking NaVi at the rounds line of -4.5, which is paying -120.48.

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