BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2024 betting picks – Wednesday, January 24

ESB’s Counter-Strike 2 betting predictions for Wednesday, January 24, focus on four BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2024 matches. Here are our picks for FaZe Clan vs GamerLegion, Team Spirit vs Team Liquid, Virtus.pro vs BIG, and Cloud9 vs Heroic, with odds courtesy of BetOnline.

FaZe Clan and GamerLegion have met twice before on Counter-Strike 2, both times at the Intel Extreme Masters Sydney 2023. GamerLegion won the first game 19-15 but lost the best-of-three rematch 1-2.

Since their first loss against GamerLegion, FaZe Clan have won 21 of 23 series, with just two defeats against Team Vitality, who beat them in the finals of the BLAST Premier Fall Final 2023 and World Final 2023.

GamerLegion hasn’t been as successful in their recent outings and ended 2023 with a six-game losing streak, even though they are yet to play an official match in 2024.

GamerLgion might’ve beaten FaZe before, but considering their form, it’s unlikely they’ll manage to claim a map, let alone the series. FaZe to sweep the series at the offered betting odds is a better choice.

Team Spirit travelled to Denmark without Boris “magixx” Vorobyev and Danil “donk” Kryshkovets, which is a huge blow to their chances of winning the tournament. With the complete roster, Spirit has looked very good lately, and last month they won BetBoom Dacha without any issues.

Unfortunately, despite Team Spirit’s recent flashes of greatness, it’s tough to feel optimistic about a squad that is missing two key players and will play with coach Sergey “hally” Shavayev and academy player Oleg “baz” Kulynych as stand-ins.

Team Liquid debuted their new-look roster in the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 and Intel Extreme Masters Chengdu qualifiers, where they produced mixed results. They picked up 14 wins across 16 games but also played against much weaker opponents and lost to M80 twice.

Team Liquid has a lot more work to do, and while they shouldn’t be losing against Spirit, there’s a good chance Liquid will drop a map.

BIG enters the BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2024 as the lowest-rated team in the tournament and the main candidate to claim the wooden spoon in Group D. The German squad hasn’t produced much in bigger events; however, they won CCT Online Finals #5 and YaLLa Compass Fall 2023 in December.

Still, they’ve gone 1-3 in the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024: European Qualifier A last week, with defeats against BetBoom, Fnatic, and Nexus, which isn’t a good look.

Virtus.pro, unlike BIG, has looked good over the last month. They’re 7-1 across their last eight games, with just one loss against Natus Vincere. They’ve not beaten any top-tier teams over that stretch but have done well against squads of similar calibre as BIG.

Heroic rebuilt their lineup in December with the signing of Guy “NertZ” Iluz, Nico “nicoodoz” Tamjidi, and Damjan “kyxsan” Stoilkovski. Even though this is a weaker line-up than what they had before the controversial departure of Martin “stavn” Lund and Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard, Heroic have enough talent to do well at the top level.

Six months after the most recent major roster change, Cloud 9 has yet to find much success. They showed some glimpses in November with semifinal runs at both the BLAST Premier Fall Final 2023 and Thunderpick World Championship 2023, but then ended the year with a fifth-sixth-place finish at BetBoom Dacha and the BLAST Premier World Final 2023.

This is a very stacked Cloud9 roster, which should find some traction, but they’ve yet to show any consistency.

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