Will Astralis bounce back at Elisa Masters Espoo?

How low can you go? The question needs to be asked before Astralis plays their first match at Elisa Masters Espoo. A tournament that Astralis in its heyday would never take part in. But times are different for the four-time Major winning Organization, that had to accept the humiliation of not even qualifying for IEM Rio.

In Finland, Astralis will take on SAW in the first round. The match is played as a best of one which only highlights the importance of the map veto, which could go like this:

Veto

Astralis: Veto Inferno, Ancient, Nuke

SAW: Veto Mirage, Inferno, Dust2

Decider map: Overpass (AST 33% win rate - SAW 60% win rate)

In general, SAW has the best stats on most of the maps, but almost all of their results are against tier 2 opponents. The question is, what map does Astralis really feel like home on? They tend to pick Nuke a lot despite their 25% win rate during the last three months, which could also be the middle ground between the two teams.

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Astralis is still considered a favorite despite fielding two stand-in players. Kristoffer "kristou" Aamand will take up the AWP role for device, while Mikkel "MistR" Thomsen continues to be the stand-in for Kristian "k0nfig" Wienecke. We believe this match will be a close one, and if you don't like betting against Astralis, it could be possible of betting on the number of rounds during the match. We like 1.84 for "over 26.5" rounds on Map 1.

You can follow the match live here from 11.30 CET.