With the playoffs of the China leg of this tournament kicking off by Friday, we come down to the last match of the group stage matches for Group A. This decider match will be a rematch of these two teams who faced off in the opening night. Can CDEC pull-off another upset the way they did the first time? Or will PSG.LGD continue to build on the momentum they gained from their elimination match against Team Aster? Read on to know our thoughts for this upcoming battle.

Betting Lines

CDEC to Win (2.72)

PSG.LGD to Win (1.34)

Previous Match Results and Statistics

The reigning champions of the ESL ONE Birmingham China Region in PSG.LGD come into this game as the favorites. It is not surprising that they are still considered to be the favorites here despite losing against CDEC in their opening match. This is the same PSG.LGD who went undefeated for the entire ESL tournament and have finished most of their wins in spectacular fashion, sweeping majority of their opponents. PSG.LGD only dropped two games in total for the entire tournament, one in the group stage and one in the grand finals against iG.

CDEC shouldn’t be counted out, though, as they also had an undefeated group stage record and sat atop of team standings in Group B of the previously held ESL ONE tournament. However, the team seemed to have cracked under pressure come playoff time. They suffered two straight losses and even lost against iG, a team they beat in the group stage, causing them to be knocked out of the tournament.

In their most recent encounter, CDEC looks like a refreshed and refocused team as they worked like a well-oiled machine as they played extremely well against the reigning champs. Everyone performed extremely well, as the team only suffered two deaths at most except for Srf’s Clockwerk, who even with seven deaths did his job and did it well with his on-point hook shot initiations and lockdowns on priority targets with his power cogs. Their cores in Xm and Ame came through and combined for 17 kills. The spotlight however belongs to James in this one with his support Puck that came up big in team fights and finished game 1 with a 10/2/17 KDA as his team ended the game in just 29 minutes.

Game 2 was almost like a repeat of the first game with only a different star, it was a pure Ame show who finished the game with 12 kills and 11 assists without a single death. His Slark found his early kills and established a great early game and have not looked back ever since as he snowballed his way until the end of the game. PSG.LGD’s cores in Chalice and Maybe still struggled to win their respective lanes while their supports in xNova and the offlane old eLeVeN died 6 and 10 times respectively which made the game even harder for their cores as the enemy team got so much gold from their deaths.

Predictions

These teams are both extremely talented making this match hard to predict despite the line suggesting that PSG.LGD is the heavily favored team here. I will not be shocked if CDEC manages to pull-off a shocker upset here with the way they played in their previous match where they just completely stomped PSG.LGD.

Yes PSG.LGD may have found their winning ways in their recent match against Team Aster, however, looking at the stats their win was not as dominant as the way CDEC won against them and they even faced a team of lesser competition. It would be interesting to watch if CDEC could win two in-a-row against the reigning champs and ultimately knock them out of the upper bracket.