FaZe vs BIG: easy again for the Olof team?

IEM Winter 2021 is a $250,000 BO1 tournament that will take place from December 2-12 in Stockholm, Sweden. The winner will receive $100,000 in prize money. The CIS region will be represented by Virtus.pro and Gambit, who will be in the same group. A total of 16 teams from around the world will be taking part in the tournament. There will be two groups - A and B, where eight teams will play. Our boys will be in Group B, and despite this, both teams stand a good chance of making the play-off stage and then the grand final. All we have to do is to support the CIS teams and enjoy CS.

On December 2, FaZe and BIG will meet in another IEM Winter 2021 match. Which team will be stronger and start their way to the tournament with a victory, and who will find themselves in the bottom draw?

In the last tournament, BLAST Premier Fall Final 2021, olofmeister’s team played pretty well and took 5-6th place, as they lost to Astralis in the lower net of the tournament. FaZe Clan could have easily defeated Astralis as the Danes had a new line-up and would not have had time to play before the event. But Astralis was greatly helped by the Danish fans’ support, which was more than 8 thousand in that tournament. FaZe Clan currently ranks No. 8 in the top teams according to the HLTV.org portal and is one of the favourites in this tournament. As for the match, the European squad is the main favorite based on the last meetings between the teams.

The Europeans have two main maps - dust2 and overpass with 71% of wins. Since the match format is bo1, they will need to think hard about which maps to banish. Also, in karrigan’s team map pool, there are two other worst maps - nuke and vertigo with 0 and 20% wins, which should be banned.

BIG were eliminated in the last major, finishing in 9th-11th place. After that, BIG took part in V4 Future Sports Festival 2021 and ended 3-4th after losing to Gambit 2-0. Next up for the team was the BLAST Premier Fall Final 2021, from which they crashed out, losing to NaVi and their next opponent, FaZe. In general, the German team had a chance to win the match with FaZe and on dust2. Team tabseN’a showed a confident game but still lost with a score of 16-11. Inferno BIG also did not give up and showed a decent game, but there turned out to be a stronger FaZe Clan. Many analysts and experts believed that the main reason for this result is the lack of permanent luncheon events and the two-year online era. As everyone knows, BIG were a very strong online team and even held first place in the HLTV.org rankings for some time. At one of the past online events, the DreamHack Open November 2021, the Germans ended up in second place, losing to Fnatic in the final. Does this prove that the team is not yet ready for a return to live-action? It is quite possible, but it is too early to say so because the pro scene has not yet seen a permanent return to LAN tournaments. At IEM Katowice 2021, the Germans can prove that they are ready to play in offline tournaments and show a decent result.

The best maps in BIG are dust2 (69%) and vertigo (67%), and mirage is also a good map with a 58% win rate. It’s hard to predict which map the teams will play. In my opinion, they will play mirage, as both teams have the same winning percentage on this map.

The clear favourites for this match are FaZe Clan that frequently defeated BIG in LAN tournaments. But this is a bo1 match, and here even the outsider can beat the favourite, even though it will be a live match. So, I believe that this time, it is BIG that they will win. The bookmakers are offering odds of 3.00 on a BIG win, which is a very favourable proposition. You can also take Total Under 26.5 on the first map for 1.84.