Dust2.us Pick 'Ems powered by GGPredict
The IEM Rio Major is right around the corner, and with just four days until the opening game starts, Dust2.us is revealing the predictions made by our writers, social media staff, alumni, and editor-in-chief. The use of the RMR system has led to increased competition in the Challengers Stage of the Major. The Swiss format, utilizing BO1s except for qualification and elimination matches, can also lead to some unexpected results early on in the event. These factors combined will make the Challengers Stage a difficult stage to predict.
Despite these factors, everyone here at Dust2.us selected the same four teams to go through, as OG, Vitality, Cloud9, and FURIA were all selected to reach the next stage. Most staff members put those teams as "teams that will advance" with the exception of Ryan (Vitality 3-0), Scoobster and Martin (Cloud9 3-0), and Liam (FURIA 3-0). MOUZ was the second team that was almost unanimous with only Jacob not believing in the young Europeans, and Arnie perhaps believing too much, trusting them to go undefeated in the Challengers Stage.
Outsiders was featured in all Pick' em predictions except three, as Dafydd, Duck, and Ryan don't think the CIS team has what it takes to get through to the Legends stage. Not featured in only two guesses was fnatic as Waldo and Gonc don't think the European roster is on the same level as the rest of the competition.
The most controversial pick among the staff room was 00 Nation. Six out of the thirteen Dust2.us staffers think the "TACOld" duo and the kids will be a dark horse, with Jacob and Collin trusting them to go undefeated, and the rest of the staff thinks that "tacOLD" will fall despite the home-field advantage. Some readers might be thinking "What about EG?" Well, Dust2.us has some copium for you. While only being picked twice as "teams that will advance", by Arnie, and, of course, Ryan, EG was also picked to go undefeated by Dafydd, Duck, and Waldo. With some mental gymnastics, and with the help of the Buchholz simulator, you might get there as well.
Continuing the trend of wild picks, we have BIG only being picked to advance thrice by Waldo (the most out-of-standard picker), Martin and Scoobster, while GamerLegion got Jacob's attention after eliminating G2 in the European RMR. Other picks of note include Bad News Eagles having Jeff's and Draik's full support as they believe they go 3-0, and I, Goncalo, have chosen 9z to go undefeated trusting some specific upsets will happen.
IHC was the only team not featured in any of our Pick' em predictions as the Dust2.us staff sees IHC winning at least one game. Rounding off the Pick' Ems, almost everyone was able to find some common ground in one pick, other than OG, and that was to put Grayhound as one of the two 0-3 teams. Sorry to all the Aussies! Except for Collin and Duck, who are on the verge of committing a war crime by thinking Imperial will go 0-3. Collin has some math behind his choice due to the history, as "the lowest seeded south American team has gone 0-3 the last 2 majors". In fact, GODSENT was the lowest SA team seeded during the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 and went 0-3, as well as 9z during the PGL Major Antwerp 2022. Will the trend continue?
Most of these picks were done with something called the "Eye Test", but if you are feeling like you need the guidance of a better mathematical model, you can use GGPredict's Challenge Stage qualification predictions. At GGPredict, they have built a system for pairwise team comparison, which gives you probabilities of a win between any two teams in professional CS:GO. It is a simple system, not accounting for maps being played or whether the match is taking place on LAN or online. It looks at team players' statistics and their recent performance, taking into account opponents' strength and tournament level. They assign different weights to all the factors in the model and optimize it to achieve the best predictive results of a win in pairwise comparison.
Using this tool, GGPredict have programmed possible scenarios for the Challenger Stage of IEM Rio Major 2022. Each team is randomly assigned a win or a loss according to their probabilities and is moved to the next games according to the tournament system, so the opponents of each team are equivalent to what would happen in the real thing. This way, they have "played out" the tournament 10,000,000 times using their pairwise win probability tool.
The drawbacks of their model are that it assigns the most weight to recent results, which overall is a good thing, but cannot capture, e.g. some teams might have not taken some matches seriously in preparation for the Major. It also does not care for players' experience and their ability to cope with stress, which is an important factor during an event of such rank as the IEM Rio Major. Lastly, as some teams compete only in their rather hermetic regions (e.g. Grayhound or IHC) their results may be skewed, as the model considers their opponents as quite weak and has no opportunity to update that in comparison to other regions.
Whether or not you did Pick' Ems as well, we can all look forward to the Major kicking off soon, with the opening matches of the all-important match set to begin on October 31st at 10:00AM.
DISCLAIMER! GGPredict is a company that provides AI coaching and analytics for individual players. We are not a bookmaking or forecasting company. These results are in no way a betting recommendation. The research was made solely for the purpose of our data team's fun (and hopefully yours as well).
About GGPredict: GGPredict is an AI-driven tool that uses quantitative analysis and machine learning to give users precise, easily viewable feedback on their CS:GO skills. After choosing one from five available roles, you receive the most complex, personalized training to develop your skills. To be more precise with the training plan, GGPredict downloads all your matchmaking, Faceit and ESEA matches, and analyzes them with a tailor-made CS:GO demo analyzer. All trainings happen in the game, so you get the most accurate results.
