ESL One Katowice 2019 Predictions

Dota 2
February 12, 2019
Radu Muresan

ESL One Katowice 2019 is getting closer and closer. The event is scheduled to take place between February 22nd – 24th in Katowice, Poland.

ESL One Katowice 2019 brings together 12 teams and the majority of them are tier 1 competitors at the moment. This is guaranteed to turn the tournament into a great show and a very successful Dota 2 event, even though it doesn’t belong to the Dota Pro Circuit. So no qualification points for The International 2019 and that means a very simple thing: the teams will feel free to experiment more with their strategies. Especially the ones that are already familiar with success and don’t need the money anyway.

Predictions and top contenders

ESL One Katowice 2019 is likely to be won by Team Secret, followed closely by Ninjas in Pyjamas and Fnatic. One of these 3 teams is almost guaranteed to emerge victorious but let’s see why.

Team Secret

Secret are the best team in the world at the moment and they actually occupy the top place in the Dota Pro Circuit rankings. Grand Finalists of the first Major of the season and winners of the second one, Team Secret are by a country mile the best team at this event. Or at least, the one with the highest chances of winning it based on their recent results and current form.

Ninjas in Pyjamas

NiP, ppd’s new team, finished 4th at the first Major of the season but then completely missed the second Major, as a consequence of a massive patch (7.20) that resulted in a lot of uncertainty. NiP’s captain, ppd, did not manage to immediately make sense of all of the changes and his team got caught completely by surprise by Alliance and others in the qualifiers.

At the most recent qualifiers for the 3rd Major of the season, NiP not only qualified. They won the European region in an outstanding fashion. That’s absolutely insane considering that both Team Secret and Team Liquid took part in that qualifier. And Team Secret actually faced NiP and got crushed by them. That says a lot about ppd’s team. Right now, they seem very strong compared to most teams in the race.

Fnatic

And finally we have Fnatic, another serious team in the race not just for winning ESL One Katowice 2019, but also for getting a direct invite to The International 2019. At the first two Majors of the season, Fnatic finished 7th – 8th and then 5th – 6th. At the recent qualifiers for the 3rd one, they won the Southeast Asian region.

Overall, Fnatic is almost certainly the 3rd best team at ESL One Katowice 2019, but it could still surpass the first 2 on a good day.

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