Starting the season strong with DreamHack Open January 2021

Several organizations are officially starting their new CS:GO season today with DreamHack Open January 2021. The off-season period is officially over with DH Open and cs_summit 7 engaging most of the high ranked teams this weekend. For some it will be a showcase of their newest rosters and for others a chance to start the season off on a high note.

Here’s everything you need to know about Dreamhack Open January 2021, paired with our in-house analysis, predictions and news.

© DreamHack Open

DreamHack Open January Tournament Info

The event is split into two divisions, one for Europe and one for North America. Based on participating team rankings the European event is considered an A-tier event, while NA falls into the B-tier category. Prize fund wise, EU plays for $70,000 while, North America gets to split $30,000.

On the EU side, eight teams will battle in two double-elimination format groups with the top four teams going straight to semifinals. In North America, the four teams are seeded directly into a double-elimination bracket with a total of six matches played in the entire event. The finalist coming from the winner bracket gets 1-0 scoreline for the final match.

DH Open Eruope participating teams are: BIG, Evil Geniuses, FunPlus Phoenix, Gambit, Team Spirit, forZe, HellRaisers and Sprout.

DH Open North America features: Triumph, Extra Salt, PaiN Gaming and Rebirth Esports.

The entire competition is set to end by January 31st, with the grand finals in both regions being played on the same day.

DreamHack Open January Group analysis and predictions

BIG are the absolute favorites in the European competition as the highest ranked seed invited to this event. They will however need to fight Evil Geniuses coming from a decent showing at the BLAST Premier Global Finals and a brand new FunPlus Phoenix roster that is making their debut at this event. Additionally, these three teams are all seeded into a single group, meaning one will have to get eliminated before playoffs.

Group B is battle between CIS rivals Gambit, Spirit and forZe and we are likely seeing two CIS teams in the Playoffs by the end of it. HellRaisers and Sprout are the odd ones out in both groups and have the lowest chances of advancing forward.

On the NA side, we can expect Extra Salt (former C9 roster) and paiN Gaming to easily win their opening match-ups and eventually meet up in the final. We assess the strength discrepancy between these two teams and their opponents is too much to have any sort of challenge for the favorites.

Finally, summarizing all that was written, we come up with the following opening match predictions: (Winners marked with bold)

BIG vs HellRaisers
FunPlus Phoenix vs Evil Geniuses
Spirit vs forZe
Gambit vs Sprout
Rebirth vs ExtraSalt
Triumph vs paiN Gaming

If we predict BIG and ExtraSalt win their matches with a 2:0 scoreline; we can get as much as x7.35 return on our bet at GG.BET and x8.44 at Unikrn. Not a bad haul for a days work of esports betting.

In the end, you can follow all the matches at the following Twitch stream.

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