Can Fnatic reclaim lost glory at DreamHack Open November 2021?

DreamHack hosts their open tournament in November of this year. It will likely be the final Open type tournament in history. The event itself is a clash between four invite teams and four who earned their spot through the closed qualifier. They will be fighting for three things: A spot in the ESL Season 15 Pro League Conference, a prize pool of 85,000 dollars and points towards the ESL Pro League tour.

The tournament will open up on Wednesday November 10th and finish on Sunday November 14th. 

Teams & Format

Eight teams in total are competing at this event. Four teams with direct invites: MOUZ, ENCE, BIG and Team Spirit, and four teams through an open qualifier:  MAD Lions, Fnatic, Team GamerLegion and forZe.

The tournament will take place over two stages: Two double-elimination format (GSL) Groups with four teams each, playing BO3 series in with two teams from each group advance to the Playoffs. The Playoffs is a single-elimination bracket that continues the best-of-three format, with only the finals being best-of-five.

Key Storylines

AWPer Smooya will play in the first big tournament with his new team, Fnatic. This is the first shot at redemption Smooya will have after his dramatic exit from BIG back in 2019. Having seen much personal growth over the last few years, the English AWPer hopes to shed any negativity associated with him over the next few tournaments. His skill was undeniable with the results he showed when he played with Movistar Riders, with by far the highest HLTV rating out of anybody in the tier 2 scene. He has paid his dues and will have a shot to finally showcase his talent against some tier 1 competition. 

Both ENCE and BIG have a chip on their shoulder after their early exits from the major, where neither of them reached the top 8. If they play as well as they did in Stockholm, we may very well have a spicy final on our hands between these two. 

MAD Lions are the dark horse of this tournament. With a great showing in their first match, they hope to continue with the same gusto through the rest of the group stage. Take a look at them as a potential underdog pick to win.

Match Predictions

BIG and GamerLegion open up the event with a series that is heavily favoring the Berlin squad. We can expect a clean 2-0 from tabseN and the boys. Following up, MAD Lions take on MOUZ in what should be a 3 map series that can go either way. Calling a winner here is tough, as MOUZ will play with a stand-in and might not perform at the same level as they did a week before.

Over in Group B, ENCE and Fnatic are both favorites in their matches versus ForZe and Spirit respectively. We might not see clean 2-0 series, but just going for outright winners should suffice in both cases.

Overall, we are looking at roughly 7x return on investment if we tie all four opening matches into an accumulator at GG.BET.