The PGL Major Antwerp is the biggest CS:GO tournament of 2022. In his prop market preview for Pinnacle, Adam Boothe looks at some of the prop markets available for the tournament. Read on to find out more.
The PGL Major Antwerp 2022, the biggest CS:GO tournament of the year, begins on May 9. Here, Adam Boothe takes a look at some of the many proposition markets Pinnacle has provided for this event.
The first stage of the PGL Major Antwerp is the Challengers Stage. It will follow a Swiss format where three wins will mean qualification to the next stage, while three losses will send a team home. The first market to touch on is the Tournament Matchup (All in). This is a head-to-head between the two teams listed based on the number of matches each team are predicted to win. Immediately, Renegades vs. IHC sticks out as a possible mispricing. IHC, the first full Mongolian team I can recall seeing at a major, defeated the Aussies just a couple of weeks ago in dominant fashion (winning 2-0) when they were the large underdogs. While I am sure a rematch could play out differently, we may be able to get value on a team more capable of an upset against one of the lesser teams in the Challengers stage or should they face the Renegades again. The Mongolian side are currently priced at 2.410* for this matchup.
The second matchup on this market is Team Liquid against Complexity Gaming. They are certainly the number one and number two teams in the North American region. However, there is a significant discrepancy in performance between these two as evidenced by the recent 2-0 result in Liquid’s favour. Additionally, Liquid has the ‘easier’ opening match, facing G2, whereas Complexity’s opponent is Team Vitality and is easier based on the odds listed for those series. The Liquid vs. G2 series is priced at a 61% to 39%, while the Complexity vs. Vitality sits at 71% to 29%. Some of this is certainly accounted for in Liquid’s head-to-head against their regional counterpart with odds of 1.500*.
The next market to take a look at is the Highest Rated Team (All in). Similarly to the Challengers stage matchups, it is also a head-to-head market; however, it is not dependent on the actual results of matches but on overall team performance, where dominant wins and close losses will be rewarded. Currently, at Pinnacle, we can find some better prices for this market. G2 is priced at 1.600* to do better in the Tournament Matchups (All in) market but are priced at 2.030* in the Highest Rated Team (All in) market. This is significant value for a team that still has a lot to show. In a similar thread, I have backed Astralis at 1.800* against Liquid to be the higher-rated team after the Challengers stage. Astralis has the far easier opening match and perhaps this has not been properly accounted for.
Moving to some of the player Futures markets, there looks to be some nice value here too. One overtime map can certainly torpedo any one of these but we are not in the business of predicting which teams will play more overtimes. However, we can try to give ourselves a reasonable opportunity by taking players from good teams who are likely to win more rounds over more maps consistently. The five that I have listed below fit these criteria:
- “ZywOo” at 2.000 vs. “NiKo”
- “Hades” at 2.090 vs. “m0NESY”
- “Ll1T” at 2.060 vs. “dycha”
- “juanflatroo” at 1.830 vs. “Grim”
- “Jame” at 2.070 vs. “oSee”
With all of these markets, we do not know the subsequent opponents any team/player will face and that is ultimately what will play a significant factor in records and performances. However, if we work from the necessary assumption that they will go on to play similar levels of opposition, or our teams/players are fortunate enough to play weaker teams/players than the other teams/players in the matchups I’ve mentioned above, our bets should be winners.
*Odds are subject to change.
