BIG vs Ninjas in Pyjamas – Betway Showmatch Betting Preview and Prediction
BIG and Ninjas in Pyjamas will return to the battlefield this Wednesday, January 13, for a best-of-five (Bo5) Showmatch organised by Betway. Here is our free betting preview and prediction. For more esports betting tips, check our premium website or follow us over at Betmarkets, where we cover both League of Legends and CS:GO.
BIG and Ninjas in Pyjamas last met at the IEM Beijing-Haidian 2020 Europe in November, when BIG justified their tag as the favourites (priced at around 1.78) and beat NiP (priced at around 2.0) with 2-1. The Germans took the series lead with a close 19-17 overtime win on Vertigo, with NiP striking back with a convincing 16-7 win on Nuke to level the score at 1-1. The series came down to BIG’s favourite map Mirage (72% win rate across the last 12 months). NiP started on CT-side where they managed to muster up only two rounds and although they saw more success as Terrorists(eye-watering four rounds), BIG had no real issues closing out the deal with a 16-6 victory. Regardless of BIG’s commanding win, the match was fairly close and had NiP closed out the first map on Vertigo they would be in an excellent spot to win the series 2-0.
Since their loss to BIG, NiP have played only one match against the newly formed Cloud9 roster. The Swedes entered the bout as heavy favourites (1.57) and although they ended up winning 2-0, the match was way too close for comfort (16-14, 16-12), which is inexcusable and quite disappointing.
For what it’s worth, NiP have not been performing too well in the online era of CS (i.e. the whole 2020), which is somewhat confusing considering they were looking fairly solid on LAN. That makes me believe they didn’t care too much about online games and instead decided to wait for CS to return back on LAN, which sadly hasn’t happened yet.
There were also some issues with Tim “nawwk” Jonasson who got placed on medical leave for almost a month, but there seem to be no internal issues as of now. Their best placement in 2020 was a bronze medal at BLAST Premier: Spring 2020 European Showdown. One positive we can take from NiP is that Björn “THREAT” Pers is still their coach and should be able to bring his team back into the top 10 sooner or later.
Unlike NiP who have struggled in the online era of CS; BIG have found themselves on the opposite side of the spectrum and not only started playing much better but also held a no.1 spot in the global CS:GO rankings for a while.
The Germans started the year with a gold medal from DreamHack Open Leipzig 2020 (LAN) and later went on to fill their pockets with B-Tier tournament winnings. A few months into 2020 something seemingly clicked in the team and they suddenly started wining bigger events such as DreamHack Masters Spring 2020: Europe, cs_summit 6 Online: Europe, DreamHack Open Summer 2020: Europe which made it seem like BIG have emerged as a proper top-3 team in the world.
They had their occasional slip-ups in August and in months that followed, but with top-three finishes at events like BLAST Premier: Fall 2020 and Intel Extreme Masters XV – Global Challenge, they seem to be in good form.
BIG have recently parted ways with their coach Tobias “tow b” Herberhold, who decided to step down due to personal reasons. He got replaced by Dustin “DuDe” Großmann, which does not concern massively, since this was a planned move and apparently tow b has been preparing DuDe since summer for the coaching role.
BIG will enter this match priced as favourites (around 1.65) which seems about fair. They have achieved far more than NIP in 2020 on top of the fact that NiP have not played an official match since November.
Since this is a showmatch, we can’t know how seriously the teams will take it nor whether they even take the time to prepare themselves for it. It’s also worth noting that the match will be played on maps such as Tuscan, Cache, Cobblestone, which are not maps used in the current rotation, making it difficult to analyse how the teams will perform on them.
This seems like an open match and at the current odds, it makes the most sense to bet on each side winning at least one map.
Prediction: Over 3.50 Maps – 1.34 at Pinnacle, 1.28 at Bet365 (1.44 at Pinnacle when posted on Betmarkets and sent to premium members)
