This is the 14th DreamHack Open Winter tournament, with the event this time being held in the Swedish city of Jönköping.
The tournament is ongoing and currently at the semi-final stage. Team Solomid, Fnatic, Virtus.Pro and Luminosity have secured their places and will be in blistering hot battles to try and get to the final. Who will make it through and continue their quest for the grand prize?
The semi-finals will be:
TSM vs Luminosity
&
Fnatic vs Virtus.Pro
Usually, TSM would be clear favourites in a match against Luminosity, but this may not be the case here. TSM’s recent results have not been strong, losing to Natus Vincere and struggling to beat Cloud9 in the IEM Season X in San Jose a week ago. Luminosity did come a disappointing seventh in that tournament, but they have been performing unprecedentedly well recently and are better ranked than both G2 and Cloud9, teams against whom TSM have struggled recently. Although it may prove to be a close game, TSM are still marginal favourites, but don’t discount the possibility of a shock.
Fnatic and Virtus.Pro are both well-respected teams of the highest calibre. Fnatic on the whole are performing better right now and are also higher in the rankings (second versus sixth), but luck may be a greater factor in determining who will win here. Despite this, Fnatic are expected to prevail as they possess a fraction more skill than Virtus. Both teams have won both qualifying games, but Fnatic narrowly beat Virtus in the ESL One: Cologne a few months back and so have form.
Consequently we expect the finalists to be Fnatic and TSM. They are not bitter rivals but they have developed quite a healthy competition, with mixed results against each other for a while. TSM are currently the top-ranked team with Fnatic close behind in second but recent form suggests that Fnatic could just about edge it. This may be crucial as it could see Fnatic take the lead in the rankings too, which would be a huge boost for them.
It won’t be easy though. TSM currently have former Team Dignitas players on their team, who transferred to them back in January. As they have been playing with each other for a while, they have developed a firm camaraderie with nuanced relationships and this could be crucial in battle. Conversely, Fnatic have a temporary stand-in after their former team leader Markus ‘pronax’ Wallsten left. He is Dennis ‘dennis’ Edman, who has played for a large number of teams and has only been with Fnatic for a fortnight. This could possibly affect their performance, but they do have Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer, who was deemed the 12th best player of 2014 by HLTV.org. This will be a close game, with sparks flying everywhere and the heat turned up high, and it’s very difficult to know which way it will go. Don’t miss it!
