TECHLABS Cup quarters preview

The playoffs for TECHLABS Cup are set to begin on Wednesday with two quarter finals taking place followed up by another two on Thursday, and it's now time to take a look at the upcoming matchups.

What makes TECHLABS Cup especially interesting is of course the fact it was the debut event for many of the renewed rosters among the European top, such as SK Gaming featuring Martin "trace" Heldt and fnatic with Andreas "MODDII" Fridh.

Group A saw Ukrainian giants Natus Vincere coming out on top and the Russians of Vifort surprisingly advancing over LIONS who were favored to advance as at least the second seed.

In group B the usual suspects fnatic and ESC Gaming were able to advance over challengers Xapso and snT. In the end, fnatic were able to best the Poles 21-9 on de_train to clinch the top seed for playoffs.

The third group ended up in a three way tie among SK Gaming, WinFakt and ALTERNATE aTTaX, with Virtus.pro exiting the group without a single point. In the end it was the two teams from the Nordics who made it out, as ALTERNATE dropped out due to a weaker round difference.

The final group saw KerchNET surprise everyone by winning it over Moscow Five, eSAHARA and Anexis. While eSAHARA lost each of their three games, the second place actually came down to the very last round of M5 vs Anexis, where a tie would have been enough for the Danes but the Russians escaped with a 16-14 win.

This leaves us with the following quarter final match ups:

Wednesday 18:00	Natus Vincere	vs Moscow Five
Wednesday 21:00	fnatic	vs WinFakt
Thursday 18:00	SK Gaming	vs Vifort
Thursday 20:30	ESC Gaming	vs KerchNET

Worth noting is that only the quarter finals and semi finals will be completed online, as the top two teams will fly out to Moscow on March 18 to duke the grand finals out on LAN for a larger slice of the $15,000 prize purse.

Natus Vincere vs Moscow Five

These two teams have a lot of history playing against each other where Natus Vincere has often had close games with the Russians but up until the Kingston Trilogy Tour just under two weeks ago, always escaped with a win in the end. According to rumours neither team has been practicing much which can always randomize the results a little bit and probably favors Moscow Five due to their playing style.

Na`Vi has looked strong once again after a bit of a slump towards the end of last year, starting the year with a big win at IEM6 Global Challenge Kiev. Moscow Five finished third at the same event and had some trouble in TECHLABS Cup's group stage, but are never a team you can count out due to their unpredictable playing style and high individual skill level among the team.

I do think Na`Vi will manage to overcome M5 this time though, although I expect the match to be very close. They are overall the stronger team and while both teams are clearly better on LAN, I think the Russians might suffer more from playing online due to relying way more on individual skills rather than teamplay, or the strats that Alexander "xek" Zobkov said they don't have.

Prediction: Natus Vincere > Moscow Five 2-1

According to Zobkov Moscow Five basically doesn't use strategies

fnatic vs WinFakt
(Prediction by Marc "Nix0n" Winther Kristensen)

WinFakt has just resumed practice days ago after captain Tomi "lurppis" Kovanen returned from vacation in North America. Despite not playing for quite some time, WinFakt managed to win against Alternate and Virtus.pro in the group stage, but then loss with a big margin agains SK in the final match. Andreas "MODDII" Fridh had a great debut with fnatic, going 3-0 in the group stage, managing a convincing victory against ESC Gaming to top the group. 

Last time the teams met, was in Kiev, where fnatic won 16-12 on de_inferno, when facing off in the group stage. The question is how much time fnatic has had to fine tune Fridh's role in the team, a best-of-three showdown against WinFakt could very well display their current shape.

fnatic won 2-0 in the last best-of-three series between the two, when facing off in the semi of IEM6 GC Guangzhou. There has been changes in both teams since then, but still fnatic go in favored in this match. I expect two close maps, going in favor of the Swedish team.

Prediction: fnatic > WinFakt 2-0

Fridh had a great debut with fnatic, will that continue in the playoffs?

SK Gaming vs Vifort

Going into this match it would be hard to argue that Vifort's chances were more than maybe 20%. SK Gaming had a rough start with their new team as they fell against ALTERNATE but then picked up two comfortable wins. They have also been bootcamping for a couple of days now, which should definitely help trace ease into the team more as the days go by.

Vifort had a big loss against Lions to begin their campaign but then easily beat SharkGaming and surprisingly managed to tie Natus Vincere. Their best bet is definitely playing in an aggressive and unpredictable way just like in the Na`Vi match, but it will be harder to keep up throughout an entire best-of-three series without running low on money.

Maps will definitely play a big part in this match as I don't think the Russians stand a chance on train or nuke, but inferno and dust2 could be competitive if they win a pistol and hit their shots. I don't know too much about Vifort's tuscan, but you have to assume SK has the advantage on it.

Prediction: SK Gaming > Vifort 2-0

SK Gaming is currently bootcamping to integrate Heldt into their team

ESC Gaming vs KerchNET

ESL's announcement of the last chance qualifier for IEM6 WC must have been like Christmas and all of their birthdays rolled into one, and I expect their motivation to have skyrocketed since the announcement roughly two weeks ago. KerchNET has been outside of the limelight recently but came out with a bang, beating M5 16-4, Anexis 16-9 and eSAHARA 16-9.

ESC Gaming is clearly the stronger one of these two teams, but they have a long history of producing underwhelming results online and a part of that problem is the fact they don't seem to believe in themselves online either. KerchNET looked strong on their terrorist sides too (scoring eleven rounds on de_train and thirteen rounds on de_nuke) which has traditionally been ESC Gaming's strong suite and could result in lopsided halves.

Overall while I think KerchNET will probably win one map and even has a chance of scoring an unlikely upset win here, I still have faith in Filip "NEO" Kubski and company to pull out the win here and advance in to the semi finals. It won't be easy, but playing against a team that comes from another country known for weak internet connections and being located somewhat close to one another will also make it easier.

Prediction: ESC Gaming > KerchNET 2-1

Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas at it back in e-Stars Seoul 2010

The first two matches will be played on Wednesday at 21:00 and the latter two are scheduled for Thursday 21:00 . Semi finals are scheduled to take place on Friday, first one at 18:00 and the second one at 20:30 .

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