DreamHack Open Summer preview

DreamHack Open Summer kicks off what will be the busiest period of the year so far, with offline events happening on a weekly basis until the PGL Major Krakow, in July.

DreamHack makes another stop in Jönköping this weekend

Looking at the teams that will be present in Sweden, SK are the ones coming in the hottest, with two first places and a top four finish at the last three events they played. Those placings have also secured them the #1 spot in our rankings, but only 50 points separate the Brazilian team and the likes of FaZe and Astralis.

Apart from the Brazilians, Gambit at #6 are the only other highly ranked team at the event, with fnatic, MOUZ, Cloud9 and Immortals all on the fringes of the top 10—a good placing in Jönköping could allow any of them to move up the ranks.

CLG and Singularity are the two underdog teams at the event, but it must be said that the Danish side, especially with their star Allan "⁠AnJ⁠" Jensen leaving the team, have way lower chances to make their mark at DreamHack Summer than Pujan "⁠FNS⁠" Mehta's team.

As is usual for the DreamHack Open circuit, the eight attending teams have been split into two groups:

Group A	Group B
SK	Gambit
MOUZ	fnatic
Immortals	Cloud9
Singularity	CLG

The tournament will feature a BO1 GSL group stage, with BO3 elimination and decider matches and with the two best teams from both groups advancing to the playoffs. After a two-day group stage, the bracket will be played out using the best-of-three, single-elimination format.

Without further ado, let's take a look at the teams and what we can expect from them at DreamHack Open Summer 2017, which will run from Saturday to Monday.

Group A

SK (#1)	Age	Rating 2.0
Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David	22	1.27
Fernando "⁠fer⁠" Alvarenga	25	1.27
Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo	26	1.16
João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos	20	1.13
Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo	22	0.96

Similarly to G2 at DreamHack Open Austin, the title at DreamHack Open Summer is SK's to lose. With the Brazilians being the only truly elite team at the event, the outcome of the tournament will be in the hands of FalleN and co.—if they play at the same level we have seen from them recently, no one should be able to steal the trophy from them.

On paper, the toughest opposition for SK will be Gambit, who, coincidentally, were the team to take the crown from G2 in Austin. The matchup against Gambit seems to fit SK, though, as the last matches between the two ended as pretty comfortable wins for the Brazilian side. A dark horse SK should look out for is definitely fnatic. The Swedes have a high peak, and if they get going—with the crowd backing them up—it could get scary for SK.

SK's recent results make them the favorite for the title

Another thing that must be considered is that this LAN event will be just the first step in SK's month-long PGL Krakow Major preparation. The Brazilians have announced that they will be staying in Europe for a longer period to bootcamp, and will attend DreamHack Summer, ECS S3 and ESL One Cologne before the Major. Having that in mind, SK might take it a bit easier in Jönköping and ramp up the intensity as the Major nears.

Still, the depth of talent in SK, their fundamentally sound approach to the game and the plethora of experience they have make them the clear-cut favorites for the DreamHack Open Summer title.

MOUZ (#13)	Age	Rating 2.0
Tomáš "⁠oskar⁠" Šťastný	25	1.15
Christian "⁠loWel⁠" Garcia Antoran	20	1.06
Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool	17	1.06
Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong	27	0.92
Denis "⁠denis⁠" Howell	22	0.92
Sergey "⁠lmbt⁠" Bezhanov  (coach)

Coming to Sweden after two solid LAN showings with their newest addition, ropz, MOUZ are looking to continue their string of playoff finishes and build additional confidence going into the Major Qualifier.

Even though the team lost their star player earlier this year, things have never looked as good for MOUZ as they do right now. Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač's departure was supposed to be the end of the team's hopes of being a top-tier contender, but the German organization struck gold once again as they secured the services of ropz. The 17-year-old Estonian had a decent showing at his first international LAN, DreamHack Tours, and then finished MOUZ' most recent LAN, the ESL Pro League S5 finals, with a 1.11 rating.

Many wrote oskar off after he took a place on mousesports' bench

Besides ropz, the European mixture is fueled by the fragging power of another youngster, loWel, and of oskar, who made a somewhat unexpected comeback after taking a place on the bench due to personal matters.  

A player who has massively improved since NiKo left the team is denis, who still might not be a world-class player but is far from the liability he was in 2016. The last member of the team is the longest standing one, chrisJ, who has sacrificed his personal game for the benefit of the team, ensuring the team's stars can flourish.

In Jönköping, MOUZ will once again be looking to reach the playoffs, and, if no major drop-offs happen, they should be able to make it. Beating Singularity shouldn't be an issue, while Immortals will be a tougher matchup, but still one for which chrisJ and co. should be favored.

Immortals (#14)	Age	Rating 2.0
Ricardo "⁠boltz⁠" Prass	20	1.18
Lucas "⁠LUCAS1⁠" Teles	21	1.17
Vito "⁠kNgV-⁠" Giuseppe	22	1.12
Henrique "⁠HEN1⁠" Teles	21	1.06
Lucas "⁠steel⁠" Lopes	23	0.96
Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes (coach)

Immortals found themselves in a tough spot after Lincoln "⁠fnx⁠" Lau departed the team with the Americas Minor just around the corner, but the acquisition of kNgV- has worked out well for the Brazilian side. steel and co. didn't have a tough time securing a spot at the Major Qualifier, but they did lose the grand final to Cloud9 in the end, although the level of motivation Immortals had in that match could be called into question.

lucas has been in remarkable form recently

Heading into DreamHack Summer, we still don't know what to expect from this Immortals roster. So far, the team has been carried by boltz, who has taken over the in-game leadership role once again, and by LUCAS1, who has been playing on a level never seen before from him. It's hard to say how likely the two are to keep this up, but, at the same time, HEN1 has been quiet for the last couple of tournaments, and this could be the one where he finally turns up—which by itself is usually enough to win matches for his team.

Getting out of the group will surely come down to the match against MOUZ, as Immortals should be able to handle Singularity, while they have never looked too dangerous against the senior Brazilian side SK in the past. A win against the Germany-based team wouldn't be a massive shock, but it makes more sense to bet against it, considering Immortals' recent form.

Singularity (#38)	Age	Rating 2.0
Thomas "⁠Ryxxo⁠" Nielsen	20	1.16
Ismail "⁠refrezh⁠" Ali	19	1.13
Mads "⁠Console⁠" Skovby	21	1.09
Peter "⁠Inzta⁠" Kragelund	24	1.06
Lucas "⁠Lukki⁠" Pilheden	17	1.04

The biggest outsiders of the tournament are Singularity, who made it to DreamHack Open Summer through the European qualifier, in which they beat likes of Team123 and PRIDE.

Singularity made a name for themselves at this year's Copenhagen Games. At the Danish event, they qualified for the main tournament by winning the BYOC part of the competition, and then went on to win the main event as well, ahead of teams such as BIG, NRG and LDLC. Despite that big win, Singularity haven't been to a big tournament since then.

Going against the two-time Major champions SK in the first round surely won't be an easy task for the Danish side, who recently lost AnJ—probably their biggest talent. Singularity have spent the last two weeks to prepare for the event with trial player refrezh, who showed some potential in Copenhagen Flames, but their chances of getting out of Group A are still pretty slim.

Group B

Gambit (#6)	Age	Rating 2.0
Dauren "⁠AdreN⁠" Kystaubayev	27	1.13
Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov	23	1.13
Rustem "⁠mou⁠" Telepov	25	1.07
Mihail "⁠Dosia⁠" Stolyarov	28	1.03
Danylo "⁠Zeus⁠" Teslenko	29	0.90
Mikhaylo "⁠Kane⁠" Blagin (coach)

The second highest ranked team in the tournament, Gambit, had a second-placed finish and a title win at their last two offline events, cs_summit and DreamHack Open Austin, respectively.

Ever since Zeus came into the team, Gambit has relied on great performances from 27-year-old AdreN, who currently sits on a 1.13 LAN rating for the past three months. Following closely are the other two Kazakhs, HObbit and mou, with the latter stepping up significantly over the course of the two last tournaments.

With the former Natus Vincere member leading the team, Gambit's only weak point seems to be Dosia, who has been far from his early CS:GO form for quite some time. However, the Russian legend turned up in Austin and picked up the MVP award to prove his doubters wrong.

With Dosia stepping up, Gambit have a lot of depth

Along with a more well-rounded fragging distribution came more depth in their map pool. Back at SL i-League StarSeries S3, Gambit were known as a two-trick pony, with Overpass and Cobblestone being the maps they got wins on. That was abused by CLG, who were able to do in-depth preparation before facing Gambit on Cobblestone and ended up upsetting the CIS side.

Since then, Zeus has experimented with a different variety of maps by not picking or even banning their notable maps, in order to play the likes of Train, Inferno and Nuke. Now a more versatile team than ever before, Gambit are a safe bet to go far, but that is not to say that victories will come easy. All of the teams that they will meet, in the groups and potentially in the playoffs, will be able to put up a good fight. But the experience Gambit have, both as a team and as individuals, should allow them to close out the games.

fnatic (#11)	Age	Rating 2.0
Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson	23	1.09
Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer	25	1.06
Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman	26	1.04
Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist	23	1.00
Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell	22	1.00
Jimmy "⁠Jumpy⁠" Berndtsson (coach)

The legendary 2015/2016 lineup of fnatic was reunited in February of this year but hasn't been able to come even close to the heights of the original incarnation. The team has been struggling to find their style for some time, but finally started clicking in online matches leading up to the ESL Pro League S5 finals.

At the event in Dallas, fnatic started out strongly, finishing 2-1 after the first day, but a second-day blunder meant that they would, once again, end a tournament in the group stage. Still, they seem like they are on the right track, and, if so, they have found the perfect time to get into form.

The indegredients are there to finally see fnatic have a deep tournament run

Player-wise, it's KRIMZ having the highest rating at the moment, but the whole team seems to be contributing in LAN matches, as all of them have above-average ratings—something that is rarely seen in teams. 

fnatic's group at DreamHack Open Summer is not an easy one, but teams such as Cloud9 and CLG are just the type of opponents fnatic should be able to beat if they are to become a contender for titles anytime soon.

Cloud9 (#12)	Age	Rating 2.0
Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip	19	1.14
Timothy "⁠autimatic⁠" Ta	20	1.09
Tyler "⁠Skadoodle⁠" Latham	23	1.02
Jordan "⁠n0thing⁠" Gilbert	26	0.95
Mike "⁠shroud⁠" Grzesiek	23	0.94
Soham "⁠valens⁠" Chowdhury  (coach)

Cloud9's up and down form continues as they won the Americas Minor last week by defeating Immortals in the grand final, which was their first LAN victory over the Brazilian side since 2015. Before the Minor, n0thing and co. had had their best result at cs_summit, where they used Braxton "⁠swag⁠" Pierce and finished fourth, with an 11-12th place at the ESL Pro League Finals and a 5-6th place at DreamHack Open Austin coming in between.

The in-game leadership duties were recently transferred back from autimatic to Stewie2K, which seemingly freed up the former, but it's yet to be seen how the team looks against opposition tougher than the one they faced at the Americas Minor.

Stewie2K's Cloud9 will have a tough time getting out of group B

The two main fraggers are bound to show up, but Cloud9 will also need one of n0thing, Skadoodle and shroud fired up in Jönköping to make it out of the groups over the experienced Gambit, the home-crowd favorites fnatic and their local rivals CLG.

CLG (#18)	Age	Rating 2.0
Ricardo "⁠Rickeh⁠" Mulholland	25	1.11
Ethan "⁠Ethan⁠" Arnold	17	1.09
Stephen "⁠reltuC⁠" Cutler	28	1.03
Kenneth "⁠koosta⁠" Suen	21	1.00
Pujan "⁠FNS⁠" Mehta	25	0.87
Chet "ImAPet" Singh (coach)

The firepower of Rickeh, combined with the leadership of FNS and the impact of coach Chet “ImAPet” Singh, has resulted in CLG slowly but surely rising through the ranks, but disappointment struck last week as they were unable to make top two at the Americas Minor, losing out to both Cloud9 and Immortals.

Considering their solid tactical foundation, it's a surprise to see the team struggle with anti-eco rounds, something they must improve if they wish to make their mark in Sweden. Even though they are obviously the underdog of group B, they have been able to upset Gambit in the past and will always have a chance to take down Cloud9, considering the nature of domestic matchups.

However, in order to cross the finish line they will probably need koosta playing on a higher level and helping Rickeh and 17-year-old Ethan.