ENCE vs forZe: The Russian team has a chance

The historic victory of Natus Vincere at the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 is still fresh in the minds of the fans, but the new tournaments are ready to please CS fans with exciting matches and fiery highlights. The first tournament after the Majors will be DreamHack Open November, which selected a good lineup of participants, and the CIS region will represent two teams at once. The tournament will be held from November 10 to 14. Eight teams will be competing for a $100,000 prize pool.

On November 10, ENCE and forZe will play their opening group stage match at DreamHack Open November 2021. We will find out if the Russian team will put up a fight against the favourites very soon.

ENCE managed to make it to the main stage of the Majors, showing a good level of play. However, later on, the team seemed tired and failed three matches in the Legends stage, never taking more than ten rounds per map. Perhaps the boys relaxed after a successful first leg, but the team’s results in the Legends stage were abysmal. After that, the European team had a little over a week to rest and prepare for DreamHack Open November, but how the team spent them is unknown.

As for maps, ENCE will take their pick of Nuke. It is one of the team’s strongest maps, unlike forZe, with only a 50% win rate. Last time ENCE defeated forZe in a head-to-head game with Nuke 16-5, but the Russian team was not very competitive that day. Usually, forZe put up stiff resistance on this map and won’t let themselves be crushed. The guys beat G2 Esports on Nuke and took 12 rounds against Complexity, which showed good CS at that time. So the Russian team will have a chance to score a good number of rounds, especially if things go well with the pistol rounds. ENCE’s 52% win rate in the pistol rounds gives them a good chance of doing so.

ForZe have dropped quite a bit in the rankings in recent months. The team has practically left the top 30 of HLTV, and changes in the roster have not yet yielded the desired results. The team has strengthened on paper with shooters, the team has four men with an individual rating above 1.10, but this does not give results yet. With this squad, the team has already lost the closed qualifications for DreamHack and was called for the tournament because of Complexity’s rejection. The Russian team learned about it quite some time ago and had time to prepare for the tournament.

As for the maps, forZe lost a lot on Mirage. Before, it was the strongest in the team’s pool, but now the win rate dropped below 70%, and some not-so-strong tier-2 teams defeated them. In the last face-to-face meeting, forZe was picking Mirage specifically with their pick, but I’m pretty sure that will change now. Most likely, the guys will be thinking between Dust2 and Ancient. On both maps, the opponents don’t look their best, and it will all depend on how confident forZe is about one map or the other. I am confident that the Russian team can cling to victory on any of them. The team has won five of the last seven meetings and must impose themselves on the favourites.

ENCE look like the favourite, but the bookmakers overestimate their chances. I believe that the Russian team can fight against the favourite and even fight to win. Bookmaker companies offer odds of 1.53 for forZe to win with a handicap (+10.5), which looks like a good option. You can also take Total Over 2.5 maps for 2.19.