The faithful shall be rewarded. Movistar Riders came into the week with the expectation that they would be a middle team in Group C, hopefully scraping by into a top-three placement.

To be fair, they did get a top three placement. But they ended up doing much, much better than expected. Movistar became the first team in ESL pro league’s groups this year to win all five of the games that they played.

In a group that looked pretty open to begin with, Movistar quickly claimed a good position with wins over Godsent and Players in their first two games. Beating one of the best teams in the group set them up well for the second half, where they claimed wins over Liquid, BIG, and Party Astronauts en route to their perfect record.

Perhaps most interesting was the fact that Movistar rarely won dominantly. The only 2-0 they achieved was against BIG. Even Party Astronauts, who ended the group 0-5, managed to take a map.

The Rider’s best player over the week was SunPayus, who ended the week with a 1.17 rating while Alex had a 1.14. Both players were instrumental to their team’s unbeaten record, but all five ended with a rating of above 1.0.

Despite Players’ loss to the Riders, they still performed well; that was their only loss in the group and they claimed an easy second place on the back of 1.37 rating by Sh1ro and a 1.25 by HObbit.

If those two players keep performing at that level, this roster is going to be really scary heading into playoffs.

Rounding out the top three was NA’s second-to-last hope, Team Liquid. Despite losses to both Players and Movistar, they won their other three maps and made it across the line just ahead of the 2-3  BIG, 1-4 Godsent, and 0-5 Party Astronauts.

Now, the last group awaits with NAVI, Heroic, Astralis and EG. Read on for more.

Congratulations sailor! You made it to week four of Pro League.

It wasn’t exactly a struggle to muscle past three straight weeks of CSGO, even if Group C was... less tasty than the rest.

But you deserve a reward regardless, so you get to see s1mple stomp on the throat of the best Denmark and North America has to offer.

NAVI and Heroic stand out in an otherwise mediocre group. Honestly, we’ll never get used to Heroic not being considered one of the mediocre teams. Alas, compared to Astralis, they are a top tier team.

Nah, it just doesn’t sound right.

Though NAVI’s start to the year has been underwhelming - for good reasons - we can’t see a world where three of these teams finish above them. Heroic might, Astralis could fluke it, but which of Complexity, Evil Geniuses or AGO are also doing it?

Astralis will be playing with farlig, giving us a first glimpse of their newest attempt to recapture the glory days, while EG will be playing with their normal roster, who are also desperately trying to recapture the glory days.

Of being the 5th best team in the world.

Complexity meanwhile have a real opportunity. While we’re not expecting much from AGO or EG, Complexity are a team who can do something.

They won’t, but they can.

First and second place are probably settled; but the race for third between Complexity, Astralis and whichever of AGO or EG doesn’t go 0-5, will be juicy.

🥫 Freshly spilled beans

• The next s1mple, AKA the next m0nesy, AKA w0nderful just got a trial on Enterprise. Never heard of that team but we wish him luck.
• CS:GO Source 2 confirmed (again)? CS Source was such a success they just had to make a sequel, we get it.

🤡  Shut it, m0E

• We’ll have you know, m0E, that we’ll gladly read all of Ryan’s horrible articles just to prove your maths wrong.

🥴  That’s got to hurt

• We’d say this is the kind of stuff that would get a player like FNX on a proper team, to a Major. Can you smell the sarcasm?
• Sad to see you go, Lynn Vision... Wait, no, sad to see you not go. Sad to see that you won’t be able to go to the Major. We’re not trying to rub it in, we just suck at condolences.
• ESL did Liquid dirty. We’re loving it.