Pick’em Challenge for BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025: Stage 1 from s1mple, chopper, ohnePixel and others
The third Major in CS2 history is already on the horizon and it’s time to start the chase for the diamond coin with BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025. It’s worth noting that getting it this time will be even more difficult, as now 32 teams participate in the VALVE tournament, which has added an additional Swiss system stage. As a quick reminder, teams need to achieve three victories to advance to the next stage.
The first stage features teams that we’ve rarely seen at tier-1 events in 2025, so making predictions will be truly challenging. There’s very little information about some teams, and random BO1 matches in the early rounds add even more headaches. Therefore, in addition to our predictions, we’ve collected Pick’ems from various community members to identify the most popular picks and possibly ease your path to the diamond medal.
Currently, the rarest diamond reward is considered to be IEM Rio 2022, which only 0.1% of players have, and this one could become even rarer! So don’t miss the opportunity to grab a rare item!
Pick'em SIH
- 3:0 – HEROIC, Complexity
- 3:1/3:2 – BetBoom Team, B8, TYLOO, Nemiga, Wildcard, Legacy
- 0:3 – Chinggis Warriors, FlyQuest
Don’t forget that in the new pick’ems you can’t bet on 100% advancement of strong teams with a 3:1 record, and guessing 3:0 teams is really important. Therefore, we turned to a special calculator and according to our predictions, the most favorable bracket will be for HEROIC and Complexity. By seeding, these teams are also at the top. Next, BoomIb4 and company have a fairly good draw and in theory they could even contend for 3:0, but the team has had practically no LAN experience with the current roster. B8 already surprised last year and this team showed they can pull themselves together at the right moment, while TYLOO just settled in our hearts after their bright performance at EPL S21 this spring.
Teams in the 3:2 bracket can also show decent CS and easily advance with a 3:1 record, but in this case – it doesn’t matter at all. The main candidates for elimination for us are the newcomers from Mongolia and the mustached guys from Oceania. While the former have tight competition in the Asian region, FlyQuest repeatedly compete with themselves. In our view, they have little chance of showing anything, although the Australians’ last performance in their home Melbourne wasn’t bad at all.
Pick'em s1mple
- 3:0 – HEROIC, Nemiga
- 3:1/3:2 – BetBoom Team, B8, TYLOO, Complexity, Metizport, Imperial
- 0:3 – Fluxo, FlyQuest
The CS:GO legend is already training hard at the FaZe bootcamp and apparently Alexander Kostylev decided to look at potential opponents in the next stage. We think the team lineup suits him more than well and s1mple has some confidence that none of the potential eight will take their slot in the final top-16. First and foremost, it would be interesting to see their match against former teammate BoomIb4 – admit it, you’d also watch that showdown?
Pick'em Banks
- 3:0 – HEROIC, B8
- 3:1/3:2 – BetBoom Team, Nemiga, TYLOO, Complexity, Wildcard, OG
- 0:3 – Chinggis Warriors, NRG
From esports players, let’s move to the main face of LAN tournaments, who hosts most events. This guy might not be the best expert in terms of the game itself, but he personally knows almost every team and should have an understanding of their morale and cohesion. We don’t know if he appealed to these factors when making his Pick’em, but it almost matches ours, except for OG and NRG. Regarding OG, this pick seems quite risky to us, even though fairly experienced fighters play there, while NRG at 0:3 looks more than realistic, especially after this quintet’s failed performance in Dallas.
Pick'em chopper
- 3:0 – HEROIC, BetBoom Team
- 3:1/3:2 – B8, Nemiga, TYLOO, Complexity, Wildcard, FlyQuest
- 0:3 – Chinggis Warriors, Fluxo
It’s possible that the Team Spirit captain won’t meet any of these teams, as they’ll start their trophy path from the third stage. The most surprising pick for us was FlyQuest, which Lenya believed in for unknown reasons. Perhaps he was also impressed by this team’s performance at IEM Melbourne 2025 or he’s just used to seeing them at tier-1 events and clicked on them by “familiar icon” logic. Also worth noting that he, like s1mple, put Fluxo at 0:3 – do the guys really not believe in arT as captain that much? In our view, his explosive playstyle will allow them to secure at least one victory for sure.
Pick'em Lobanjica
- 3:0 – HEROIC, Lynn Vision
- 3:1/3:2 – B8, Nemiga, TYLOO, Complexity, Wildcard, BetBoom Team
- 0:3 – Chinggis Warriors, Legacy
The main VALVE hater and especially CS2 didn’t leave the main tournament without attention and also made his choice. Like most others – everything is quite default, but the pick of the Chinese collective for 3:0 looks like fat trolling or an attempt to guess one of the most unexpected outcomes and hit that very “sensation.” Believing in these guys’ advancement is still possible, but doing it without a single loss – extremely doubtful. Legacy in last place is nothing other than belief in “karma,” since the Brazilians got to the Major extremely controversially, taking BESTIA’s place, who did get their visas but didn’t manage to provide them within the deadlines set by BLAST and VALVE. Well, this is certainly regrettable, but hardly anyone in Legacy’s place would have missed such an opportunity, and their 2:3 in the Swiss at PGL Astana 2025 literally screams – there’s no smell of 0:3 here.
Pick'em FL4MUS
- 3:0 – HEROIC, Complexity
- 3:1/3:2 – Fluxo, Nemiga, FlyQuest, OG, Wildcard, BetBoom Team
- 0:3 – Chinggis Warriors, Metizport
One of the brightest stars of the Shanghai Major as part of GamerLegion has started to fade a bit in VP, but obviously he hasn’t become less knowledgeable about CS. Well, here we see one of the most controversial Pick’ems – where Fluxo and FlyQuest advancing to the next stage are especially surprising. Apparently, arT in the IGL role appeals to him much more than electroNic. Okay, seriously though, the choice is really interesting, especially Metizport in the 0:3 bracket, who not only confidently passed RMR but also have a far from weak roster.
Pick'em ohnePixel
- 3:0 – HEROIC, Complexity
- 3:1/3:2 – B8, Imperial, FlyQuest, OG, Chinggis Warriors, BetBoom Team
- 0:3 – NRG, Legacy
Probably the main content creator in the industry and owner of an inventory worth hundreds of thousands of dollars decided to follow his colleague Loba’s example and put Legacy at 0:3. We’ve already commented on everything here, but leaving the advancement of the collective from Mongolia without attention is simply impossible. This is literally the first passed qualification from these guys in recent times, their first major LAN, and expecting three victories from them is still naive. Here we disagree and even Loba’s 3:0 Lynn Vision pick looks more logical.
Pick'em Mauisnake
- 3:0 – HEROIC, BetBoom Team
- 3:1/3:2 – B8, Wildcard, FlyQuest, OG, Complexity, TYLOO
- 0:3 – NRG, Fluxo
Finally, let’s see what one of the main analysts, who doesn’t hesitate to criticize many teams, has. What do we see? Again FlyQuest in the advancement bracket, which makes our 0:3 pick already look doubtful, but we’ll still stick to our guns. Also can’t help but notice one pattern – literally everyone has HEROIC at 3:0, and this is against the backdrop of the official announcement of SunPayus and coach sAw’s departure to G2 immediately after the Major ends. Why doesn’t this fact bother anyone? We think their last performance in Dallas was too serious, and rumors about this transfer have been around for a long time, so the official announcement was unlikely to be a surprise for the players.
Conclusions
This Pick’em is really difficult to analyze, as absolutely every team can beat each other and there are only 3-4 clearly standout collectives out of 16! Therefore, we wish you good luck, and hope our material helped you form the right choice!
