Welcome back, FANation! We are back with yet another Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 2-game LOOT DFS slate for April 16th, and this one begins bright and early at 5:30 AM ET, so get to reading and plugging in those lineups!

Game 1

WINSTRIKE (Ranked 42nd in World) vs SKADE (Ranked 39th in World) - 5:30 AM ET

For this LOOT group A, we have two teams here that have yet to play their 3rd match out of the whole group, however that is what this match will be. Both of these squads are undefeated in their prior two matches, so someone will be gaining their first loss, and one will be staying undefeated. As you can see their world ranks are relatively close, and both teams are sporting positive rounds won compared to their rounds lost – Winstrike have won 87 rounds in their prior two matches compared to 70 rounds lost, while Skade has won 85 rounds, compared to 73 rounds lost. Now remember, there are a total of 30 rounds set of a game, and a team has to reach 16 round wins to win the game. With all this said, these two teams are sitting in 2nd and 3rd for the tournament at the current time, behind only Team Sprout, who sits at 3-0, so one team will be tied or right there with them after this match.

As far as maps go – Skade’s best maps include Dust 2, Mirage, and Inferno, all three sitting above a 60% win-rate. Mirage is one of Winstrike’s worst maps lately, only winning this map at a 25% clip, and have yet to play a game on map Inferno. So, my perspective is that Winstrike will likely ban Inferno, as it seems to be the map they do not want to play, and it's Skade’s best map, and I believe that Skade will likely look to ban map Nuke, as it is their worse map at the moment sitting at 44%-win rate, whereas Winstrike is sitting at a 100% win rate on Nuke after 3 matches. The likely scenario is that the maps to be played will end up being Train, Overpass, or Dust2. As mentioned I believe the edge here would go to WInstrike, as they have 60%, 75%, and 100%-win clips on these three maps, compared to 62%, 75%, and 44% on these maps for Skade. If Skade gets unlucky and Train is selected as map one, this could bode very well for WInstrike as it one of their top three maps, and the bottom map for Skade.

Now, lets talk about some player options. At the moment I am taking a stance on Winstrike, as I feel like the map history tells a bit of a pre-story for this match, and I think it favors Winstrike. Both of these teams have won four of their last five matches, except Winstrike have won their last four matches straight, with two of those being a 2-0 sweep. Skade has reeled off three consecutive wins, but all needed a third map win. Edge here is Winstrike for me. Now player options:

Winstrike:

ANCHOR: El1an (1.19 Rating 2.0, 0.73 Kills per Round, a lovely 0.55 Deaths per Round, Kill-Asst% of 72.0, a hefty 1.22 IMPACT, and an above average ADR of 74.0.

Top Builds: El1an (make him your core 1.01 and build around), Hobbit, Bondik (in that order) Lack1 is value play.

SKADE:

ANCHOR: Rainwaker (1.21 Rating 2.0, 0.78 Kills per Round, 73.8 Kill-Asst%, 1.23 IMPACT, 83.7 ADR) 

Top Builds: Rainwaker (if stacking Winstrike, use Rain as a one-off), dennyslaw, rafftu

Game 2

Espada (Ranked 63rd in World) vs SMASH (Ranked 131st in World) – 8:00 AM ET

On paper, we can see that Espada will likely be some major chalk with the gap between world ranks here noted above. Must admit as well, SMASH has not played good lately, losing all five of their most recent matches. We also must note that Espada has been losers in their last three of five matches as well, however, two of those matches were against the two teams in game one – Winstrike and SKADE, who are both very solid squads, so we can somewhat discount that, but need to not pay so much attention to the world rank discrepancy here. It does however, not look great that SMASH has been 2-0 swept in three of those five, and Espada 2-0 swept their fourth and fifth opponents before catching losses in their last three. So, with that said, maps are not great of course either for SMASH, as they have been trounced, and overall, just seems like it “should” be an easy match for Espada, and to be quite frank, I believe it should as well, and Espada is basically into lock-stack mode here for this match and for DFS. Let’s look at some stacking options for each team. Again, I believe the team to fade on this 2-game slate is absolutely SMASH.

Espada:

ANCHOR: degster (1.25 Rating 2.0, 0.80 Kills per Round!!, 73.2 Kill-Asst%, 1.30 IMPACT!, 79.9 ADR)

Top Builds: degster (lock this guy in, anchor, top play, top one-off), dima, FinigaN

SMASH (again, likely a big dog here and fading is highly likely):

ANCHOR: disco doplan (0.98 Rating 2.0, 1.01 IMPACT, 74.8 ADR)

Top Builds: disco doplan, fejtZ, grux

**TOP PLAYS AND STACKS**

TOP PLAYS for CPT – degster, El1an, Rainwaker (can be used a one-off CPT or even 2-man stack)

 (Just so happens they are the top three priced CPTS on DK)

Best Values: Hobbit, Bondik, FinigaN, Lack1

Top Stacks – Espada, Winstrike 

Hope you enjoyed the playbook! Follow me on Twitter @smitchell17! Thanks.