StarLadder Budapest Major 2025: Pick'Ems Judgement Day

In the Harry Potter franchise, creatures known as “dementors” are thought to feed on despair—they drain all joy and happiness from the atmosphere around them, snatching away every positive memory and emotion you’ve ever felt. This is how Team Liquid look when playing Counter-Strike.

Stage 3 was generally unremarkable. Imperial did sneak an upset over Mongolz, but they were finally exposed against top opposition. Vitality had a rocky start in the best-of-ones, but then dominated, as expected. FURIA dominated, as expected. Spirit dominated, as expected. Plain sailing, really, before we cover the few minor upsets.

Falcons and G2 were unlucky enough to face off in the 2-2 bucket, though in the former’s case, they brought it upon themselves by losing the first best-of-one to B8 on Ancient. Bit of déjà vu from the last Major, if you ask us. Meanwhile, broky and jcobbb rediscovered the button to shoot back against 3DMAX and Passion UA, after frozen carried them to a Nuke win over Vitality. We never know what to expect from FaZe, because they managed to take down a tournament favourite, before getting battered by Spirit and having to slog their way through the 1-2 bracket to qualify. All the teams that deserved a playoffs appearance earned one, and all the teams that didn’t… didn’t. Looking at you, Liquid.

Stage 3 - Analysis

That marks five correct points for every stage. We are three-for-three on successful Pick’Ems predictions. Last article, we claimed that this stage would be the easiest of the lot, and the results indeed confirm this. If we compare the total surprise (nats) across each Swiss bracket, it progressively lessens as the level of competition increases. This is a sizeable win for the Valve Ranking System and the new major format—fewer crazy upsets, more predictable stages, and better teams generally advancing over weaker ones.

As we’ve mentioned before, if you’re curious how the model works, we recommend checking out the first article of this series. If you’re already familiar, here’s the model's Stage 3 performance breakdown, sorted by how surprising the results were.

That’s an improvement—14/16 is a new record for simple qualification prediction accuracy. We ended up with FaZe instead of G2, mostly due to quirky seeding and their nightmarish 2-2 matchup against Falcons. We’re very happy with the model’s performance during this stage. Hopefully you are too, because if you’ve been following along, you’re part of the 0.1% (estimated based on last Major) still on for a Diamond Coin. One final hurdle remains as the real test draws upon us: the best teams, in a single elimination bracket, played in the MVM Dome arena. Exciting stuff!

Stage 3 - Predictions

The keen-eyed among you will have noticed that the subheader has changed from “Best Predictions” to simply “Predictions.” This is because playoffs is a different beast entirely; straight up best-of-three matches all the way to the grand final, which is now a best-of-five for the first time in Counter-Strike history. No buckets, no second chances, no reason for teams to hold back. A common joke about Astralis (when they were relevant, in the pre-covid era) was that they “saved strats for the Major.” This is the part of it those jokes refer to, and crucially, it’s where the best-prepared teams can pull off the grandest upsets. That being said, here is how the model thinks Budapest will play out:

Unbelievable. A hair’s width in it—0.01% splits apart FURIA and Vitality. The model thinks this is a two-horse race, and we’re inclined to agree. The last time these two titans clashed in a best-of-five grand final, it ended in a 3-0 victory for the Brazillians, but every map was a round or two away from swinging in the other direction. FURIA were able to edge out Vitality then, and they’re edging out Vitality in our predictions now.

They enter these playoffs with a 10 match winstreak, which would be 16 if not for a (mostly meaningless) group stage loss to MOUZ in Chengdu. FalleN also has a commendable history in best-of-five finals, winning 14 of the 16 he has played so far in his CSGO/CS2 career. Granted, most of these were around the dominant SK/Luminosity era, with some middling-tier LAN wins padding the numbers since then. Still, when FalleN is capable of making it to the finishing line, he’s very strong at coming out ahead.

Vitality, on the other hand, are coming off of a shaky best-of-one stumble against FaZe and multiple unsuccessful finishes in events before this one. They’re practically guaranteed a spot in the semi finals, probably even a grand final appearance, but the echoes of the Vitality era are fading into recent history. With the exception of ESL Pro League Season 22, they’ve finished 2nd-4th in every event since the BLAST Austin Major, which they won back in June. They’re still a very impressive team, but unless they’re also “saving strats for the Major”, we have to support our model’s nod to FURIA.

As for the other teams, only Falcons, MOUZ, and Spirit have noteworthy dark horse angles. Falcons are the ultimate Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde team, with one of the highest ceilings in modern Counter-Strike, but a floor so low they can lose to B8 on Ancient twice. When the trio of m0nesy, NiKo, and kyousuke are firing on all cylinders, Falcons become an unplayable monster. When they aren’t, matches become unplayable for them. In the MOUZ camp, every tournament is a reference to The Myth of Sisyphus—they roll the boulder all the way up to playoffs, only to watch it tumble back down into the next group stage with another 3rd-4th place finish. Team Spirit’s literary analogy must be The Iliad; donk can win every duel that can be won, but it’s never enough to win the war.

Then there’s FaZe clan. Last Major—powered by s1mple—they made a much bigger splash than expected, but bombed out of playoffs anyway. The Major before that, everyone wrote FaZe off as a dead team walking, before they manifested a path to the finals. The odds don’t apply to karrigan, so we’re hoping he takes that 1.11% and runs with it.

We hope you enjoy the last stage of the Major. As always, best of luck with your Pick’Ems!