If you hadn't mentioned about this match I wouldn't have noticed. Since 9Z are familiar team reaching deep into tournaments, Magic are not one of those many are use to seeing.
So they are the winners of the lower bracket of the semi-finals EWC, let's see how far they make it through to their next opponents when they resume in two days.

I have the opposing prediction when it comes to Team Spirit. Since they lost so badly to MOUZ in the last major I have much doubt they can beat a Vitality or Faze team in these championships.
You could see the confidence level of their players were at an all time low, especially Donk who had slammed his table several times early on in that match. So I don't think they have enough time to recover since that defeat.

Is anyone here into chess? Did anyone watch the EWC Chess tournament? I guess I can post this here since EWC chess is also considered an esport. Right??

No one has been able to beat Magnus Carlsen in EWC Chess. Back2back EWC championships for him. And the way he won was incredible. He knew exactly what he was doing. Imagine being 99% accurate in Game 4. That queen sacrifice was insane. If you're something into chess you'll definitely enjoy watching this tournament too.

I even saw a post saying it's a new record for the region. I had a bit of hope for LGD after they started 1-0 against Yandex, but unfortunately, one game was all they could get out of that series.

Both teams have the potential to go all the way through the semis, but i'd rather choose Vitality over Spirit. Even with the bigger picture showing Vitality is struggling, it's getting hard to trust this current version of Spirit with Hally.

Maybe they could start smoothing out their problems with the help of each series, but I prefer to back a roster that's best at their roles despite the lack of results in the recent tournaments.

So, from what i could gather from what actually happened to XG, from chinese sources, here's what happened:
This is all XG's owner fault. During last year, when XG reached TI final, XG owner always saw XM and xinQ as the ugly ducklings of the team. He always thought XM was not skilled enough to win a TI, and xinQ lacked professionalism, always wanting to take breaks.

Apparently XG's owner is a very supersticious guy. So, after TI, he decided to remove XM and xinQ from the team(against Ame and XXS will) and bringing NTS and fy, as he believed recreating the old LGD squad was that the team needed to take the extra step to win TI.

Ame and Xxs gave it a shot, but it quickly became obvious NTS and fy were massive downgrades to the team. They kept trying hard and they even got top3 at ESL Birmingham.

However, this was when the team finally cracked. At ESL Birmingham, in game 3 of Yandex vs XG for the lower bracket final, xiao8 insisted on picking Keeper of the Light for NTS. The team was not really on board with this pick, and XG lost the match. XG's owner, then decided to hire maps, to be like a secondary coach to xiao8.

Xiao8 felt disrespected and left the team. Ame and Xxs tried many times to convince xiao8 to stay, but xiao8 felt he was being disrespected and there was nothing they could do to make him stay.

So, now we have Ame and Xxs against the kicks of XM and xinQ, against the signings of NTS and fy, and against the xiao8 departure. Ame tried to jump ship to Vici as last resort, before TI, but got rejected. Now all there was left was participate at TI and get it over with. Very sad turn of events. That XG owner completely ruined a team that showed so much promise last year.


HOWEVER

BIG NEWS. Topson just announced he wants to play professionally at least one more season!!!
Quote from an interview from cybersport with Topson:

I mean no disrepect toward this guy but he should have stayed retired.

He is married with 1 kid and have a stable life as streamer, that should be a good ending for his story but instead he chose to come back on the competitive scene. There are plenty of pos 2 talent that are way cheaper than him, obviously you need to offer Topson lots of money with no guaranteed results and so far we have seen that he is no longer the same guy like he used to be

Still good but not something as extraordinary like 6-7 years ago

---

So anyway, which teams will bag the TI trophy this year ? VISION obviously the best right now but its just boring if they win easily on most tournaments

Would it be smart to back all 4 outsiders in today's CS World Cup matches?

I'm tempted to back Astralis today but H2H looks quite one sided in recent matches.
Maybe I will just wait until the match starts and get involved in-play.
There will surely be some underdog wins today.

Well G2 did not look so good out the gate since Astralis beat them badly on the first map for the first game of the playoffs. So your assumption on Astralis are looking respectful so far even though their past matches didn't do them justice.
Same with Magic they dominated FUT on the first map too for another underdog win. With both the favorites having nearly identical odds pre-match circling around 1.44-1.49x for each of these early matches.

Next are FURIA vs Aurora and GamerLegion vs MOUZ so I can not see the same happening to these favorites in the later matches of the day.

I'm going to bet on this Furia vs. Aurora match. I was analyzing it and everything is very even. This is mainly because even though Furia is in the world's top 3, they are still inconsistent. Furia has a slight advantage in Dust2, Cache, and Inferno, but it's almost equal. Aurora only has an advantage in Anubis. So, depending on the outcome, I believe Furia will ban Anubis and pick Dust2. I'm betting on Furia thinking they will win Dust2 and maybe even Inferno. It's practically a 49/51 for Furia.

Not really, every player on that team speaks chinese. Ame and XinQ for obvious reasons, Sneyking is chinese and is fluent in chinese, Ws is also fluent in chinese and played for Vici before going to Aurora, and i'm pretty sure Topson speaks at least the basics since his wife also speaks chinese apparently.

Betboom and Parivision just had some great games. I didn't expect to see Pudge and Puck, even though they weren't effective in the end. Nature's Rapier didn't work at all in the end. But the games were fun. Now we'll find out who's stronger in the end. I was most interested in Spirit's games today because Yatoro always shows more than just effective and impressive play. And I got to see the second match. There was no drawn-out jungle farming like there was in the first game between Betboom and Parivision. I don't like static and boring matches like these. I'd like to point out that the team that took Winter Wyvern lost. Overall, I'd say there was a festive feeling. Let's get to Game 3!