After hitting two big winners with our ESL Pro League S13 betting predictions for Saturday, Esportbet returns with another set of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive predictions for two play-in bouts on Thursday, April 8. Here are our best bets and top odds for Heroic vs Ninjas in Pyjamas and Gambit Esports vs Astralis.

?Heroic impressed with their group-stage performances last month when they put together a perfect 5-0 record and a +38 round differential. That run includes sweeps of Renegades and FunPlus Phoenix, as well as 2-1 victories against BIG, OG, and Complexity.

Ninjas in Pyjamas were just as good with wins against ENCE, FaZe Clan, mousesports and Team Vitality. Those results would suggest NiP are a very strong team, but we have to consider that FaZe, mousesports and Vitality are not playing that well at the moment.

NiP enter this match off a 1-2 loss against HAVU in the Pinnacle Cup, which leads us to believe that they might not be a very consistent team. Heroic have been playing much cleaner Counter-Strike for the past month and are on a seven-game winning streak, which makes it hard to side against them. NiP might win one map, but they don’t seem ready to take down the Danes just yet.

?If we were predicting the outcome of this match a couple of months back, it would be very easy to bet on Astralis and call it a day. But while Astralis are still one of the strongest teams in the world, the Danes have not looked very good this tournament.

Gambit Esports are a completely different story. The Russians came out of nowhere to win IEM Katowice and have not shown any signs of slowing down. A low-effort showing against Copenhagen Flames (1-2) at Snow Sweet Snow #2 is the only blip on the radar in recent times as Gambit enter this match on an eight-game winning streak.

While Astralis are the stronger side, it’s Gambit who are in better form. This should be a close match, which is why we have to take the slight outsiders at higher odds.