The strategy behind vetoing maps plays a big part in professional CS:GO matches. If a team have the read and do the right move, it can leave the opponent in a pretty dire spot for the series. This is what happened before paiN Gaming thrashed Fluxo 16-2 on Mirage in the first round of the BLAST Paris Major Challengers Stage on May 8 and it was all because paiN’s captain Rodrigo “biguzera” Bittencourt saw it unfold on Steam ahead of the tournament.
PaiN had the better seeding coming into the game and therefore could choose to either remove the first two maps or the three last ones. Biguzera chose the latter so he could see what strategy Fluxo was going for and to confirm the theory he crafted after seeing Fluxo’s players practicing a lot of Ancient via Steam’s friend list.
“I told my team yesterday there were only two options, either they had to veto Anubis and another map minus Nuke or Vertigo because if they vetoed Nuke or Vertigo along with Anubis, I knew I’d pick Mirage over Ancient in the end,” biguzera said in a post-match interview with Gaules’ Twitch channel after the 16-2 victory. “I knew they wanted to play on Ancient because I observed them playing a lot of Ancient thanks to Steam’s friend list. Ancient was one of their worst maps [prior to the Major], according to HLTV, so I knew there was something strange there. Although Ancient is a good map for us, I didn’t want to play without having information on them so I picked Mirage.”
Biguzera let Fluxo veto first and they indeed banned Anubis and Vertigo as he had foreseen. Then paiN banned Overpass, Inferno, and Ancient to force them to play on Mirage, where they had plenty of information on Fluxo, having beaten them 16-1 on the same map during the Americas RMR in April, and avoiding a potential curve ball on Ancient.
The veto may have caught Fluxo off guard because they looked unprepared to face paiN on Mirage. Biguzera’s side barely allowed Fluxo to run executions on their T side as they played with relentless aggression instead of just waiting for the grenade executions on the bomb sites. This strat paid off and paiN beat Fluxo 13-2 on the CT side and closed the game rapidly after switching sides, winning three in a row to beat their fellow countrymen by 16-2.
This is the first time we’ve seen the Steam friends list play a key role in the veto, but biguzera definitely made his point, and it’s something that all pros might have to consider in the future.
