Who wins the $600,000 Counter-Strike final in Paris on Sunday?

32 Counter-Strike teams played the group stage of the Esports World Cup between 12 and 16 August, and 16 of them went home.

The round of 16 starts today. Every round is a best-of-3 and single-elimination until Sunday's final, which is a best-of-5 at 13:30 in Paris. First place takes $600,000 of a $2m pool.

HLTV's world ranking on 17 August reads Team Falcons first on 812 points, Team Spirit second on 731, FURIA third on 669, Team Vitality fourth on 668 and MOUZ fifth on 568. All five survived the group stage. The five most expensive contracts on the board are those same five names in a different order, with Vitality first and Falcons second.

So the traders and the ranking disagree on the sequence but agree completely on the membership. Both say the winner is one of five teams out of 16. Owning all five on Polymarket costs 84.4 cents and pays a dollar on Sunday, which is an 18.48% return.

The reason we’re adopting this strategy is that selecting a specific winner is essentially gambling. It’s incredibly challenging to predict the outcome accurately, and even if one’s prediction is correct, it’s difficult to maintain consistency in such predictions. We already employed this trading style during the FIFA World Cup, and it resulted in a 24% return within just a month. While the strategy may not yield huge profits, it still offers a lower risk and a higher probability of success.