The offline qualifier for Counter-Strike’s first-ever $1m tournament finished this past weekend and the former professional explains what he learned
Pressure already getting to teams at the qualifier
Easily the most impressive team of the 16 participants in the past couple of months, the Danish dignitas team came into the qualifier in Ohio with high hopes of securing a spot at what was announced just before the qualifier to be a $1m major – as the prize purse was upped four times from what it has traditionally been for more than two years.
Yet dignitas, who are one of the youngest teams in the scene, failed miserably.
MSL’s team lost to Australian Renegades – who have been an afterthought at best for the better part of a year now – and then were knocked out by Cloud9, a formerly strong American team whose last good performance wa barely less time ago than that of the Australians.
Perhaps it is fair to assume then that pressure simply got to them seeing as they have beaten much better teams than were at the qualifier fairly consistently in the past two months.
Another similar victim were their fellow countrymen SK, whose major hopes were slaughtered by Vexed, who were missing their star player and American CLG.
Another failure was HellRaisers, who actually beat Liquid in their opener in overtime, but ultimately fell short against the same team in a best-of-three decider for a spot.
Their star oskar had a superstar-level performances – his third in a row this year – while Slovakian talent STYKO also played well, recording the event’s best pistol round rating with otherworldly 2.81.
Finally – and probably most notably – the Brazilian team Tempo Storm came into the qualifier with high hopes, having bested the North American teams in recent IEM Katowice qualifier online but completely fell apart in the decider after a tough loss to G2 earlier on.
hen1’s team looked nothing like they used to be, but they have another chance this week in Katowice to redeem themselves.
Random map draw needs to go
It is understandably frustrating for professionals who spend months practising for events such as this to see all their hard work seemingly go to waste due to one minor mistake in a best-of-one game.
One-map games have become a big talking point in the community in the past year and the arguments are not without merit. But as I explained in an article on Sunday, the real issue at play is the random map draw.
Odds of the favorite winning a best-of-three series are only marginally better than the odds in a one-map match, if we control for maps, i.e. take odds as constants.
However, we all know maps decide entire series, let alone one-map games.
As such, we can only hope Valve recognizes the absolute cruelty of their random map draw system – during a time no map is as clearly overlooked as some were when the rule was introduced – and makes a change.
There’s still a month to go before the event and $1m should not be decided by a coin flip.
s1mple’s breakthrough in the community
For someone as incredibly talented as s1mple, you would automatically assume his breakthrough comes on the servers, which are practically his domain.
He is one of the most talented, explosive, flashy and consistent players in the world. That’s a lot of words anyone would want to be associated with.
And, in case someone has not noticed, he is only 18 years old – he has years to improve before hitting what can conceivably be considered his prime.
However, he comes with baggage. He is known to be a tough teammate to play with and will openly criticize teammates who are not pulling their weight.
Having been disappointed many times by his team, despite playing at world-class level himself, what happened at MLG Columbus offline qualifier came as a complete surprise to all the fans – and it must have been even more difficult for him to comprehend.
Not only did s1mple not carry his team to a spot at the major, but – especially in the deciding best-of-three series against HellRaisers – he was carried by his teammates, one of whom he surely had a chance in removing from the team weeks ago, only to be brought back to this event on a temporary basis with the team unable to find a suitable stand-in.
He finished the event with Liquid’s worst rating at 0.96 – which was also his career’s worst. Rest you can see on this video.
Sometimes, no news is good news
If you were to look at the team list of the qualifier before it started and name five teams that would be most likely to disappoint given their history, that list would surely include both G2 and mousesports.
Well, this event would not be one of those – as both cruised to two quick map wins, over Tempo Storm, FlipSid3, YP and HellRaisers and secured their spots at the $1m major.
In fact, by Sunday you would have forgotten G2 were even there if it were not for their zoo photos on Twitter.
Another similar story was Gambit – the new ex-CIS team built around the likes of Dosia and AdrEN – who also won two quick games over Cloud9 and Renegades to qualify.
The team’s Kazakhstani combination of AdreN and mou was especially impressive – though the sample size of two maps is as close to negligible as you can get – with 1.40 and 1.39 ratings, respectively.
Interestingly, mousesports won all four of their pistol rounds, while Gambit secured three wins out of four and Cloud9 won 70 per cent of theirs.
Closest team after was Vexed – who did not qualify – with 60 per cent, while no other team came above the 50 per cent threshold.
North America prevails
Prior to the event many community figures – including America’s own moses – suggested the first North American major could end up with zero North American teams in attendance.
In fact, most favored Tempo Storm, the second best Brazilian team who are currently living in California and recently beat out the North Americans for a spot at this week’s IEM Katowice, to qualify for MLG Columbus over the locals.
Well, they were wrong.
Incredibly, out of five North American teams attending, four qualified.
This includes SPLYCE, a relatively unknown team who were an afterthought at best – to many, and who only made it to the qualifier as a replacement team for TheMongolz, who could not travel to Columbus due to visa issues.
MLG must be thrilled, considering the obvious favoritism that is associated with every sporting event with players and teams fans may consider locals.
None of the North American trio of Cloud9, CLG and Liquid looked especially strong, but all of them got the job done and will have a month to iron out their issues before the first million dollar major begins.
Notably, though, some individuals perked up – excluding players who played mere two maps, tarik topped the event with a 1.29 rating, while Hiko (1.22) and shroud (1.15) were not far behind and made making huge differences with key plays for their teams.
Additionally, the player Liquid cut in February but brought in as a stand-in – adreN – has his career’s best offline event yet.
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