Counter-Strike Shakedown #11

Feature -- Forrest "var1ables" Campbell releases #11 of his Counter Strike 1.6 Shakedown.  This series will look at happenings in eSports the past week and his opinion on what's going on.
Note:  None of this is the opinion Insider eSports or it’s sponsor(s). This is just my no-named wannabe-journalist opinion.
coL.br
compLexity picked up an ESWC champion. And no, it’s not the one you’re thinking of. It’s the former MiBR roster that won ESWC right after coL one their first one with fRoD and CO. FireGamers has not been seen much in the last year and a half due to the lack of funds that the team has had to deal with, and hopefully with the money that coL can put up they can go to the international events and give South America some hope again.
Just looking at the roster makes me excited, with Lincoln "fnx" Lau and extremely good sniper Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo being flanked by great leader and great experience in Bruno "bit" Fukuda Renato "nak" Nakano and Bruno "bruno" Ono showing that this roster is the perfect mix of young talent and experienced intelligence need to play counter-strike at the top level. However it seems that this roster is pretty inconsistent as they were sent to the lower bracket in the last two events they have attended in their native Brazil before coming back and winning from the lower bracket above EG and MiBR respectively. If it had been a standard bo3 single elimination bracket this roster would’ve been out - and neither of those recent wins would’ve been recorded.
New Power Gaming
Power gaming lost their longtime member Max "ruuit" Aspe who had been with the team for almost five years and has more sponsors/organization sponsoring himself and his team than i have fingers on my hand. And right when they find a stable org.....he gets a kid. Good on him, he’s got the next generation to take care of and that should be his first - and only - priority outside of providing for his new family as a whole.
Aspe was a big force for his team - just google his name to see some of his highlights and his crafty play throughout the years. Even better is that despite his years playing the game he showed that he could still frag like he always did. Now Kimmo “BASiC” Fagerholm  is a little more of a mystery - at least to me - as i don't know his body of work as well as lets say...anyone. I’ll have to do some research on him and watch some demos but as  Mark "jESUIT" Cheben put it so aptly on Liveon3 about a Swedish roster move, I doubt that they picked up a player that’s wearing a helmet. I’m sure he can frag and can that he’s got a good in-game sense seeing as he’ll be required to be a top player in Finland now.
IEM gets a TV show
ESL’s Intel Extreme Master series, the premier competition in counter-strike and quake as well as hosting games in counter-strike as well, has announced that they will have a 25 minute television show on europsport. It will feature starcraft II, quake, and - most importantly - counter-strike.
I think this is a great thing for their sponsors - it gets more eyes and could possibly lead to more mainstream sponsors into their tournaments - but not great for eSports. We aren't big enough. Statistically the market they want are now going away from televisions and are almost exclusively watching things that are online only. The cost to the brand may be more than the potential sponsors which will be interested in the brand after seeing it on television.
However hopefully it will draw people to watching more eSports - whether it be starcraft II quakelive or the best game ever made counter-strike(sorry battle toads) - and that’s great for the sport as a whole. It is unknown if it will be syndicated in the states, I seriously doubt it, but it’d be sick to see it on ESPN or fox sports.
ESEAi week1 recap
Evil Geniuses take the top spot for the week taking the first two games with little trouble. Their first game against WinOut went much like their meeting at WCG last week, hell they used the same roster, with EG rolling the team 16 - 3 and n0thing putting crazy numbers - 36 kills, 4 assists and  9 deaths with no bomb plants or defusals - showing that it wasn’t just one weekend of domination. Their second game was a little closer, where they beat PLP 16 - 11 and fRoD showed why he is still the best in north America with a strong 22 - 18 game, however icy also showed he’s not anything to shake a stick at either as he put up an even more impressive 25 - 18, albeit with 1 bomb plant.  Making them 2 - 0 overall.
The Canadian representative AREA51 Winning 16 - 0 - GRT putting up 20 - 2 - 2 with no bomb anything and medic putting up a 18 - 4 -  3 with 1 bomb plant - started out strong with a win over Ruins but started to falter a little  to Hausen eSports, a move up from main, although medic put up an impressive 26 - 7 - 13 game overall and Hausen’s HandleD db had a 25 - 1 - 18 game leading his team, although they narrowly lost the game.
Other notable teams like Winout and ruins are not coming out to as strong of a start as they could have -  WinOut has a 2 - 2 record winning 16 - 9 over exultance, 16 - 14 over PoV and a loss to EG as stated before in an embarrassing 16 - 3 match and a 6 round loss to ruins 16 - 10. Loaded came out 2 - 0 with a win over PLP and eXultance. Ruins came out 2 - 1, PLP 2 - 2, Finesse 1 - 2, Hausen 1 - 2, PoV 0 - 1, mL-gaming 0 -1 and finally eXultance 0 - 4.

Counter-Strike Shakedown #10

Feature -- Forrest "var1ables" Campbell releases #10 of his Counter Strike 1.6 Shakedown.  This series will look at happenings in eSports the past week and his opinion on what's going on.
Note:  None of this is the opinion Insider eSports or it’s sponsor(s). This is just my no-named wannabe-journalist opinion.
Kode5 Qualifiers
Kode5 announces their first set of qualifiers since they held their Norwegian and french - which was postponed indefinitely - in the first half of the year. Sadly it was in two country’s nobody really cares about. Brazil is pretty much a FireGamers vs MiBR vs CnB frag fest with a bunch of other teams no body's ever heard of sneaking into the top through the numerous qualifiers which will be held throughout the country. Russia will basically be the same thing with forZe playing MYM int he finals and a bunch of no body’s playing each other in every other area.
Hopefully this will lead to other tournaments in other country's - like Germany, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and most importantly for me America - so that we can have another tournament to look forward to in the near future after WCG grand finals - at the end of the month - and ESL’s American championship which will happen shortly after it.

Reloading

Loaded made a change just prior to the WCG nationals exchanging Shaun “hostile” Catron for Liridon "quas" Ademaj. So basically they went back to the frag dominant team from the kode5 USA 2009 qualifier - minus Pauly plus aZn - that worked then, and then went to downhill before disbanding due to the teams own problems. Basically making changes trying to make the team into a team that didn’t work before. But the team says that move wasn’t due to Catron’s.....eccentric personality, but more to due with the fac the had to focus much more on his school and his family. Funny though, as he showed up for the nationals with another team and seemed to be able to play - reasonably -  well  despite his lack of practice.

Maybe the second time around will be the charm and they will be able to compete well if they can get some real practice in, but as can be seen by their work at WCG USA nationals - detailed below - it doesn’t seem like it has. If anything the team has gotten weaker since the change. However they only had a few days to get practice in, but i can only assume that it’s a sign of things to come.

wCrea changing rosters

wCrea - who I praised for being able to make a good choice in picking up p00nhandlers despite what i assumed would be a futile team when you see a team like mTw running the scene pretty hard internationally - has dropped their danish roster due to the team not using the name wCrea as their name in the WCG finals. It seems pretty petty, as the team can’t even wear the sponsors jersey’s at the event  - the reason fnatic didn't’ go to WCG this year - and other teams use their country’s name instead of the sponsor, so i’m sure there is more than meets the eye for the roster drop. Although, that could really make or break the new organization, as they really don't have that much exposure yet in the bigger eSports scene.

wCrea also picked up a swedish roster, ICSU - a team which couldn’t get out of group stage in ASUS summer - but shows promise as they added Daniel "rape" Börzsönyi who has been known for his strong play in minor teams in the past year, but i really doubt they made the right move with the move from a possible international contender to a team that could barely compete domestically, and got smashed in the only international event they have attended.

IEM america online group stage
Evil Geniuses, Loaded and others have advanced through the online group stage to go to the final of the stage of the IEM American championship to qualify for the IEM Grand finals which has yet to be announced.

In group A Loaded swept their group 3 - 0 after losing the first map to 6 - 16 to excello before coming back to win 2 - 1 and take the match. They then went on to beat team ace 16 - 2 and 16 - 0 before playing mLgaming and lost their second map 6 - 16 and then won two subsequent maps 16 - 6 and 16 - 6 again. They won an easy match 2 - 0 versus team ace 16 - 3 and 16 - 0. Due to team ace being 0 - 3 it meant that that the former excello roster and mL-gaming would be the deciding match for the final spot in group A, excello narrowly edged out the relatively young roster, winning 2 - 1 after losing the first map 16 - 14 before coming back to win 16 - 14 and crushing mL-gaming 16 - 6 to make it to the finals in NYC.

In group B Evil Geniuses, strong off their MSi BEAT IT! win, ran through the competition, beating scared2plant 2 - 0, 16 - 1 and 16 - 2, SK-gaming ladies 16 - 7 16 - 6 and Area51 16 - 10 and 16 -12 - showing that their recent success in china can directly corresponds to their success domestically. In the battle for second place Area51, the Canadian WCG representative, beat scared2plant 2 - 0, 16 - 0 and 16 -3, and finally beat SK-gaming ladies 16 - 9 and 16 - 11 to guarantee their spot. Sadly the journey for the only female roster would end there, losing out 1 - 2 after winning by forfeit from Scared2plant, who could not get five.


Group C Ruins rolled despite not having a sponsor to pay for their spot at the final, winning in overtime 21 - 18 and 16 - 11. They went on to win backfire 2 - 1 losing the first map 13 - 16 and winning 22 - 18 and 16 - 10. They won their final match from  against HRG 16 - 3 and 16 - 9.  Everyone won their match versus team ace meaning the decider would be between backfire and sway gaming, the experienced Canadian lineup could not hold up to the stress however, and backfire managed to win 2 - 1, winning first map 16 - 12, losing the second 16 - 3 and winning an epic map 21 - 16 to advance to the American championship.

Group D isnt’ quite down as as it looks like PoV will advance with little contention as they have a 2 - 0 record, but for WinOut they need to finish up the games - as all three teams are waiting for Ultimax to play their games in group D before it can be done. 

WCG USA recap

WCG USA has been decided and like everyone expected, EG swept thought he tournaments without dropping a game, and only dropping 22 rounds in group stage - and most of those were only given out in a loaded match where they stopped trying after taking 17 rounds - and only dropped a total of 11 rounds in the  three bracket stage games of the tournament. Backfire advanced with them, shocking Loaded with a 17 - 13 win, and tying Ruins allowing them to advance instead of the relatively stacked Loaded roster. So it appears - for the outside looking in - that the Shaun “hostile” Catron for Liridon "quas" Ademaj move doesn’t seem to have paid off in the biggest event in North America.

PoV also played very strong advancing with a 1 - 2 record, but the WinOut roster seemed even stronger, as they won the group 2 - 1 despite having a negative Round difference and a lost to PoV. Now in brackets the group B teams ROLLED the group A ones, with EG beating PoV 16 - 13 and backfire - a team nobody looked at going in -  beating WinOut, a favorite for the whole tournament, 16 - 2.  The PoV and WinOut match did not go as planned for Winout, as after winning the match overall, they were forced into OT after PoV disputed the first roudn of the game where Ronald “Rambo” Kim illegally defused, and PoV when went on to win 4 straight in OT. 

EG rolled Backfire 16 - 1 in the upper bracket finals, sending them to face PoV in the lower bracket finals. Backfire couldn’t continue their upset streak, as PoV won handly 16 - 7 to play EG again in the finals. EG shut them down hard, 16 - 7, to win the event and make it their second straight WCG grand finals appearance as well as their second appearance as a team.