Author: Stephen "stuchiu" Chiu
Every great roster starts with two core ingredients: the superstar and the leader. The superstar is obvious; you need only watch their game and look at the stats to understand their impact on the game. The leader’s impact can’t be as easily quantified. The stats can point to a leader’s individual skill, but not how they impact a team through tactics, decisiveness, leadership, or any other intangible. To get a better grasp, we will take a historical overview of NA’s leaders, what intangibles they gave to their team, and how that led them to their success.Context on the ‘Best’Before going…
Team Liquid has solidified their position as North America’s best CS:GO team. There is no other team that comes close to their level of results and consistency. They are the NA team par excellence. To do so, Liquid has had to balance the firepower of the team and team cohesion. For the last five years, Liquid has been treading this line, sometimes at a pace, sometimes at a sprint, and sometimes holding on by a finger, but never falling completely into the abyss. This is the Liquid tight rope.The Curse of NA’I think it will always be America’s curse to…
Before the IEM Katowice 2022 finals, there was a sense of destiny in the air. Multiple teams had made massive roster changes to topple the world order. By the end of the tournament, G2 and FaZe had succeeded. On one side, G2 had defeated Na`Vi, the best team in the world. On the other side, FaZe had swept through Gambit and Heroic.At the heads of these two respective teams were Nikola “NiKo” Kovac and Finn ‘Karrigan’ Andersen. NiKo is one of the three greatest prodigies of CS:GO and has distinguished himself as the best rifler in the game. Karrigan is…
FaZe’s PGL Major Antwerp 2022 victory was historic. It was the team’s first CS:GO major victory, the first major victory for an international squad, and the first major victory for all the players: Finn ‘Karrigan’ Andersen, Havard “rain” Nygaard, Helvijs “broky” Saukants, Robin “ropz” Kool, and Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken. For Karrigan and Rain it was particularly poignant. The two of them teamed up in 2017 and put international teams onto the map. Together they had a heartbreaking loss at the Eleague Boston Major 2018. They split apart, then later reunited, and have now fulfilled their ambitions of winning a…
In an earlier article I talked about the Sword of Damocles, which is the pressure at the top. Once you get recognized as a top tier threat, the entire CS:GO world will start to analyze, dissect, and specifically adapt to what you are doing as a team.With Cloud 9 winning the Major, they have become on of the big teams that people are now looking into. We’ve since seen them at CS Summit and 2 bo3 series at Starladder Kiev. From here we’ve already seen cracks in their map pool. There are 3 major things I want to point out.CacheThe…
This list was made to acknowledge and celebrate the best players of CS:GO in 2017. Unlike a few of the other lists where there is a hard ranking, this will acknowledge the best players by role. In this list, I name the winner and the runner-up of each category. As there are no real set roles I’ve divided it into supportive player, versatile player, small man player, best leader, best AWPer, T-side entry, CT-side playmaker, hardest carry, and overall best player.As for criteria I took into account a few things. Consistency – How much a player turned up tournament after…
Short and regular opinion blast from Stephen “stuchiu”ChiuI thought I’d give a demonstration of what clickbait is. It is not something that you disagree with, it is not something that you dislike, it’s not something that’s meant to provoke you. It is actuall this.The title is directly lying about the contents of the actual post. That is clickbait.For the people who actually believed it here are some actual tips.First…….there is no easy shortcut to being the best.Second…is hard work. No amount of talent will let you coast by if you don’t do most of the grunt hours.Thirdfocus on the fundamentals…