It’s the moooost, wonderful tiiiime, of the year.

A time where some of the best teams in the world are forced to slum it against tier 15 teams you’ve barely heard of, and quite often lose.

We’ll let you decide which side of the coin Nakama land on.

That’s shox and SmithZz’ team, for what it’s worth, who crashed out before even making it to any games on HLTV at their hometown Major. Qualifiers. For the qualifiers. Of the RMR.

It’s barely even a fall from grace any more, it’s more like a dig to the core of the earth as fast as humanly possible.

It’s also not been a great day for Denmark at the start of the Closed Qualifiers. Though Astralis did win their second game, they fell to LDLC at the start of the day. We might actually collapse with laughter if they do go out in the Swiss system in the RMR qualifiers.

Copenhagen Flames, meanwhile, lost two games to Eternal Fire and Mixfits. No, we don’t know either. It’s Kyojin, devoduvek (remember him?) and three players we’ve never heard of.

One team who won’t be getting their hearts broken is the best team in the world. G2 slapped PGE Turow and Astralis-slayers LDLC, and are now at 2-0, and there’s absolutely no way even G2 could mess this up.

Right?

9INE, Into the Breach and Tricked (who likely won’t exist soon) joined G2 in the 2-0 bracket, and can expect to find themselves in the RMR, while Ikla, B8 and PGE Turow will be fighting for their lives.

The latter has won just seven rounds in two maps, but in fairness, they played Astralis and G2.

There’s still a whole load of twists and turns to come, we’re sure of it, but none of them will include shox and SmithZz which, frankly, is incredibly amusing to us.

9 months, 18 different OverDrive leaks, and 1WIN later, Boombl4 has found himself a new team. Oh, wait 1WIN is the new team.

When 1WIN swapped glowing for the highly rated Forester from Entropiq, and Lollipop21k was taken out for NickelBack, the team started to form more of a threat.

Then, they added Boombl4, ex-NAVI, controversial and proven.

Taking on Boombl4 is a controversial decision, given the way he left NAVI wasn’t… ideal (to say the least). Nevertheless, he deserves another chance and 1WIN might just be it.

When you look at the remaining two members of 1WIN, Travis, and deko, the latter has long been the franchise player for the 1WIN org. The kid is unbelievable. His all-time rating is 1.23 on HLTV, and if Boombl4 can bring the experience to unleash deko, the roster move will have paid off.

That doesn’t mean Travis is bad at all, far from it. Travis has held strong in the 1WIN org for three years now, which can only be a sign of reliability.

It doesn’t matter how reliable you are though, deko will be the difference maker. The player that decides if 1WIN can join Spirit and Forze in the ranks of CIS teams or stay right outside of that conversation.

1WIN are in the Paris RMR right now, trying to show their skill.

It hasn’t started well, losing to… a UK team?!? Viperio to be exact. Whether they can recover from such an embarrassment is left to be seen, so keep your eyes on the Paris RMR.

With Travis and NickleBack on one team, the vibes ought to be good.

Tune in to this week's episode of Overtime on Inferno where your favorite hosts aizyesque and Logan Ramhap go deep on the biggest news in CS:GO:

• s1mple rolling back the years (to when he was toxic)
• Are Astralis any good?
• The worst of the worst EG teams

What exactly entails a difference in play-style?

That’s the question we’re left pondering with ENCE distancing from valde, after only a matter of months. Was valde given roles he didn’t want? Was he trying to overrule Snappi? Was he trying to suggest that ENCE should actually win some games?

Whatever it was doesn’t really matter, but it’s amusing to imagine. valde’s time on ENCE has been cut frustratingly short, due to a aforementioned play-style difference, and now he’s back looking for a new team.

Maybe he can finally get that Astralis move he’s been angling for for years.

In his stead, ENCE have gone back to what has worked before; taking talent from Israel and trying to mould them into a star player. And probably try to sell them for a massive profit.

Nertz was rumoured to be the replacement immediately - suggesting that this has been in the works for a while - and was announced days after.

He’s an interesting player, the Israeli. One look at his recent form suggests he’s too good for the tier of play he’s currently in, and that he should be able to make the step up, but it’s taken a while to get there.

In fact, early on in his Endpoint career he wasn’t the focal point of the roster, but has proven to be an exceptional player and gotten the move he deserves.

When Endpoint smacked NAVI 2-0, Nertz put up a 1.54. He can definitely play.

Let’s just hope he doesn’t have new ideas on how to play the game.

🔀 Roster raffle

• nexa is taking some time off from OG for private reasons, and we wish him well. It seemingly has also made degster realise that IGLing + AWPing isn’t that ezpz.
• EG have confirmed +Shakezullah, but as a coach?

🤨 Whoops, let’s ignore that

• Remember that copyrighted artwork we talked about on a recently added AWP skin? CSGO has already removed it and swapped it out for Doodle lore.
• We saw what you posted, Astralis. Don’t hide behind that delete button.
• Nothing beats our own Logan and (thankfully, not our own) Ryan witnessing a true NA CS moment as a player got banned in the RMR.

👀 Worth a looksie

• Are you the absolute antithesis of our average reader - in that you want all the information, all the time and you want it now? Then this Telegram group is perfect for you.