• hampus is on his way back to action, it seems. There are a couple of articles going around about how ‘more than ready’ he is to come back. Something about seeing your old teammates look much worse without you is great for the ego.
• MIBR are trying to spend $280,000 on a single player from Brazil. Which player? It doesn’t matter. It’s an insane amount of money for anyone that isn’t KSCERATO. Okay, it’s Lucaozy. You got us. He’s a good player, but lads: nearly $300,000?
• What’s worse than finding out you got cut from your team? Hearing your baby brother brag about how he took your spot at dinner. Bart4k has been replaced by his fifteen-year-old brother, while ANNIHILATION has been swapped out for 910. Us neither.

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:

• nitr0’s sad end
• Is Altekz him?
• Brotherly hatred

If you hated the Paris Major, you’ll love the IEM Dallas playoffs.

All the old-school big names are here - Heroic made it, with G2 and FaZe, ENCE are more of a modern phenomenon, but MOUZ are super old school. There’s even a guest appearance from Astralis.

Just like the old days.

While there’s a bunch of weirdness with regard to rosters, these teams rose above that and actually showed up in the last big tournament before the player break.

Looking at you, Cloud9, Team Liquid, et al.

Today’s games start in the evening here in EU, so you’ve got time to get home from work or… wake up if you’re a real gamer. Kicking off with the impressive Astralis against the… well, better than Major-form MOUZ.

We don’t want to say they’ve been good - they’ve beaten a shoddy-looking FURIA and an OG-looking OG - but they haven’t been terrible. Astralis 2-0’d Cloud9 and beat Liquid in OT, which just gives us a bit more faith in them.

Even if they did lose to ENCE. Ignore that.

They look much better, though — Altekz isn’t the best player we’ve ever seen, but he’s pretty damn good at what he does. He’s a huge upgrade on Xyp9x, at least in 2023.

The winner of that game meets Heroic, while ENCE await G2 or FaZe. G2 are what they always are - wildly talented, quicksilver, and falling apart at the seams. They might still win the event, but it won’t be off the back of outthinking anyone.

FaZe, similarly, are the same team as ever. Dangerous, un-put-away-able, gifted, and intelligent. You wouldn’t bet against them winning, but you probably wouldn’t bet on it, either.

That game should be mental.

Dallas has been a strange event, but these playoffs should go OFF.

What’s harder, qualifying for the Major or getting a player out of Sprout?

Neither are easy, especially if your name is Astralis. But, they look to have finally managed to achieve the latter, at least according to Striker of HLTV.org.

It was in October of 2022 that good old Jaxon first reported the Danish behemoth’s interest in the 18-year-old, but the two sides have STILL not reached an agreement on a buyout.

With no transfer forthcoming, Astralis have apparently got Staehr on a free transfer for the beginning of 2024 when his contract expires (just like the deal they struck with blameF and k0nfig).

It’s a deal that makes sense. Sign the brightest young Danish talent early while Heroic are comfortably a top-two team in the world, learning from their mistake with the likes of jabbi and stavn.

What isn’t clear yet is who Staehr might replace. The obvious answer is Buzz, who has been given nearly every role under the sun in his short time in black-and-red and has rarely convinced in any of them, or Altekz, who was named as a “temporary” addition in place of Xyp9x.

But there are rumours on the Twitter-sphere of “internal issues” that might result in blameF departing, which would make much more sense if Astralis are after a 1:1 swap role-wise.

There’s also the possibility of gla1ve hanging up his mouse and keyboard and letting blameF IGL, as was the long-term plan when he joined the org in 2021.

Considering there’s another 6 months of 2023 before Staehr will join — unless Sprout somehow budge on a deal — we doubt even Astralis know who he’ll sign for. Which is either bad planning (it’s this one) or an amazing Machiavellian game of “fight for your spot”.

It’s funny that this news has come out now, too, just as Astralis arrived back on LAN at IEM Dallas with a bit of a spring in their step. device is the highest-rated player of the event, Altekz has got 25% T side opening attempts from Xyp9x’s old lurk spots (how and why, we do not know), and blameF is still fragging away.

For the first time in a while, you can see the method behind the madness at Astralis. Adding Staehr for 2024 is another logical step in the right direction — we’re just not too confident it’ll be good for team chemistry in the meantime…

🧑‍🔬 I’m with the science team!

• Apparently, there’s a connection between whether or not you have autism and if you use a high sensitivity or not. Not saying we don’t have autism, but our eDPI is at least above 5000.
• NadeKing (leading scientist in his field) has put the Astralis players to the test: how smart are they really?
• Research shows: taking a nade to the kisser results in better (permanent) sleep.

♠️♣️ Shuffling the deck

• Looks like TheMongolz is freshening up their roster by adding a few players. One of which is 15 years old and apparently the brother of bart4k - who he is replacing.
• MIBR is apparently looking to add Lucaozy, and for a hefty price tag as well. 1.5 million Brazilian Reals is about 260K. In this economy?

👶👴 (Not so) fresh faces

• GODSENT is looking to find the next generation’s superstars with their new academy roster.
• Aside from their amazing announcement video, we’d personally never heard of FlyQuest. But any addition to the female CS scene is more than welcome.
• The smoke criminal hints at his return to CS. You can’t abuse CS2’s volumetric smokes, Stewie.