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The Major qualifiers are back and bringing all the chaos you’d expect, while HLTV are finding themselves at the front of a culture war - over absolutely nothing at all.
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HLTV top 20
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HLTV haters rise up
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It’s the mooooost, wonderful time, of the year.
For those of us who like to tweet angrily at HLTV about their reasoning for the top 20, anyway. Especially for those of us who haven’t read said reasoning.
The top 20 comes to a close this weekend - this Saturday, in fact, and you can watch the ceremony live, if you so choose. But we’ve already been dripfed some apparently controversial choices so far.
People appear to be upset that s1mple is #7 despite missing ‘half of the year’ (he went on a break around October), frozen was #12 when he apparently should have been higher and that cadiaN was on it at all.
What most people are missing, is that none of it really matters.
Whether or not sh1ro should have been #8 or #9 makes no difference - he’s still in the top 20. frozen might be disappointed with ‘only’ being number #12, but if he was in the top 10, would he really care?
It’s all a bit of fun at the end of the day, but some x.com users seem genuinely upset. Well, obviously, but it’s a bit silly. There’s genuine vitriol and anger out there, and it’s all a bit baffling.
If we’re being truly honest, there’s plenty of times we’re envious of HLTV. They make more money than we do (>0), have more clout and throw much cooler award shows.
All that said, we don’t envy them for this week.
It’s only going to get worse when they announce XANTARES as #1.
Catch up on the entire HLTV Top 20 here.
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NA RMR Open Qualifiers
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Expect the expected
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As qualifiers go, the NA RMR open qualifiers are always where you see the craziest results.
With a lot less top teams in the mix you can expect a random team or two to make the closed stage.
So who made it through the first one?
Fortunately for Complexity they avoided this stage entirely, heading straight to the closed qualifier. But the likes of Liquid and NRG took on the “grueling” task of playing against NA teams!
Liquid, with cadiaN at the helm of an arguably unstoppable roster, breezed through with the confidence to run some classic strats and secure the top seed.
NRG lost only to Liquid which is forgivable given they have a lesser roster. Hopefully we’ll see better form in the closed qualifier rounds. Maybe it’ll be a Brehze…
But really the reason you’re all reading this is to find out about ‘vagrants’ and ‘my life be like’ ooooo aaaaa… Both teams have players we honestly have no idea about other than PwnAlone, the 32 year old AWPer who can still hang with the best, just check his HLTV achievements!
The 2nd and last qualifier is underway right now, and with most of the top names already making it to the closed stage, there’s only four spots remaining for the 220 teams to battle for.
Who will bag the last four spots and continue their journey in the RMRs tomorrow? We’ll be back monday morning with the TLDR.
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Roster moves
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Rounding out the transfer window
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Jerry has his new gang of misfits to bring to the top - though this time there’s a bit more in the way of known talent. Patsi, ArtFr0st and Qikert have joined him at PARIVISION. We are looking respectfully.
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Here’s a weird one: Bravado have signed poizon. No, we don’t know either.
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MOUZ have re-signed Brollan, once more on loan. We have no idea how long this one will last either, but it’s nice to see him be loved again.
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autimatic has left EG, to the surprise of absolutely no-one.
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9INE have replaced their outgoing team with some more Polish players, including SunPayus’ bold prediction KukuBambo, who sadly is now called Bambosh.
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EU RMR Open qualifiers
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The new roster proving grounds
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There’s no such thing as too much Counter-Strike. But we’re damn close.
The first two European Open Qualifiers have finished, and it’s been a bloodbath.
844 teams entered the first Qualifier alone, and only four teams made it through. It’s not just 800 teams of silvers either: teams like Heroic, fnatic, BLEED, OG, Sprout, SINNERS, etc. are all fighting it out to secure a spot.
When a list of teams gets that long, it becomes more likely a team doesn’t do so well. Which is exactly what happened.
OG got eliminated, reinstated, and then eliminated again in the round of 128. The same round TSM was eliminated, as expected with the kings of mediocrity.
The second qualifier wasn’t much kinder: OG lost again, TSM lost again, and BLEED got especially embarrassed losing in round of 512 to Team Space. Yeah, us neither.
To keep this piece a TLDR because, well… let’s just cut straight to the winners shall we?
fnatic was the first to make it through in Qualifier 1, beating a former legend from the team, JW, in the process. They’re joined in the Closed Qualifiers by a tiziaN lead Entropiq, KOI (Movistar Riders), and the Polish ex-ThunderFlash.
In Qualifier #2 it was all about Heroic, whose new roster swept the bracket to take the top seed. They’re followed by oskar’s SINNERS, the MICHU and Lekr0-powered IKLA, and the #41 in the world, PERA.
There are two more Open Qualifiers left to play in Europe starting today, and we’re excited. Who knows what’s going to happen? Well, other than OG and TSM being eliminated early, since that’s now a tradition.
See you right here with a recap monday morning.
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Everything else
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🏆 Just Major things
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We’ve talked about sticker money as an income factor for players before, but 110 million just from the Paris Major is a lot.
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Look we don’t want to suggest anything, but why do bad things always seem to happen to smooya? That or the organisation for the RMR is just… less than ideal.
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🔄 Big changes
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Astralis bring back a familiar face with their (old) new CEO, Nikolaj Nyholm. Oh and he also founded Astralis btw.
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FLY RED are in that radical kind of mood where they remove two players at once. Seemingly, no one knows why two, and no one knows who will replace them.
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🔥 On that grind
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blameF hasn’t only been growing muscles, he’s also been growing his ELO. #1 on FACEIT altogether, and we can’t even get regional number one in Tuvalu.
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Looks like the Chinese Open Qualifier for the Major just got a whole lot grindier and sweatier with about 3000 teams already signed up.
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This TL;DR was written by aizyesque, dickle, Horizzon and napz.
Welshy coded the email and Crash_ copy edited.
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Heroic
IKLA
HAVU
