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deko is the last remaining Counter-Strike aristocrat, the party in space has ended and so has PGL’s party in Poland, apparently.
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PGL Cluj-Napoca preview
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A Major-level event (ish)
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For the first time since 2015, Counter-Strike is going back to Cluj-Napoca, Romania courtesy of PGL.
If your brain doesn’t instantly tell you how long ago that was, allow us to fill in some of the blanks:
In 2015, NiKo was still on MOUZ, Swedish and French CS was still relevant, and m0NESY and donk weren’t even born yet.
Crazy.
Back then we were in Cluj for a Major, and while this event may have a Major-level prize pool, the teams attending are far from Major-worthy.
Well, they’d be at the Major, but probably wouldn’t get out of the first stage.
The headline acts are undoubtedly FaZe, they’re the team that need this the most given that they haven’t exactly lit the world on fire since picking up EliGE. NAVI, Spirit and Vitality are all skipping the event, so this is the best chance they’ll have to win one this year.
That is, if they can get past The MongolZ.
It’ll be no surprise to anyone that the Mongolians are our favourites for the event. They’ve been on fire recently and we back them to beat anyone in this event. It could be the catalyst for them to go onto even bigger and better things, so maybe aizyesque will see his dream of an Asian team winning a Major realised this year.
The two other teams we’ll have our eyes on are MOUZ and Falcons. MOUZ because they’ll be debuting with Spinx and because we’re still convinced that Brollan IGLing is a social experiment, while Falcons will always be an intriguing prospect for as long as they remain entirely underwhelming. Both of these teams could massively shift opinions with solid results in Romania, so let’s see if they can muster up anything by getting out of a full BO3 Swiss stage.
And yes, you did read that correctly. A full BO3 Swiss stage. Valve better be watching.
As exciting as that is, it does come with one major drawback - both BIG and MIBR are at the event. You’re guaranteed to be getting a game between them, so just make sure you set an alarm before you start watching for when you inevitably fall asleep.
The event kicks off today and will continue through next weekend where we’ll find the winner.
We’ll of course be back right here in your inbox with recaps and previews, stay tuned.
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Best of the rest
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How do you spell miscellaneous?
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Sometimes there’s loads of big stories, and figuring out what to write about is easy.
Sometimes there’s loads of small stories.
And sometimes, there’s a whole bunch of stories in the middle that sort of need to be covered - that is the case today:
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A whole host of teams have written an open letter to Valve to complain about ‘significant flaws’ in the VRS system that could push organisations out of Counter-Strike and into administration, or worse, VALORANT. They’re right - just look at Endpoint.
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Falcons and GamerLegion have qualified for IEM Dallas, alongside BC.Game and 3DMAX. BC.Game beat Astralis thanks to a jkaem masterclass, in current year. The last spot will go to either Astralis or HEROIC, with that deciding game inexplicably coming on the 20th.
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Shr and roman are the next to leave SAW. That’s just a sad, sad team now. Sad.
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Speaking of which, Party Astronauts have blown up their whole team in a way only American teams seem to - by airing all their dirty laundry on Twitter. Yes, each one of those hyperlinks is different, and insane in their own way.
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deko remains the best interviewee in Counter-Strike. He claims he’s been offered spots on two tier-one teams since retiring (at 23, because of course). When asked why he’s playing on EGOISTO, he says it’s just so he doesn’t get bored. When asked for the brightest moment in his career, he just says ‘I don’t think there is one’. Tortured artist. We love him.
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Podcast
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We hate to be on Twistzz side, but…
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What if it all it took to be the best in the world was to not shower? Well, most HLTV forum users would finally get the page they hoped for.
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PGL change Krakow 2027 location
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Venue Cancellation Any%
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And the record for the quickest event venue announcement and cancellation goes to… PGL!
With an impressive time of 5 hours and 45 minutes!
In a swift turn of events, PGL canceled their trip to Krakow for their first event of 2027, just hours after announcing a return to the TAURON Arena – the same venue that hosted their 2017 Major. The reason? The venue “informed us that they have to cancel our reservation”.
According to PGL’s statement, the TAURON Arena informed the TO that it had “received confirmation from the Municipality of Kraków that Kraków will be a host city and co-organizer of a cyclical event which will take place in January for the next 3 years”. This raises the question: could this ‘cyclical event’ be the confirmation of IEM Krakow?
In response to PGL’s cancellation tweet, Łukasz Sęk, the Vice-President of the Municipality of Kraków, stated that PGL “announced the event date without having a signed reservation agreement with TAURON Arena”. What a mess.
Basically, PGL alleges that TAURON Arena canceled a reservation they already had for those dates, while the Municipality countered by saying PGL never even made a reservation in the first place.
So, what really happened? Who knows, but don’t you worry. Give it a few weeks, and the Reddit detectives will give us a full report.
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Everything else
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🎞️ A Mexican action movie and an NA reality show
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↩️ It’s the return of the…
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Anders - the voice of Counter-Strike - is making a return to casting, but not in the way you would think.
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However, PGL - one of the TOs of Counter-Strike - is not making a return to Kraków after 10 years. Imagine being told that the entire arena was accidentally double-booked.
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🤯 Iconic
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This TL;DR was written by aizyesque, shoko, Horizzon and napz.
Welshy coded the email and Crash_ copy edited.
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