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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
ZywOo became king at esports’ finest coronation.
Evil Geniuses are no more (for real this time), OG are at least attempting to appear like a real team and TSM really, really aren’t.
Everyone loves to laugh at NA until it’s open qualifier season.
Then, everyone shuts up and whips out their dusty stars and stripes banner.
“We’re an NA org, we promise!” protest Brazilian team after Brazilian team as they all try their darnest to get into the easiest regional qualifier.
That trick worked for LOS’ new team (the org that merged with TeamOne last year) as they made it to the closed qualifiers, and the same charge can reasonably be levelled at Liquid too — the Dutch organization has two Brazilians, two Canadians, a Latvian, and a Dane and you’ll never guess which qualifier they chose to compete in.
It’s not like you can blame them, it’s just a bit weird on the TO side — and makes it harder for ‘true’ NA teams to qualify.
But, Complexity and Wildcard are bucking the trend: full-NA (we count hallzerk) lineups who were the first two teams to make it to the Americas RMR.
By the time you read this, three more teams will have made it, the winners of Liquid-PA and M80-Nouns, but the bragging rights will still belong to EliGE and stanislaw’s sides. Check in on results here.
Six more slots are still available, but there is set to be a favorite exiting early as daps’ NRG meet LOS in the elimination 1-2 stage of the Swiss group stage.
Everyone wants a slice of that sweet sweet $110 million pie, but even in the ‘easy’ region, banana skins are aplenty, and who knows who will be next to slip.
Welcome to stunning Belgrade.
In January. It’s minus six some mornings.
The city is at times breathtakingly beautiful - from the view from the middle of the bridge, with parallel skylines bracketing the Danube, illuminated by the metropolitan lights that come with any European capital city, to the snow-topped fortress threateningly littered with military equipment.
It, simultaneously, has a post-Soviet communism-chic distric that almost mockingly sits opposite the capitalist lighthouse that is the Hyatt Regency, a five-star hotel that saw the afterparty for the HLTV Awards.
For some reason, we were allowed to send a couple of people, and it was everything we imagine being at the Oscars is like, except cooler - because instead of taking a selfie with a motley crew of vapid Hollywood stars, you get GeT_RiGhT and PaszaBiceps.
HLTV put on a hell of a show, with lights, cameras and action, and a glamourous, glistening pair of hosts that only made the whole thing feel important.
CS Esports has properly made it.
It’s a shame, in some ways, that the winners were often so obvious:
…were all absolute shoo-ins.
At the end of it all, ZywOo ended up with three trophies. The aforementioned AWPer, the Highlight of the Year (which, in our unbiased opinion, should have gone to m0NESY) and the big boy, #1 Player of 2023.
It was, as many others, wholly unsurprising - but his comfortability on stage, speaking English and cracking jokes, was. He’s grown into a full blown superstar.
He was a fitting winner for the most Hollywood-esque event esports has ever seen.
Filling in at second was NiKo, with ropz at third. Both can be overjoyed with their years, but they’re simply not ZywOo. Nobody is, right now.
As the RMRs keep going, some teams proved us wrong… and some teams are TSM.
In our last edition, we pointed out that OG and TSM just COULDN’T buy themselves a closed qualifier spot. Well, fair play to OG, they’ve managed to qualify out of RMR #3 alongside ECSTATIC, Permitta, and sYnck. We’re genuinely shocked.
Fortunately for our entertainment, TSM has still failed to qualify and is currently on its last shot. As of writing.
Actually, about that last shot.
The final qualifier has started as of yesterday, this one being a little different.
The games are split over two brackets, starting on two days, bracket B, which houses TSM and BLEED starts today. Of course, that means bracket A started yesterday and has reached its current impasse point, with teams like GODSENT, Sashi, and HAVU already out.
Bracket A still has its Round of 32 to play, with JW’s EYEBALLERS among the contenders. Meanwhile, the big names we mentioned in bracket B are yet to prove their worth, and in a RMR qualifier, that’s a dangerous position to be in.
Speaking of dangerous, bracket B also features team BOOMERDEMONS with a glorious lineup of swedes: f0rest, xizt, Friberg, olofmeister and simpan. They’re their first game at 17:00 CET today. Catch it on Friberg’s stream.
The third day to this qualifier starts tomorrow, and Closed Qualifiers kick off on Thursday. We’ll have the updates ready for you as always. See you Friday morning.
It’s the end of a (very poorly run) era.
After the legendary NA team returned to the scene in 2019, EG won 5 trophies and held the #1 spot on HLTV’s rankings for 3 weeks, dominating in COVID-era CS.
This could’ve been it, they could’ve continued to be a successful NA team, signing the top talents from the region. Unfortunately, the org was mismanaged by a CEO whose incompetence can only be described as cartoonish, putting an end to what could’ve been.
You have to give them some credit for taking a risk on oBo after his time on Complexity, but this move must’ve given EG a crazy craving for more. Kinda like discovering MSG.
Not too long after, they begun signing all the NA talent they could. Hogging every young player in the scene to form three (!) rosters that couldn’t even compete in the same events.
Somehow they held onto this fiendish desire to hoard all the way until the end, ruining many possible careers with rosters that had no present or future.
On this past Friday it ended its natural conclusion. EG has pulled out of CS entirely but “hope to engage” again sometime in the future.
We’ll miss EG, in part because of what they used to be, and in part because we could always rely on them for easy content.
Rest easy, friend.
👍 Do better
🙈🙊🙉 No filter whatsoever
Al
