FURIA have beaten the dead team allegations to lift a trophy! We just have to ignore who it was against, where it was, and how much they struggled to do it.

Speaking of struggle, the Major race is reaching it’s end, and ESIC have been back in action.

NIP

2·1

MIBR

Legacy

1·2

BetBoom

FURIA

2·0

Aurora

Falcons

1·2

BetBoom

Aurora

2·1

Falcons

FURIA

3·2

BetBoom

• By the skin of their teeth, FURIA have won FalleN what might be the final trophy of his career. Just a shame that it’s a studio in Malta.
• NIP are storming with Krimbo as IGL. What a strange turn of events.

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Falcons continue to fall

TWC was the free tournament for Falcons - Legacy with a recovering arT, Aurora who aren’t yet at full strength, and a FURIA team that are so burning out so hard they could melt steal beams.

There was no excuse to not win this one, and yet they finished fourth, having lost to BetBoom in the semis and Aurora in the third-place match.

Now, we can excuse the third-place game, but BetBoom? Seriously? That’s a loss we can’t forgive.

kyousuke was crap all event, continuing a recent downturn in form, and the rest of the team is still making sloppy errors they should be far too good for.

That Major run is looking more and more like a fluke every day.

It’s to such a degree now that we aren’t even sure if they should be considered top three anymore, and perhaps they’re just top five, with both MOUZ and Aurora ahead of them.

Speaking of Aurora, another third-place for them is great. They’re picking up form a lot faster than we anticipated, and they’re now positioning themselves as reasonable outsiders to take home the Major trophy.

It’s a long shot if you’re a betting man, but stranger things have happened.

BetBoom deserve a shoutout, too. They’ve been a little quiet since the Major, but making it to the final here is seriously good news for them. They’re a solid team, so we hope this becomes more consistent.

As for Legacy, we’ll let them off considering arT just came back from having meningitis, but we really do hope they can back on track in time for Singapore.

We won’t be letting off PARIVISION, though. They were pretty pitiful in their last place exit.

Who could have predicted Pro League was a fluke with that kind of firepower? Crazy…

A tale as old as time

Wherever there’s competition, there’s someone trying to cheat it for a quick buck. As we know all too well, Counter-Strike is no exception.

This week, ESIC took another swing in its fight against match-fixing, handing down bans to five NOMERCY players following an investigation into their participation in ROMAN Imperium Cup VII back in March.

The team’s plan - if you can even call them that - was to lose all four BO1 matches, and lose each one by more than 9.5 rounds, to cash in on a four-leg parlay. Unsurprisingly, the dimwits were about as discreet as a fire alarm, and the tournament organisers caught on from the very start, feeding everything straight back to ESIC.

The regulator’s punishments ranged from a lifetime ban for kzy, the leader of the operation and best known for a brief stint on MOUZ back in 2014, to five- and three-year bans for the rest of the roster.

One of the players on the softer end of the hammer was playN, thanks to his “detailed responses, financial and communications production, and continued engagement”. And oh boy, was he committed to that engagement.

Right after the ban was announced, the bozo thought it was a good idea to start flexing the cash and cars he supposedly earned through match manipulation, boasting that he’d be back in 2029 to fix even more.

Naturally, being the proud owner of an IQ that hovers around room temperature on a chilly day, playN didn’t really stop to think about how the posts might affect his already precarious situation. Sure enough, 24 hours later, he got smacked with an update to his sanction, turning it into a lifetime ban.

In our humble opinion, only the guillotine would be a fitting punishment for players so pathetically bad that the only way they can make money from the game is by throwing matches.

Seriously, no mercy for these clowns.

How to become the GOAT

You know what pro players do? Play a lot of CS. You know where they do it? Community servers.

At least we think they do. They don’t really talk to us.

Either way, we play on them a lot over at Wideswing, and we’re all A) cracked at the game and B) so incredibly knowledgeable at the game that you spend your time reading our opinions on it. So, if you’d like to at least be like us, get on Wideswing for Deathmatch, Retakes, 1v1s, and stop playing on whatever sh-t you currently use.

You trust us for everything else, so trust us with this, too.

Two minutes to midnight

Just two weeks remain until the sun sets on the race for the Singapore Major, and more and more teams are dropping out of the race. With tier two LANs virtually spewing out of every single orifice in a trypophobic’s worst nightmare, how are you supposed to keep track?

The answer is: listen to us no-life c-nts, who have nothing better to do than stare at this page all day.

The Asian race has really heated up recently, and not only because of the scamming and cheating millionaires trying to buy the spots, but the legit teams are actually exciting as well.

At this point, pretty much everyone in the race has been knocking on the door of clinching a spot, only to turn around and get f-cked by a significantly worse-ranked local rival.

Mongolians 5star looked good to grab the final spot after beating The MongolZ and Astralis in FISSURE Playground, but then went and lost to Chinggis Warriors. FlyQuest looked to be as set for a Major spot as always, before they opened the door for yet another Mongolian team, NEXVOID, by losing a grand final to them.

Still hanging on are Lynn Vision and TYLOO, as the former won an online event, but also lost to NEXVOID, while the latter had a poor showing in ESL Pro League. With BC Game, that makes eight teams still in the running, and it’s still anyone’s game.

But of course, the centre of the world - Europe - is far from decided. As Heroic took home the third-place decider of Stake Pulse Beat III (the first time one has been useful), they clinched the 10th spot, while event winners NIP more or less locked in their ticket eastward with a third LAN title in as many weeks after adding Krimbo.

Heroic performances in recent events, not least in ESL Pro League, have sent 1win and Nemiga up the rankings, and they look good for a Major spot, while the presumed Stage 1 teams of B8, FaZe, and PARIVISION still look good north of a 70% likelihood to make the Major. Disastrously, NAVI still aren’t locked in, per HLTV’s simulations, but we would personally guess they’re not in any real danger yet - despite being sh-t.

While a whopping nine teams sit between 8% and 18% to make the Major, the most interesting are the two teams upfront, fighting for the 18th and final European spot. 100 Thieves lost two playoff games in Stockholm, plummeting their chances from 69% to 38% - to Luminosity’s benefit.

100 Thieves have just a single event left to play, the last chance event in Buenos Aires, while Luminosity will play two more European events chasing that spot in the Major. And even with that, any of the trailing nine can pull a 1win-esque performance out of their sleeves and steal it from them.

Easy to keep track of, right? We promise it won’t change before this newsletter goes out for no reason. Promise.

Friends are friends, business is business…

FURIA and BetBoom have been a thing in 2026, at least outside the server. In October 2025, FURIA announced a two-year partnership with BetBoom, which also involves their main star, FalleN, as their ambassador, and their fans, Dezorganizada Furiosa. So it’s safe to say BetBoom had their claws around the Panther.

Well, that was before Brazil’s president sanctioned a law forbidding all activity from betting companies in the country, including advertising. Thanks for that, guys. Definitely didn’t cost me a job or anything.

Add to this background the Russian team defeating the mighty Falcons in the semis, and we have quite a grand final between FURIA and BB.

And a spicy match it was.

Dust2 made us feel like it was going to be an easy 3-0 for the Brazilians, with KSCERATO making his case for that MVP medal. And molodoy, who was losing every AWP peek in the middle to zorte (hello?), woke up on the CT side to close it at 13-6.

Ancient, though, was not a walk in the park. YEKINDAR topped the scoreboard for FURIA despite having a fever, and although Boombl4 failed to secure a kill for 12 rounds, we had two OTs that ended up in favor of BB.

On FURIA’s pick, you might think they would bounce back, but no… you actually have to put up a T side for that.

Oh, and yuurih lost every duel against Boombl4 on this map. Which wasn’t exactly helpful, either.

Magnojez, on the other hand, played a hell of a map, going 13-0 at one point and doing a solid job throughout the entire series.

Mirage was the weirdest map I’ve watched in a while. FURIA was leading 11-2 and fumbled the lead in a way only Brazilian teams are capable of, allowing BB to close the gap to 11-8. At that point, d1Ledez lost his earbud, and every Brazilian hoped this long tech pause would end BB’s momentum and FURIA would bounce back.

But no. They lost. Again and again. But at least they resurrected just in time to close at 13-11 and take us to Cache.

On Cache, the professor took over. FalleN decided to win a trophy before retiring, and he did his best to evoke that prime FalleN who ruled the world in 2016. He was the second highest-rated player on FURIA’s side in the match (behind KSCERATO), with a 1.08 rating, which may seem like it’s not a lot, but hey, we’re talking about a 35-year-old IGL, okay?

We take what we can get.

Is this the last trophy in the godfather’s career? Probably. Is it bad that it’s a Thunderpick against a lower-ranked team? Absolutely not. FalleN deserves to lift one more trophy in his retirement tour, and if FURIA doesn’t go far in the few next events, we’ll gladly take this one.

As the Brazilians say: Caralho, the old man still has it!

Final standings:

1st 🇧🇷 FURIA – $250.000

2nd 🇷🇺 BETBOOM – $125.000

3rd 🇹🇷 Aurora – $50.000

4th 🇪🇺 Falcons – $25.000

5-6th 🇧🇷 Legacy – $15.000

5-6th 🏳️ 9z – $15.000

7-8th 🇷🇺 PARIVISION – $10.000

7-8th 🇪🇺 Ninjas in Pyjamas – $10.000

😤 Bad teamwork

• Want to get better? Be a worse teammate. Apparently.
• Top ten most embarrassing moments caught on camera.

🐒 No crime or reason

• Aleksib is in court for stealing the Major. Or tax evasion. One of the two.
• Speaking of criminal activity, Patsi is still getting gigs.

😎 Holding angles is dead

• device? More like deluded. Got’em.
• The name of this video is the opposite to what it shows you. But it’s still interesting.