device, rain prepared to venture down the left. There's a good flash thrown in for poiii. Oh, it must be & it is! Gizmy!

Yeah, if you can’t tell, we’re quite happy 100 Thieves have secured a Major slot. Side note: if you know where that quote comes from, AN1MO will send you a P250 Sand Dune.

Also, FURIA have won another trophy and against a surprising grand final opponent, too - are we seeing our next Major champions heat up at the perfect moment?

NRG

1·2

WildCard

HOTU

0·2

1win

100T

2·1

WildCard

fnatic

2·3

E. Fire

Nemiga

2·0

Vitality

Nemiga

2·3

FURIA

• Yes, you’re reading that right: Nemiga managed to take down Vitality 2-0, and we don’t care that Vitality had a stand-in - that’s seriously impressive.
• Major drama: First, Wildcard eliminated NRG from Major contention. Next, 1win took it out of HOTU’s hands by beating them over in Russia. HOTU had to then anxiously await the result of 100T’s game to see if they made it or not, but let’s face it - with the Gizzler around, there was no hope for n0rb3r7 and co.
• This fire burns: Shoutout to Eternal Fire too - the org we all thought was dead after their boys left for Aurora have made it back to Major Counter-Strike with oen of the strangest international mixes you’ve ever seen.

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Welcome to the big leagues

zont1x, your time is up. Again.

There’s no other way to open the PGL Masters Bucharest 2026 Playoffs recap than by handing one of the brightest prospects in the game his flowers.

We’re talking about syph0, of course. The Tier 2 nerds have been warning us about this kid for a while now, and he has finally blossomed on the big stag… sorry, studio. Have we ever mentioned how much we hate studio Playoffs?

Anyway, the Kazakh rifler is the latest shiny Pokémon to emerge from the CIS talent ocean, and where else would he come from but Spirit Academy? The 18-year-old powered Nemiga through a massive underdog run that started all the way back in the open qualifiers and featured clean sweeps of FUT and Vitality to reach the grand final.

Curiously, the Nemiga core is built on Spirit Academy graduates, with robo and KaiR0N- both having spent time on the team too. We’re still waiting for OverDrive’s tweet claiming this was actually an incredible tournament for Spirit.

The other half of the bracket had its own Kazakh headliner. molodoy stole the spotlight with his usual flair across hard-fought series against BetBoom and MOUZ, putting FURIA one win away from back-to-back S-tier titles.

It’s great to see the team clicking again after the rough patch that followed FalleN’s announcement, and even better to see them do it right before the Major. Wouldn’t it be absolute cinema for The Professor to sign off by lifting another Major trophy?

Even without apEX, we rated Vitality highly going into the Playoffs, especially after a dominant group stage. Yet they couldn’t even salvage third place and a bit of extra prize money. Then again, we can’t really blame them. They had to face MOUZ, the undisputed titans of third-place deciders, and simply had no answer for such an experienced opponent.

On paper, the grand final looked like a relatively easy layup for FURIA, but the less experienced Nemiga had already proven they weren’t going down without a fight.

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.

Dinko - In The Crosshair

Welcome to In The Crosshair, an interview series where GrimyRanarr sits down with professionals and pundits from across the CS2 scene. In our debut episode, special guest Dinko discusses his journey to becoming a tier-1 caster.

• Dinko reveals the origins of his partnership with Moses
• Who is next up from the tier-2 talent members?
• How much of casting is planned out?

Watch here

History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes

FURIA are the champions of PGL Masters Bucharest. Their second event in a row, and also their second easy final that they made look quite difficult.

A pretty back-and-forth game, Nemiga opened up the series by bodying FURIA on Ancient, before FURIA answered back with dominance of their own on Dust2 and Cache. Nemiga then took it to five by edging out a close Mirage, but FURIA were back on top in map five - winning Nuke 13-6.

We want to be excited. We really do. We just can’t.

The way these finals have gone makes one thing abundantly clear: this isn’t 2025 FURIA. It isn’t anything close.

molodoy, who always did have some rough maps in high pressure moments, is now an absolute ghost in finals, and no one apart from KSCERATO is quite at their 2025 levels. They can win these sort of events, so long as they dodge Vitality, Spirit, and perhaps Falcons, but they’ll need to go up another gear to take any of those teams down.

YEKINDAR won his first MVP for his efforts in Romania - and good for him, btw - but that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Without molodoy and yuurih stepping up, full strength Vitality are still going to wipe the floor with them.

But maybe it’ll be different this time.

Maybe, by clearly not being at full strength already, FURIA will go to that next level in Singapore.

Maybe they won’t give it all before the Major and limp out in the quarter-finals again.

Maybe they needed that experience to do it right this time.

Maybe FalleN will get that last big win after all.

It’s official, it's confirmed, the deal is sealed

As the sun sets on the month of October, it also sets on many Counter-Strike teams, now faced with heartbreak. The final game that will have any meaningful bearing on the race for the Singapore Major has been played, and many teams will be wondering where they went wrong.

But not our babies. They f-cking did it.

But first, let’s go back a few days. In a miraculous run from as far back as a chance smaller than 5%, Eternal Fire took down MIBR and fnatic to put themselves in contention for a spot at the Major. As events across the pond progressed slightly against the favour of 100 Thieves, the team inched closer to a confirmed spot at Singapore.

A remarkable feat for a team that probably nobody thinks has any real business at a Major. We’re happy if MisteM can keep proving us wrong on that, though.

The Asian race is one we can’t really wrap our heads around. While Lynn Vision had effectively knocked themselves out of the race by falling to dubious opposition in an open qualifier, just as we thought they were out, TYLOO pulled them back in.

As the now-chickenpox-free team opted to attend IEM Beijing, they were forced to forfeit the quarter-final in Portugal’s HyperX to Metizport. Presumably this was always the idea, but a loss to Iberian Soul in the group stage made the event too costly, and they slipped out of the Major.

5star somehow made the stressful trip from Ulaanbaatar to Moscow, but in the end it was for nought. HOTU took them down in the semi-final, setting up a grand final to decide the destiny of the Siberian team.

The American race ended somewhat anticlimactically, as paiN’s early elimination from Gamers Club Masters secured Imperial the Major well before the event had even finished. Similarly, a group stage stumble from Wildcard set up a quarter-final against NRG, both teams with a chance at locking the other one out of the Major early. Wildcard ended up being the victor.

Going into Sunday’s games, Europe was the only race not more or less settled. A win over 1win in the Moscow grand final would have secured HOTU a spot at the Major, but nafany’s men proved too strong, meaning Sunday would finish even tighter than expected.

As the semi-finals in Buenos Aires progressed, BESTIA were knocked out to officially confirm Wildcard’s Major spot, and Fnatic’s slim hopes faded as Wildcard disposed of local Brazilians who could have thrown a spanner in the works. HOTU’s hopes now rested on Wildcard, while 100 Thieves needed the trophy to clear the bar.

And they really wanted it.

The editorial team here at TLDR rose in more ways than one as last night’s grand final of FiRE Last Chance wrapped up. A double overtime opener on Cache eventually fell the way of 100 Thieves, and with momentum in hand Gizmy’s men seized the Major spot with both hands.

device and rain topped the stats charts, with the former ending the final map of Dust2 with a 2.05 rating. Gizmy returns to the Major, while sirah and poiii are set to attend their first-ever Majors.

It’s heartbreak for HOTU and fnatic, both of whom made miracle runs to even put themselves in contention, while once near-confirmed teams like B8 and Alliance will be examining their entire season to find where they went wrong.

But do you know what? We don’t care. We’re gonna slap poiii signatures on all our weapons. Congrats, kid.

🎃 Darkness falls upon the land…

• Tye is back, this time with a Halloween special: the HE that will haunt you forever.
• Scrawny and Launders also got in the Halloween mood by reminding us of the worst CS match in existence.

💩 That’s some bullsh-t

• Looks like jL is back to his regularly scheduled shenanigans.
• Hitreg, movement, peeker’s advantage - all baloney. You know what CS2’s real problem is? Jumping Deagle headshots. We’ve seen too many already.

📦✨ Skin showcase

• He huffed and he puffed and he blew and entire team on an eco away.
• This SG skin is inaccurate, Aperture Science would never develop a gun that wastes 65% of the bullet.