The Krakow Major was filled to the brim with great stories. This week, we look at just a few of them.
Sometimes, an important esports tournament goes by and it’s sort of uneventful. Not quite boring, just… predictable. The pre-tournament favourite wins, the underdogs bow out early and journalists are left with little to write about except for how good the winners are.
Other times - let’s say, this past weekend, for example - so many unexpected things happen that journalists are presented with a very different problem: where the hell do you start?
The Krakow Major had so many fascinating subplots that George R R Martin is probably chastising himself for keeping Game of Thrones so simple. Just like Game of Thrones, the major saw beloved characters dying early (Faze), villains prospering (BIG?), and more beloved characters dying later on (pretty much everyone except Gambit and Immortals). All we’re missing now is the incest.
Gambit - A Hobbit's Tale
Gambit’s victory is obviously the big story here. Maybe we should stick to what we know and write about the winners. After all, this wasn’t just another day at the office for SK - no cakewalk for Astralis. This was a team ranked 14th in the world taking home their first major and beating solid opposition en route. Lots has been said about the swiss format, but nobody can doubt Gambit’s credentials after this success. Of the six teams Gambit defeated, only Virtus Pro was ranked lower than them before the tournament and, ironically, the Poles actually showed a surprising return to form during the event. Gambit earned their title the hard way and won what was arguably the most competitive major ever.
Immortals - Well, Almost
Then there was Immortals. I didn’t expect Gambit to win the major, but I did expect them to do well. Immortals, on the other hand, I expected nothing of. I didn’t even expect them to survive swiss play. In a sense, you could argue that Immortals finishing second is an even bigger surprise than Gambit finishing first. Their route to the final was just as tough as Gambit’s - as evidenced by their losses to SK and Astralis - and they only narrowly lost out in the final. That in itself is an impressive achievement but there’s more to this tale.
The team that calls itself a family certainly lived up to that billing by the look of the statistics: Immortals had no players in the top 10 HLTV.org rankings. They clearly relied less on individual talent and more on teamwork than other teams. If you need more proof of it, take a quick look at the Total Assists statistics: four of the top five are Immortals players. A cynic might interpret this as missed kills, but if you look at the way Immortals played their matches it’s clear that they were often working together in order to secure kills.
The BIG Test is yet to Come
There were a lot more stories in Krakow, but this column only has room for one more. I’m going to end with my favourite - BIG. Like Immortals, BIG is a team greater than the sum of its parts. Tabsen is certainly a star fragger, but BIG is a thinking man’s team. Gob B has assembled a military force, reliant on discipline and dedication. BIG is a team which exemplifies a growing trend in Counter-Strike: brains over brawn. Of course, any team that wants success needs members who can hit headshots, but long gone are the days in which the team with the best skills and mechanics out-dueled everybody else.
It’s still early in this team’s existence. Their story is far from complete, but already they show signs of being another Astralis. They show signs of the commitment needed to become a truly great team - to live up to the title of Legend. But it only gets harder from here. BIG was lucky enough to catch teams off-guard in Krakow - that won’t happen again. The next major is where this team really gets to test its mettle, but don’t count out Gob b and don’t count out BIG.
