Canadians Stanislaw and NAF Speak to the State of North American Counter-Strike
Liquid edges past MAD Lions in a fascinating match-up, but that wasn't the most interesting part of yesterday's broadcast.
Okay - this won’t always be a daily blog, but we get a lot of information and insight about professional CS:GO around the big event weekends. A big reason for that is that the most media resources are invested by the event organizers for their broadcasts rather than independent media outlets—there isn’t around-the-clock newspaper coverage and journalism for CS:GO, like there is for traditional sports.
I promise, that’ll change.
But props to BLAST Premier—they’ve put together some excellent broadcasts for this Fall Showdown, and I’ve got a round-up of insights from recent interviews of the top Canadian and NA CS:GO pros, Stanislaw and NAF, about the practice situation in North American Counter-Strike during COVID-19.
But first, what we learned from play, yesterday.
What We Learned in Yesterday’s 2-1 Liquid Win
I won’t be doing a recap-style posts of Liquid’s matches and yesterday’s hard-fought 2-1 win for Liquid, in 87 rounds—HLTV.org does a fine job of that—but I will do commentary on what we learned:
Grim is an impact player. We’ve seen perfectly serviceable performances from Grim since he joined Team Liquid from Triumph in August, but reception to him has been mostly… meh. Sure, his ratings have been fine, but has he really been contributing? Holding down sites? Multi-fragging? Making clutches? Well, this was the 20-year-old American’s first competition on European soil, and he put together some massive rounds for a well-deserved match MVP. (Really, the Lions’ AcoR was far-and-away MVP, but won’t get it on the losing side.) Grim showing his potential makes the talent on this Team Liquid side truly scary for any other team in the world. If better European practice can get this side back to firing on all cylinders, they’ll be right back to being in the conversation for World #1.
.@1grimcs has been a huge impact player so far, and that is an indicator of just how good this @TeamLiquidCS *could* be.
P.S. - follow me on Twitter; I’ll live tweet matches when I can.Liquid are still looking to take it to the world on Vertigo. Liquid did end up challenging MAD Lions on Mirage, like I predicted, but MAD Lions challenged Liquid on Overpass rather than Vertigo, which I did not expect. It seemed clear that Liquid was not as well prepared on the T-side for the map, despite their dominant CT-side to start. Maybe a gamble for MAD Lions, but one that ultimately paid off and put them on the front foot. But perhaps most surprising was Liquid’s second ban of Nuke, which meant they’d play map 3 on Vertigo. But despite some poor performances there, recently, Liquid have never lost confidence on the map and seem determined to challenge EU teams there.
Hindsight is always 20/20 but I opened the veto segment saying MAD Lions could use Vertigo as a punish pick, so I was quite surprised when Liquid allowed it in the final ban wave. It's not over though!@Maniac_CSGO what do you make of Liquid letting through Vertigo as a decider. And are getting smashed? #BLASTPremier
aris @officialariisDespite being down, Liquid had big CT-side confidence and would not be bullied. MAD Lions played a number of gambles and different looks that Liquid didn’t and, frankly, wouldn’t respond to. Perhaps the calming presence of new Coach Moses helped them stage their massive come-backs on Mirage and Vertigo, or perhaps they are just a more clutch team in person rather than remote, but it was clear throughout that Liquid weren’t letting poor rounds or disappointing T-sides get to their heads. They came in the favorites, played like the favorites, were dominant on their CT-sides, and they finished victorious, no matter how long it took to get there. They didn’t play too many hands or throw any crazy looks at the competition, just because they were down. They mostly played default set-ups on both sides, and they trusted their talent would carry them through.
Sure, Stewie2K and Twistzz still looked a bit weak at times, but let’s chalk that up to jet lag and hope we’ll see stronger performances from them, tomorrow.
What We Learned About North American CS:GO, Yesterday
The far more interesting insights, from the perspective of this blog, is commentary from Stanislaw (of Evil Geniuses) and NAF on why North American teams have suffered so much throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of course, it’d be easy to chalk it up the current, widening difference between NA and EU to there being more resources invested in professional teams in Europe, and of course that is a big part of the story. (It’s no secret; you can trace that widening difference back to looser gambling laws and more gambling on CS:GO in EU markets.)
But if you want to examine why the resources matter so much, (it’s just a dumb game you can practice on your computer, right?), it really comes down to depth and professionalism in the competitive scene.
I’ve unfairly eliminated Stanislaw’s Evil Geniuses from my NA coverage so far, mostly because they pulled out of the BLAST Showdown, so that Team Liquid would be the only true NA team represented on the world stage in this major event (and for the next few months, I believe). But Evil Geniuses do remain the only other true NA team—not counting the Brazilians who often play in the NA division.
Two tier 2 NA teams, Chaos and the New England Whalers, have planned to disband over investment issues, after DreamHack Winter NA, next week. Which means, where NA teams previously had very limited low-ping practice options throughout COVID-19, they practically have zero professional practice options, now, especially with Liquid on extended stay in Europe.
“There's just a lack of teams and the playstyle feels very puggy at the moment, it's like playing a bunch of FPL games,” said Liquid’s NAF in a recent interview with HLTV. “PUG-gy” stands for Pick-Up-Game-y, and FPL means “FaceIt Pro League,” which is a competitive match-making service for Pick Up Games.
Imagine being a professional basketball team, but only being able to practice with the guys at the local YMCA. “I wouldn't want to change my style to perform better against these teams, because then I'll have to play against more prestigious teams after that, and it won't work against them,” said NAF.
“Teams are switching players, organizations are dropping teams, so it's like, a lot of these teams have nothing to lose right now and it shows in the way they play, rushing around and doing a bunch of nonsense,” said NAF. “In my opinion, it's not really productive to play against that.”
Normally, with a lot of big money events in the United States, top-tier European teams visit NA for weeks at a time throughout the year, allowing native NA teams to schedule high quality practices without massive expenditures. Those opportunities have completely dried up throughout COVID, with travel limited and NA events being shut down as a result. EU events came out more unscathed than NA events, which relied on shipping-in top EU talent for the widest viewership.
“Before the rough period, we had NA LAN tournaments still happening. We had top European teams flying over to North America to play in these tournaments… Once those top teams fly in… you can schedule practice against them and still get practice from home,” explained EG’s Stanislaw in an interview with the BLAST Premier desk team. “Practice has not been good for NA—that’s why we’ve been struggling.”
“The skill gap [to tier 2] is just way too far in NA… In Europe, you have Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3; they’re actually a lot closer than they are in NA,” said Stanislaw.
Even being able to practice against the best NA teams, teams wouldn’t be able to get in the highest quality practice on maps they expected to play, because they know they’d be playing the teams they are practicing against in upcoming events. “Let’s say we have a week of practice, right? And then we’re gonna have a tournament coming up at the end of the weekend. The only teams available to play are Liquid and Chaos. We have to plan ahead, the entire week, to play certain maps that we don’t think we’re going to play in that tournament,” explained Stanislaw. “If we think we’re going to practice Liquid on Overpass and potentially play that in the tournament, we can’t really show anything that we’re going to do… it’s really disruptive, but we still have to practice. It’s choosing to practice like that or not practice at all.”
In Europe, greater team work, depth and proliferation of professional teams with more resources make these issues non-existent. Even for EG and Liquid who are far more likely to have the resources to travel to Europe to schedule practice ahead of or between events, coordinating travel team personnel and dealing with quarantine requirements has made that both far more expensive and far more difficult, especially juggling the monthly schedule of events. “Ideally, we’d be in Europe practicing right now, but it wasn’t possible,” said Stanislaw.
And as we’ve seen it play out, even Liquid wasn’t able to schedule time ahead of their first EU event to get up to speed. Team Liquid touched down a day or two ahead of their first BLAST Premier Showdown match, and are only planning to stay in Europe through DreamHack Masters Winter 2020 Europe, Nov 30 - December 6. That’s less than a two-week stay.
“Of course, I wish we could've gotten some extra time before going into our matches, but with obligations with other leagues we sadly had to arrive here almost last second, so right now we'll just have to make do with the time that we have and do our typical individual warm up as best as we can and make sure [Coach] moses and [IGL] Stewie can find time to prepare with the limited amount of time we have,” said NAF ahead of yesterday’s match. Not ideal, but Liquid pulled it out, and they’re going to have to continue to find their footing on-the-go throughout the weekend.
Interesting to note—none of the top-tier NA teams will be playing in the NA division of DreamHack, because winning that event, though a significant and seemingly easier to achieve $70,000 prize pool vs. $150,000 in Europe, against much worse competition, might result in bad habits against EU competition in far bigger events.
Good luck to all those tier 2/3 NA teams, for whom a $70K event win might seal them further investment.
Preview of Liquid’s Next Matches
Again, Liquid’s next matches won’t get much easier in the next two rounds against the top two Brazilian teams. Despite their being more familiar NA division competition for Liquid, both FURIA and MIBR seem to be firing on all cylinders after touching down in the EU, and won’t be easy match-ups. “It’s not like we’re going to be smashing through this bracket… It’s going to be tough games for all of us,” said Liquid’s ELiGE in a media appearance ahead of yesterday’s match.
MIBR (it stands for “Made In BRazil”), Liquid’s match-up tomorrow, were in rare form against FaZe clan on Wednesday, finishing 2-0 with ratings above 1.10 for 4 out of 5 players (and massive, impressive, clutch plays from all of those players). It looked like they had something to prove against Brazilian legend coldzera on FaZe. Liquid has not faced this particular MIBR roster, and they have real potential to surprise everyone by going the distance through Liquid and their Brazilian rivals FURIA.
Liquid is quite familiar with the FURIA line-up, so they fully understand and respect that challenge, if they can make it through MIBR, tomorrow. Familiar, because they’ve played and lost to FURIA quite a few times since getting skunked 0-3 at the DreamHack Masters Spring NA final in a best-of-five in June. Liquid has lost 9 out of their 10 last matches against FURIA, with only 7 map wins to show for it vs. 19 map wins for FURIA. Liquid has swapped Nitr0 for Grim in that time, but FURIA remains the same. A 2-0 result against FURIA at the cs_summit 6 at the end of June is the only bright spot in a string of disappointing losses against the current #1 Brazilian team and world #8, likely somewhat underrated due to the current NA/EU situation.
FURIA looked stellar on Inferno against a very respectable Virtus.Pro side, today.
Good news for CS:GO fans, in general, on this side of the draw—an MIBR-FURIA rivalry semis match-up would be stellar, but so would a FURIA-Liquid rivalry re-match semi… nothing bad here, for a CS:GO fan.
A loss, tomorrow, also wouldn’t be the end of the world for Liquid, especially since MIBR looked so good against FaZe in round 1. After a loss, Liquid will have more time to practice against top competition and prepare for DreamHack Masters Winter EU, where there will be more pressure on them to step up another level.
Of course, Liquid does thrive with the underdog narrative, and they really want another crack at FURIA on Sunday. Tomorrow will be a great match—and please, you don’t have anything better to do at 10:30AM ET. Watch that, here: