Forbidden Donut

P.S. there's a tourney coming up in new york in the middle of october! http://www.hltv.org/news/7535-groups-for-iem6-gc-new-york-drawn

This is big for american cs because it's the first tournament with international teams that temp and eg will play.

If you don't follow pro cs (said with some irony), there have been HUGE changes recently and a little further back some smaller, but significant, ones. Maybe a year and a half ago, there were two good teams, coL (herotown, thomz, dboorn, xp3, irukandji/evolution) and EG (frod, n0thing, storm, lurppis, gfn). Out of seven Esea seasons, EG had won five and coL two. That year, coL had been having more success at international tournaments, though EG was still considered the favorite by a lot of people.

Thomz lost his passport on the way to the airport to go to a lan in China, causing Complexity to drop the whole team, saying they were tired of them switching players and wanted a stable lineup, with thomz' mistake being the last straw. EG moved to scoop up dboorn immediately, saying gfn decided to retire (he still plays, though, and was on SK.US in season 8 of Esea). They went to a tournament right after picking up dboorn and did pretty poorly.

They continued their streak of doing poorly (though n0thing and frod were ranked in the top 10 players of 2010 by hltv.org), and eventually Lurppis was cut in favor of Irukandji (ex-coL), though they stated it was planned since Lurppis had to leave the U.S. in January. Lurppis said in an hltv this past weekend that he had called frod out for being stupid and was cut for it.

They didn't end up going to any tournaments, and rumors spread that they had even stopped practicing. They pugged through the beginning of this latest Esea season. Finally, it came out that n0thing, dboorn, and Irukandji did not like playing with frod, so frod and storm were cut (they will only play on a team together), and herotown and pauLy would be added in their place, making EG consist of three ex-coL players plus n0thing and pauLy.

This caused huge waves within ESEA Invite teams, affecting SK.US, BackFire, Area 51, and . pauLy was on SK.US, which could not find a fifth and died (when having a successful first season in Invite, being 5-2 at the time). frod and storm formed a temporary team, appropriately named Temporary, and took dizzaman, xp3, and hiko from BackFire, which FFL'd a few matches before pulling in a2z from Area 51, effectively killing them, steno from the defunct SK.US, and used impsta, who is a long-time player on BF. In effect, every top team but Full Gaming and Cold Blooded were significantly changed due to frod and storm being cut (though both FG and CB would add 2-3 new players on their own before the end of the season).

The Esea finals lan was this past weekend. EG came in first, FG second, Ultimax.US third, BackFire fourth, eMg fifth, and Area 51 is banned for a season for not going.

At IEM 6 NYC, we'll see EG, Temp, and BackFire from the U.S. They'll be up against WinFakt, Lurppis' new team shaped after the old hoorai/69n28e team from back in the day--aslak, basic, jigetus, nasu, and of course lurppis--which has been attending a lot of tournament and doing well but not finishing first. Winfakt plays Temp in the group stage, so it should be fun to see the fRoD vs. Lurppis rivalry, and aslak of WinFakt is an amazing awper, so it will be great to watch him against fRoD.

Also there will be SK, which is *the* top team of 2011. If you aren't aware, f0rest and get_right finally left fnatic for SK, and since they joined, SK has won almost every tournament they've attended. (Fnatic, on the other hand, has done so poorly that dsn retired, leaving Carn alone with five new recruits.) SK is f0rest, gtr, rabban (caller), face (support), and Delpan (awper).

SK getting first is pretty much a sure thing. I would bet on Winfakt taking second and EG third.