FaZe Clan were the big winners at IEM Sydney, but they were not the only ones who came out on top in the land down under.

Photo Credit: (Daniel Ranki)

Winners:

Tyloo

Tyloo had one of the hardest routes at IEM Sydney. They had to play SK Gaming, Cloud 9, and a red-hot Renegades to qualify for playoffs. Their most impressive feat was not dropping a map on route to the playoff stage. Hansel ‘BnTeT’ Ferdinand played exceptionally well, averaging a 1.28 HLTV rating for the entire event. Tyloo was lucky enough to have all players performing at their expected level, and all the players did their job in game. People are starting to get excited for Tyloo and with the Faceit looming the timing could not be better. This team showed their potential to win against some of the top teams, which is very important especially after the recent Chinese shuffle.

FaZe Clan

FaZe shocked everyone by beating Astralis 3-0 to win IEM Sydney. After a string of terrible online results and one of the easiest routes to the Grand Finals, FaZe looked like they had no chance. Between the star players on Astralis not showing up and Ladislav ‘GuardiaN’ Kovács winning them key rounds, FaZe finally won a meaningful tournament. Their route consisted of beating teams like ORDER but fell to Renegades in a best of three match early.

﻿ In the lower bracket, FaZe beat Greyhound and Cloud 9 to qualify for the playoff stage to meet Fnatic in the playoffs. After a strong 2-0 then beat Tyloo 2-1 on route to the finals. FaZe really needed a tournament win because of their horrid online play leading up to this event. IEM Sydney will be an event FaZe will point to for their argument that they are the best team in the world which makes it even more impressive because they had a stand in.

Richard ‘Xizt’ Landström

Xizt REALLY needed this one. While his play was not jaw dropping, the fact that he did pretty good against some of the best teams in the world shows that he can still play on a top team. By no means is Xizt a star player, for the event he had a 1.03 HLTV rating despite winning it and only dropping 3 maps. It is important to note, Xizt didn’t really have a super stand out game. Xizt does not have much time left in this roster so getting a win at the top tournament is super important for his resume. Winning IEM Sydney does not complicate anything for FaZe. The plan has not and will not change so this is all for Xizt’s next team.

Australia

Easily one of the best events by far this year, IEM Sydney was an event to remember. It should have no problem being renewed for next year just because of how well it ran. There were very few delays and technical issues, so everything was able to run well. Australia became one of the best home crowds and that really made this event infinitely better. The crowd size and atmosphere hopefully caught some other top organizer’s eye so there is more potential to see more international events in Australia. Only problem is… Qudos Bank Arena didn’t allow shoey’s and we cannot have that. This will be the destination for semi-serious Counter Strike events in the future. Thanks Sydney!

Losers:

Cloud 9

Oh boy. This is bad. Cloud 9 did not look like a top 10 team at this event. Losing 2-0 to Tyloo and having two players have single digit kills in a 26 round game is horrendous. Pujan ‘FNS’ Mehta is showing minimal upside and it is costing star players in game. He has not had an event where he went above a 0.9 HLTV rating since joining Cloud 9. This is a team that already had a reasonable amount of structure when FNS joined, but is now regressing in consistency and firepower. Cloud 9 is sometimes simply playing 4v5 in favor of a little more structure. This makes Cloud 9 is very easy to upset, if the star players get shut down there is little to no chance of anyone else stepping up. Cloud 9 is not looking too good, don’t let 8th place fool you.

SK Gaming

Did SK Gaming just lose to some guy named Dick Stacy? Yep Ollie ‘Dick Stacy’ Tierney and the rest of Greyhound showed them why you should always have a safe word in a best of 3. SK Gaming has been terrible to say the least. Not only did they nuke their team, Gabriel ‘ FalleN’ Toledo confirmed that he is passing over the in game leader role to Marcelo ‘Coldzera’ David in an act of Post-coital dysphoria. SK Gaming has falleN so hard that this is the first time they have placed last in any event with a Brazilian roster. The only thing that anyone can do is wait for the communication issues to improve.

﻿ Jake ‘Stewie2K’ Yip

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﻿Do you remember when Stewie2k was the best player in North America? Well if not you should have that checked out. Since joining SK Gaming, Stewie2k has performed miserably compared to his previous form with Cloud 9. In a team with arguably the most firepower in the world, they don’t. It isn’t Stewie2K’s fault per say, communication issues were the obvious problem within the team because SK Gaming had to switch their language to English. What makes Stewie2K a loser at this event is the repercussions of placing last. Stewie2K keeps on getting beat by dicks twice his size.

﻿Do you agree with our winners and losers? Comment below your winners and losers below!﻿

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