“There’s a lot of players who say they want to win, but there’s not a lot of players who can say their effort is reflective of what they want.” – Choi ‘iloveoov’ Yun Sung, Legendary Brood War Player and Coach

One of the most canned phrases I hear in esports interviews is, “I want to win, it means everything to me.” Everyone knows that it is the right thing to say, perhaps the player uttering it believes it in that moment. That winning is all that matters, that they will do anything to do it. Anyone can say that when they are winning. Anyone can say that when they are in a good situation. However put them in a situation that is less than ideal. Worse practice environment, less salary, falling form, and then you’ll see the truth of it. It is after the fall that we can disseminate between those who say it and those who mean it. In the case of Christopher ‘Get_RiGhT’ Alesund he means it with every fiber of his being.

GeT_RiGhT is one of the all-time greatest players across both CS 1.6 and CS:GO. A bonafide legend that has been at the top of the world in two different games and with different lineups. He was the superstar player when NiP owned the CS:GO world and broke the very concept of what it meant to be a lurker.

Throughout that time and even now, he has been a soldier. There were rumors and stories abound about his work ethic as a player. 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, for over 10 years. All of it was hard practice: scrimming, watching demos, analysis, and deathmatching. That alone should earn the undying respect of anyone who understands the brutality and work it requires to be a top competitior. That respect only deepens after we learn how he has continued to do so despite his Crohn’s disease. For other competitors, bad conditions can demotivate them so that they no longer give their best. It becomes an excuse. For GeT_RiGhT it was just another challenge that he needed to deal with. Another hurdle that he needed to get past to become the best player he could be.

GeT_RiGhT was already rightly considered a legend for all that he has done. Someone who made you believe that he wanted to win, not through his words, but his actions. Even now, after over a decade of playing Counter-Strike, he continues to strive. To put that into context, entire esports games and careers have risen and fallen. Time must eventually have its due from everyone, but even now GeT_RiGhT has refused to capitulate and continues to strive towards the top. It is a spectacle to watch as anyone with a passing interest in the history of competitive esports knows that all players must eventually fall off.

The greatest can never stay on top of the game forever. Eventually their ideas, their paradigms, and their skills become studied, copied, and rote. Sometimes they phase out of the meta. Other times they can no longer keep the form that made them such incredible players, regardless of the amount of practice they put in. Every player only gets to be at the top for so long before they inevitably fall.

And once that fall happens, that is when we see the deepest levels of a player’s desire to win. I’ve seen multiple players across history fall from grace. Each react differently. Some refuse to believe what is happening to them and stubbornly cling on to their old ways and refuse to change with the times. Others simply accept it and continue a career as a pro, cash their cheque and continue having a good, but ultimately perfunctory career. A few straight out retire as the burden of competing is too great and they move on in their lives.

We are now in Get_RiGhT’s 11th year. This is the worst year of his career as NiP have slowly degraded over time in CS:GO. At the moment, they are only being kept alive through the invites of the tournament organizers and eventually even those must run out.

Nearly any other player would have called it quits by now or at the very least cut down on the practice time. GeT_RiGhT has not as he continues to plug in the hours and grind to try to attain the form he once had. The cruelty of esports competition though is that practice does not make perfect. It is only one factor among many, perhaps it is even the highest correlated factor with winning, however it isn’t the only one.

There are countless examples throughout CS:GO and across esports where you see the player that has practiced less win out. Perhaps the meta or patch favored them, perhaps they were more talented, more in form, or on the right team and circumstances. People preach about practice and hard work, but there are times it just doesn’t pay off.

When a player puts in countless hours of practice and it fails it can crush their confidence and their wills. Practice is one of the most misunderstood concepts by the average fan as people think it is just playing around on the server. The reality is far harsher as practice is rigorous. You have to analyze and dissect why you lost, how you lost, and what you can do differently. Then you must implement it into the game. Should it happen that your style of play has completely phased out of the meta, as it did with GeT_RiGhT’s style of lurking, then you have to destroy years of subconscious instinct and learning to start anew to keep up with the times.

A vast majority of players cannot do this. They don’t have the same fire or focus that is required to pull something like that off. How many times have we seen old school veterans decide to make a comeback only to burnout within a few months? While the game has changed and reactions could be apart of it, the biggest factor is the grind. Few people can put in their 10-12 hours a day every day in a competitive field where the talent pool continues to grow.

It is here in the darkest moments that you can see how deep the desire to win truly runs. For NiP and GeT_RiGhT, they haven’t been to a Major since ESL One Cologne in 2016. That was over two years ago and at the EU Faceit Minor, the team looked like they were about to be eliminated at any moment.

The group stages were treacherous with close matches against Sprout and Red Reserve. The playoffs had them knocked down to the lower bracket immediately following a 1-2 loss to OpTic Gaming. In the rematch against Sprout, NiP barely survived as they won out 2-1.

In the final qualifying match, NiP had to play ENCE. ENCE had shown the world they were a serious contender with their run at ESL One Cologne prior to the EU FACEIT Minor. This match was likely in ENCE’s favor, however GeT_RiGhT had a superlative performance. As the game ended, you could see how much the victory meant to him. As he said afterward in an HLTV interview,

“After the game, I felt very emotional, there was a big weight on my shoulders that just disappeared. I’ve been grinding so hard for this tournament, I’ve been staying up late, putting in the hours, I’ve been dragging myself every day, I even slept worse because I needed to play more. I’ve been just thinking about CS, I’ve just been watching demos, playing deathmatch, bots, I’ve been doing everything that every professional should be doing, but I’ve been putting in even more, I’ve been sitting here wanting to play more and more and more and more and more.”

In that moment, any spectator could not help but feel for GeT_RiGhT. A legendary player who still wanted to win, still did everything he could to win. He has continued to practice, grind, and put in the hours he needed to do that, but in the last few years it hasn’t paid off. As he states later in the same interview,

“And it felt like that weight I had before, because I’ve done it a couple of times in the last two years and it hasn’t given any success back, and this was the first time in maybe one and a half years that it actually gave back to me, and I was so happy about it.”

This was a player who was practicing late into the night at the FACEIT Minor. There were pictures of him playing at 2AM just so that he could get that little bit of extra practice. Here was someone who recognized the fact that hard work may not necessarily pay off, but he did it anyway. For anyone who has pushed that far in competition or in life, the realization that hard work may not give you what you want hurts. It grinds you in a way, it makes you curse your luck or your fate or your God. Many become bitter and disillusioned at how unfair life is. But GeT_RiGhT was the opposite. It only seemed to fuel him even more. Where others saw a wall that hard work could not mount, he saw a mountain that had to be climbed.

AS I looked at the photo of GeT_RiGhT practicing in the night, I was reminded of a legend from a different game, Mun ‘MMA’ Seong Won from Starcraft 2. He was one of the stars of SC2 early on in its inception and fell off as the game advanced. In 2012-2013 he had hit the biggest slump of his career and KeSPa had fully transferred over to the game. At that moment people believed that he could never make it back to the top as there was now too much talent. KeSPA had gaming houses, coaches, and an entire system built into place to dominate any game that they touch. However MMA was determined and in an interview with Duncan ‘Thorin’ Shields in 2013, he said that his dream was to get back to the Blizzcon Finals one day. That the prestige of the stage was something he dreamt about and it drove him.

One year later he did just that. Against all expectation, against the might of KeSPA, against his own falling form, against history, he made it to the grand finals of Blizzcon 2014. It was an incredible achievement as MMA is not one of the all time greatest talents that SC2 has produced. He was more inline with GeT_RiGhT. Someone with some amount of talent, but it was refined through his continuous practice and work ethic. That is what pushed him more than anything else.

So when I watched GeT_RiGhT, I couldn’t help but think of the parallels. Both legends of their game, both years out of their prime, and both were players that still had the drive to win and the determination to make it happen. Among all of the various types of players I’ve watched, these types are the ones I respect the most. Not the ones flush with talent or the ones that can pull out impossible plays that you’ve never seen. But rather the ones with a raw grit, a determination, a burning desire to win, someone who is willing to put in the extra hours everyday.

For these players winning is their everything. They go that extra mile and prove through their actions how much winning means to them. For GeT_RiGhT this will be his his tenth CS:GO Major. Throughout that time, GeT_RiGhT has not stopped. Not in CS 1.6 nor in CS:GO. Not when there was no money in the scene and not when it became huge. He never stopped when he was at the top of the scene and he hasn’t stopped now that he has fallen. His form is nowhere close to what it was when he was the best player in the world, but his will, his determination still burns as hot now as it did then. He is the pinnacle of what competition should be. The ambition, fire, and will to never give up. To always put in the work, to always be the best version of yourself that you can. To always want to win.

“I just want to add another trophy to my cabinet. And that’s the only thing that matters for me”, GeT_RiGhT in an HLTV Interview upon Qualifying for the FACEIT Major

Related Articles: