By Tomi “lurppis” Kovanen

The $300,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament at IEM Oakland was filled with drama and some impressive performances. Here are five takeaways.

There is no clear pecking order in the upper echelon of CS:GO

The previous seven offline CS:GO tournaments were won by seven different teams, a fact that, while overblown by fans and community figures, indicates there is no definitive pecking order at the top of Counter-Strike.

However, that does not mean we are in some ultra-competitive new meta where there will no longer be any clear world number ones. Instead, I offer an entirely different explanation to why this is happening.

All year long teams and players have been attending more tournaments than they should. Staying home for some – as Virtus.pro have recently done, declining a last minute ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals spot and withdrawing from IEM Oakland – is simply good business, as it allows you to decompress and debrief after tournaments and actually start fixing your mistakes in order to improve as a team. In 2016 there has been little time for that, but it is about to change, again.

ELEAGUE will finish in about ten days’ time, and aside from the major qualifier in mid-December (and ECS Season 2 Finals a week before), there will be no other big events in 2016. Then teams will have over a month to start fresh and put in work to improve. I for one believe the ELEAGUE major in January will be the best event in a long time, and teams will look almost new by then. It has been a demanding year for everyone, but 2017 will kick off in the best possible way. And, we’ll again find out who’s who in CS:GO.

View photos Ninjas in Pyjamas at IEM Oakland (IEM) More

NiP still have magic

Do you believe in magic? The Ninja squad of Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg — HLTV.org’s MVP for IEM — and Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund did it again. Their cumulative round score at IEM Oakland was only 171-163 (+8), despite winning 9 of 13 maps they played.

What’s more, they won five of those games with a score of 16-13 or closer, while putting up mere single digit rounds in each of their four losses. They almost cut it as close as at ESL One Cologne 2014, where they won a major despite losing more rounds than they won. NiP’s record in close games, at least in Oakland, is something to admire. It takes real character (and a hint of luck) to nab so many narrow victories.

Furthermore, in the group stage NiP dropped Overpass against FaZe and Cobblestone versus SK Gaming, only to win the same maps in the playoffs. Call it randomness or give them credit for adjusting, but the results speak for themselves. Some expected NiP to finally drop off following the loss of their Legends status at ESL One Cologne in July, but despite pyth’s injury they still keep not only fighting for titles, but winning them. In three grand finals of +$250K events in 2016, NiP have been victorious three times, and both Oakland and DreamHack Masters Malmo featured a comeback from a 12-14 deficit on defense on Cobblestone to win it all.

They will likely never see another 87-0 record, and might never win another major. But they are one of the all-time great teams, and continue proving to us they can still periodically get some big wins over the world’s best teams.

Even large round robin results must be taken with a grain of salt

While big round robin groups are incredibly fun to follow thanks to nonstop action on two streams for a couple of days during the group stage (players like them, too), they’re also more random due to matches being played in best-of-one and teams being affected by lack of preparation for each specific opponent. This is not necessarily criticism on the format, but rather a point on how to interpret such results in analysis.

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