By Tomi “lurppis” Kovanen

With IEM Oakland in the rear-view mirror, the CS:GO season marched on to Jonkoping, Sweden and DreamHack Winter 2016 this past weekend. Gambit won the $100,000 tournament, but they weren’t the only story. Here’s what we learned.

The competition for the 2017 ELeague Major will be intense



Given the number of upsets that took place at ESL One Cologne, the next major qualifier was always going to have a ton of top talent competing simply to get a spot.

Teams such as NiP, FaZe, dignitas, G2, EnVyUs, mousesports, Cloud9, OpTic, TyLoo, Immortals, GODSENT, Renegades, HellRaisers and more will be competing for eight spots at the ELEAGUE major. For those who lost count at home, that list includes six of the currently top ten ranked teams in the world, per HLTV.org. To top it off, ranks 11-20 include six more teams from that list. How crazy is that?

The major qualifier has been mostly overlooked in the past months, given how busy the tournament schedule has been this year, with a number of them boasting prize pools in upwards of $200,000. But the $1,000,000 major remains every team’s goal, and each of the 13 teams above will need to survive the offline qualifier in Atlanta just to get to the event, let alone to make playoffs.

Events such as DreamHack Winter serve as a good reminder of how intense the competition will be. This time the major qualifier cannot be overlooked by any team, not even in the opening round.

View photos Gambit celebrates (DreamHack Winter Flickr/Helena Kristiansson) More

One team’s Super Bowl is just another game for a different team

When Ninjas in Pyjamas won DreamHack Masters Malmo in April, besting a strong field of teams fresh off of MLG Columbus – the first major of 2016 – it was much more important to NiP than their competitors. The Swedes had to use their coach Bjorn “threat” Pers as a stand-in at MLG, making Malmo the more important event. That was the exact opposite of all the other participants, for whom the Swedish event was the cool-off event scheduled a bit too soon after a major.

Though there is no singular event that dominates DreamHack Winter in importance, tournaments such as ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals, IEM Oakland, Eleague Season 2, ECS Season 2 Finals and the ELEAGUE major qualifier top the DreamHack event in both prize money and prestige. This is no knock on DreamHack (who always put together great events) but simply a case of bad timing.

In Jonkoping, there were teams with everything to win – Gambit, Renegades, Kinguin and GODSENT, the four teams who made the playoffs – and teams who were such obvious and overwhelming favorites to make the grand final that it was hard to see how they could not disappoint. I am of course referring to Cloud9 and dignitas, two top-five teams in the world that both crashed out in the group stage of DreamHack Winter, losing to teams few considered serious threats.

This does not take anything away from Gambit or Renegades, but is merely something to keep in mind when assessing dignitas and Cloud9 for future tournaments. Lack of practice and having to prioritize events are not excuses, but real issues affecting teams. They lost fair and square, but it does not mean they cannot climb back into form. Give them some time to practice, and put up more than 27 hours on Steam, and they should be back. For Cloud9 and dignitas, this was the final week of an exhausting regular season, whereas Gambit went into it as their Super Bowl, and it paid off.

The pressure is on for Cloud9 and dignitas

While it’s understandable that Cloud9 and dignitas were not in top form in Jonkoping, that does not mean their performances wouldn’t have any implications going forward.

The rise of dignitas has been borderline meteoric since the addition of Emil “Magiskb0Y” Reif, but success can be fleeting. There are only so many disappointing finishes a top team can have before it’s indicative something is no longer clicking. This is not to say it has or will happen to either Cloud9 or dignitas, but any last place exit makes you look prior results in a new light.

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