Zechs Files: Dreamhack Austin - A Tale of Three Teams

We've always known that online results mean less than offline tournaments but some teams deomnstrate that more clearly than others.

For numerous reasons, online leagues and tournaments have always held less prestige than their offline counterparts. LAN removes the issue of internet and computer quality, it gives esports a real crowd and the excitement that comes with it, and it makes it harder to cheat.

Online leagues have continued, of course. They are more convenient and easier to run for both players and organisers but they have always been a step down from offline events. The best teams will usually come out on top when it matters, but it’s certainly true that upsets are more likely to happen in online games. This can be a matter of ping when teams from Eastern Europe play teams from the West or it can simply be a matter of teams not taking online play too seriously. Generally speaking, though, online results at least mean something, right?

This past weekend, Gambit showed us that maybe it’s time to re-evaluate.

It’s practically a meme that Gambit is a team of LAN specialists. They are the opposite of the “online only” teams that never perform when it counts. In his article “Dreamhack is G2’s to lose,” HLTV’s Mira devoted just a single sentence to Gambit’s chances of winning but looking over their recent results you can see why. They placed well at CS_Summit the previous week, but their online results have been typically sporadic: losses against BIG and Space Soldiers in recent weeks would hardly inspire confidence.

And yet HLTV ranked Gambit 11th in the world before Dreamhack Austin, just two places behind G2 who everyone dubbed comfortable favourites before the event. In the most recent update, Gambit leapfrogged G2 into 7th, pushing the French down into 8th. Is it finally time that we start taking Adren and the boys more seriously?

On the other hand, I think it’s fair to say that G2 struggled at Dreamhack Austin. There were signs of their “super team” moniker being apt - particularly from KennyS - but third place has to be a disappointment for the French. Defeat to Cloud 9 in the group stage could be shrugged off as the randomness of a best-of-one, but G2’s overall map record for the tournament was 5-5. Evidently not the stuff of champions.

Let’s not forget, G2’s online results had been quite promising; wins over Virtus Pro, Na'Vi and Astralis are nothing to sneer at. And yet their recent performances are almost exactly opposite Gambit’s. It’s probably reasonable to assume that G2 is still adjusting to a relatively new roster, and I’m not here to have a dig at them, but comparing their recent results with Gambit’s does at least make an interesting parallel.

And then there was Immortals. Like Gambit, Immortals come from a region whose connection to the rest of the world is less than stellar. They tend to get by on the fact that they are just so much better than most of the North American teams they usually play against. But even here we can see the odd blip: a loss to NRG here, a map against Liquid there. Get them in a room together, though, and they generally tend to do better. They defeated Team Liquid twice on their way to the grand final of Dreamhack Austin, for example.

Gambit are better offline and G2 are still finding their feet on LAN, you never quite know which Immortals is going to show up. They are ranked 11th in the world as I write this - having fallen four places since the previous update - and finished runners-up in Austin, yet they barely made a ripple in the waters of Starladder. Perhaps they can discover some consistency at Esports Arena Showdown next weekend where Luminosity seems to be the only real opposition.

Meanwhile, G2 will be headed to France for Dreamhack Tours. With a decent-but-not-amazing pool of teams, they will be rubbing their hands together at this opportunity. They certainly have the raw talent to win an event of this calibre but it remains to be seen whether or not they can find the right ingredients to to cook that raw talent into something tasty. Surely, if ever G2 were going to win an event, this is their time. A nice confidence-boosting victory on home soil could do wonders for them. Only Navi and Hellraisers (another offline specialist) should offer real resistance but we have seen that G2 are capable of slip-ups against lesser teams. For such a relatively small event, Dreamhack Tours will definitely be an exciting one to watch.

Images courtesy of Gambit.gg, DreamHack

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