A hobbit’s not had this much impact since Lord of the Rings

HObbit put to rest any questions about his ability to compete with the best by putting in an outstanding MVP performance at DreamHack Winter.

Throughout the event he was Gambit’s standout player, but it was in the final where he was in a class of his own.

His stats were superb. Averaging a mind boggling 100 ADR, he had 52 kills in 54 rounds, and ended the series with a 1.41 rating. But they don’t tell the whole story.

A combination of a patient play style and the ability to pick up multi-kills allowed him to win rounds single-handedly. A mark of a truly top level player.

If he’s able to build upon his star performance at DreamHack, he can transform Gambit into a solid top 10 team.

Gambit start to pay off

Having fallen out of HLTV’s top 20 world ranking for over two months, Gambit are finally back on track to becoming a team to be reckoned with.

The recent addition of Zeus has given the Kazakhstani side a knowledgeable leader who can help fix mistakes, improve teamwork, and give the team structure.

Winning Acer Predator Masters was a positive – yet expected – result for Gambit when you consider the calibre of opposition.

Beating Cloud9 in a best of three on the way to winning DreamHack, on the other hand, is an incredible achievement and goes to show how far they’ve come.

Gambit are guaranteed to be at the next major by way of their legends spot, and on current form would be one of the best bets to cause an upset.

There’s not enough time in the day

With a distinct lack of tier one teams in attendance, both Dignitas and Cloud9 were expected to reach DreamHack’s final with relative ease.

But they looked far from their best as the Americans failed to reach the semi-finals and the Danes didn’t make it past the first round.

Travelling around the world to event after event has caught up with Cloud9 and Dignitas.

In the past three months, both teams have attended eight LANs in six countries, which is more than one every other week.

On top of travelling to LANs, tier one teams play a ridiculous amount of online leagues, qualifiers and practices. It’s not uncommon to see teams playing online officials while at LAN because of the lack of time.

It’s clear that the hectic schedule has taken a toll on the players and stopped tier one teams having the time to prepare for smaller events.

Going forward it’s likely we’ll see more teams choosing to skip events and focus on the ones with larger prize pools.

Virtus.Pro’s online woes

You would’ve thought after failing to qualify for ESL Pro League, Virtus.Pro’s online form couldn’t get much worse. If you thought that, you’d be wrong.

They’ve outdone themselves yet again to finish 9th in the European division of ECS meaning they’ll have to play another online tournament just to avoid relegation.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for the Poles.

They’re still one of, if not the best team on LAN, and the next major needs to be their main focus – with winning it the only reasonable redemption of a wretched three months.

ECS is almost impossible to predict

ECS has all the ingredients for an unpredictable yet very exciting tournament.

There’s been an unprecedented number of upsets recently, with favourites rarely winning tournaments and outsiders are doing much better than expected.

Between top-tier teams’ lack of time to prepare and the increase in level by those lower down the rankings, ECS squeezes everyone in the middle which makes otherwise one-sided matchups much more likely to swing.

Where ECS lacks is quality, and it seems lots of top-level players simply can’t get hyped for another online tournament with ELEAGUE Season 2 Finals and major LAN qualifiers on the horizon.