Regardless of how long you’ve followed the CS:GO pro scene, you will definitely find some fun facts in this article you didn’t know about. Read about stories behind players’ nicknames, failed LoL careers, and more.

1. ESL One Cologne and the best player of the year

There is something really special about ESL One Cologne. It kicked off in 2014 as a Major and kept that status up until 2017. In 2017, ESL Cologne lost it’s Major status. Nevertheless, it remained one of the most prestigious events that take place in the “Cathedral of Counter-Strike”, Lanxess Arena.

To make this event even more glorious, each year it was won by the player of that year. The first edition in 2014 was won by GeT_RiGhT, the best player of 2014. Olofmeister, the best player of 2015, clinched the title in 2015, together with Fnatic. The best player of 2016 and 2017, coldzera, helped SK Gaming to win this event in these two years. Last year, NaVi won ESL One Cologne, and they had s1mple on the team, the man who was the player of 2018 according to HLTV.

This year, Vitality played the Grand Final, and the rising star, ZywOo was there. It was a good sign for the young French player, but instead, Liquid lifted the trophy. Hence, there is a good chance that this interesting tradition will stop this year as s1mple and ZywOo have the best odds of being announced as the best player of 2019.

2. PGL Krakow – The only Major Grand Final without Top 10 teams

Here is another fun fact about the CS:GO pro scene that includes one of the Major events. When Astralis and Virtus.pro defeated SK Gaming and North in Quarter-finals, it looked like we were going to have a rematch of the Atlanta Major Grand Final where Astralis defeated Virtus.pro to win their first Major title. Moreover, Virtus.pro had a huge support of the domestic crowd who was rooting for NEO and co. The opponents of these two teams in the Semis were Immortals and Gambit Esports, two underdogs who weren’t even in Top 10.

Nevertheless, neither Astralis or Virtus.pro managed to reach the Grand Final, which was a huge surprise back in the day. The 11th team in the world, Immortals, met the 14th team in the world, Gambit Esports. Hence, this remained the only Major Grand Final featuring no Top 10 teams since the HLTV rankings were introduced.

3. TaZ and his potential LoL career

This fun fact about CS:GO pro scene also refers to another Esports game, League of Legends. Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas is a legendary Counter-Strike player who has been playing Counter-Strike professionally since the early days of CS pro scene. He was part of many CS teams including Aristocracy, AGAiN, Wicked eSports and so on. Later on, when Valve released CS:GO, TaZ played four a couple of small teams and then signed for Virtus.pro. He stayed part of Virtus.pro for about 4 years and won the Major in Katowice 2014, and many other events.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by TaZ (@viccotaz) on Jul 5, 2019 at 5:29am PDT

However, not so many people know that TaZ was extremely talented in another esports game completely opposite to CS:GO. For only 7,8 months of playing League of Legends, TaZ reached Challenger Tier and made it to Top 200 on the server. This was a great success for TaZ, but luckily, he stayed focus on his CS:GO career, which turned out to be a great choice as he achieved so many things there. (source)

4. The identical debut of HS and ropz at the Majors

The Grand Final with no Top 10 teams is not the only CS:GO pro scene fun fact that is linked to the PGL Major in Krakow. There is another fun fact that coming from this Major.

Prior to PGL Major Krakow, Estonia wasn’t represented at the biggest events. But, this country made its debut in Krakow thanks to ropz from mousesports and HS from PENTA eSports.

Interestingly, these two players had an identical first round at Majors. Ropz played against the eventual champions, Gambit Esports, and HS faced SK Gaming. Both players kicked off at Majors with teamkills. That’s a really interesting way for a country to make a debut at the biggest CS:GO event.

5. Interesting pro players nicknames and the stories behind them

Xyp9x – Many people have a problem to pronounce his name correctly. Even pro players and commentators say Xyp9x in different ways, but do you know how Andreas Højsleth got his in-game name? Well, according to his words, he just typed something on his keyboard at his CS beginnings and it remained his in-game name. This really explains such a weird in-game name.

Stewie2k – Given that Stewie sounds like a real name, many fans were wondering how a player named Jacky Yip created his nickname. Basically, what he told is that he played with friends and they all had names from Family Guy so he picked the name Stewie.

However, as this is a pretty “default” name, he once met another Stewie so he wanted to distinguish himself somehow. Hence, he wanted to add 2k14, but it was too long so he added just 2k. As he said, he was planning to change it, but he became famous as Stewie2k so it remained his nickname. So, “2k” doesn’t refer to 2 kills as many thought.

NBK – Abbreviations as nicknames have always been making other people wondering what they really mean. The current captain of Team Vitality, Nathan Schmitt revealed what his nickname means. He got an idea for his nickname from reading manga Battle Royale. There, he learned about movie Natural Born Killers. So, he thought it would be cool to have NBK as his nickname.

flusha – Strangely enough, Robin Rönnquist’s first nickname was actually flushatoilet. There is no particular story behind this name as it was just a joke. Flusha used this nickname on his second account, but eventually, players started recognizing him by that name. So, he just left out toilet and flusha remained his in-game name. (source)

6. Countries represented at Majors

The StarLadder Major in Berlin will see 29 rookies including players like hunter, nexa, xsepower, SANJI, and so on. The majority of rookies are coming from rookie teams, CR4ZY, DreamEaters, forZe, Syman, and INTZ. Among these rookies are t0rick, and SANJI that are coming from Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, which means these two countries will make their debut at the following Major.

(source)

Speaking of countries at Majors, there are 39 countries in total who were represented by at least one player at he Majors. There are some big countries that are generally successful in sports and esports, such as USA, Canada, Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Russia, China, India and so on. Interestingly, countries like Italy, Austria, Ireland, Mexico, Japan, South, and North Korea, didn’t have their players at Majors yet. Here is a full list of countries that had their players at Majors:

America: USA, Canada, Brazil

West Europe: United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Netherland, Germany, Switzerland

East Europe: Poland, Chech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia

North Europe: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland

Africa: South African Republic

Asia: Turkey, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, India

Australia and Oceania: Australia, New Zealand

Also, there is another fun fact about CS:GO pro scene that includes countries and Majors. The StarLadder Berlin Major will have no German players, which is the fourth Major that has no domestic players. Majors in Cologne 2014, Cluj-Napoca 2015 and Katowice 2019, also didn’t feature any domestic players.

7. Players who participated at all Majors

Appearing at a Major is a dream of all CS:GO players, but only a few manage to take part in every Major since Valve organized the first one in Jönköping. There are three players of the current Astralis squad (Xyp9x, dev1ce, and dupreeh), and olofmeister, shox, and Zeus.

Dev1ce, dupreeh, and Xyp9x are only players that took part in all Majors together. On the other side, shox is the player who appeared at Majors for different teams. He made his debut in Very Games at the first Major, and then played at Major for Epsilon (1 appearance), Team Envy (1 appearance), Titan (3 appearances), G2 (7 appearances) and Team LDLC where he won his only Major.

On the other side, olofmeister played only for LGB, Fnatic and FaZe, and Zeus appeared only in jerseys of NaVi and Gambit Esports, where he won his only title.

Among these players, olofmeister is the most successful one as he won two titles and also played two Grand Finals. On top of that, he reached the Legends Stage of each Major event.

Dupreeh, dev1ce, and Xyp9x, however, have the most Major titles. All of them were victorious three times.