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Esports
15 Year-Old Prodigy Wins Hearthstone Americas Winter Championship
William “Amnesiac” Barton managed to battle back from near-elimination in the 2016 Hearthstone Americas Winter Championship to win the whole tournament on Sunday evening with a 3-1 finals victory over Nostam. Amnesiac emerged as a major North American talent last year, when he topped the regional server at the age of 14 and started to…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsBlizzard’s Heroes Of The Dorm Returns To ESPN With A Case Of Esports March Madness
With less than a week before the bracket stage of the 2016 Heroes of the Dorm tournament, ESPN are once again trying to make the collegiate Heroes of the Storm competition into a nerdy, alternative March Madness. 64 collegiate teams have qualified from around North America to fight for fame, school pride, and the chance…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsLast Night’s Record-Setting League Of Legends Match Lowered The Bar
In a Saturday night game that shattered the records for “creep score” recorded in a pro match, Echo Fox and Dignitas played an exciting, sloppy, and quintessentially North American League of Legends match that demonstrated why the region is consistently entertaining and consistently disrespected. Neither team was competing for a good playoff seed, nor even…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsTeam Secret The Only Winner At The DOTA 2 Shanghai Major
With a decisive 3-1 victory over Team Liquid on Sunday morning, Team Secret finally brought the troubled DOTA 2 Shanghai Major to a mostly-satisfying close. In a tournament where nothing had gone as expected, it was only fitting that two teams that entered as complete dark-horses vied for the $1.1 million grand prize while the…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsFnatic Win The IEM Katowice Counter-Strike Championship Using Magic Bullets
To nobody’s surprise, the unstoppable Fnatic Counter-Strike team claimed yet another major championship today, and put an end to Luminosity’s ongoing Cinderella story with a 3-0 finals sweep at IEM Katowice. That score doesn’t do justice to how hard Fnatic had to fight for this championship, and just how close Luminosity came to taking a…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsNa’Vi’s Throwdown Against Luminosity Was Some Of The Year’s Best Counter-Strike
Today’s Counter-Strike duel at at the IEM Katowice tournament established itself as one of the best rounds of CS:GO of the year before it even reached the halfway mark. Then it got really good. On one side you had the established, reliable Na’Vi team: always a strong team and a challenger for a finals spot…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsAmerica Narrowly Avoids Humiliation At Home Counter-Strike Tournament Qualifier
What started out as an underwhelming tournament for North American Counter-Strike ended on a more hopeful note as Team Liquid, Counter Logic Gaming, and Cloud9 eked out victories on Sunday to qualify for the MLG Columbus Counter-Strike tournament next month, where they will compete for a $500,000 grand prize. North American Counter-Strike is regarded as…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsThis Might Be The Worst Sequence In Pro League of Legends History
Sometimes, schadenfreude is the only winner of an NA LCS match. That’s certainly the case with this breathtaking series of miscues in the opening minutes of today’s Renegades vs. Dignitas League of Legends match, where the map itself scores the first four kills of the game. In the space of a minute, two players from…
By Rob Zacny -
Esports
Fired Dota 2 Commentator On Why Valve Dropped Him
James “2GD” Harding, an esports personality who was fired from his role as host of the Dota 2 Shanghai Major and renounced by Gabe Newell, has posted his explanation of the events that led to his removal from the event. In a long, almost stream-of-consciousness essay, Harding goes into the extensive history of his interactions…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsClassic Rivals In A “Best Of The Rest” Battle In North American League of Legends
With Cloud9 and Counter Logic Gaming tied and Team SoloMid just one game behind them, this would be a dream season of League of Legends, if only it were still 2014. In 2016, it’s still pretty great, but it’s also bittersweet watching the big three of NA LCS playing their guts out for a (very)…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsWhy Fnatic Are The Best Counter-Strike Team
Fnatic are the greatest Counter-Strike team in the world right now. Just look at this crushing defeat they inflicted on Astralis in their final match today at the Barcelona CS:GO Invitational. Astralis were putting up an heroic fight against a heavily-favored Fnatic on the Inferno map. Astralis had tied the match after starting from a…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsTwo Top League Of Legends Players Duel With The Game On The Line
In a League of Legends match full of moments that were both ridiculous and amazing, Cloud9’s Hai and Team SoloMid’s Bjergsen may have taken the cake with this incredible nail-biter of a brawl. I’ll have lots more to say about this second-place match between TSM and Cloud9, which was the League of Legends equivalent of…
By Rob Zacny -
Esports
New Rules for Pro StarCraft Drive Legendary Player Off Team Liquid
Song “HerO” Hyeon Deok and Team Liquid announced today that HerO would no longer be a part of the Liquid organization after almost five years together. Since late 2011, HerO was one of the most prominent members of a team that has been at the heart of StarCraft in the English-speaking world. What’s important about…
By Rob Zacny -
Esports
Rick Fox’s Terrible League of Legends Team Has Five Weeks To Save Its Season
The visa problems that cropped-up in Riot’s League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) derailed a lot of teams’ best-laid plans, but no team suffered more damage than North America’s Echo Fox. They got a lot of attention when they were formed due to the glamor attached to their owner, former NBA star Rick Fox, and…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsCompetitive Matchmaking May Rescue Team Fortress 2 From Esports Oblivion
At first glance, Team Fortress 2 has a lot of the things that make a successful competitive game. Tons of people play it, consistently making it one of the top games on Steam going on a decade. It’s got a distinctive and charming art style that sets it apart from most other major FPS games.…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsInside The Longest Overtime In Pro Counter-Strike History
On the face of it, you wouldn’t pick DenDD vs. PixelFire to be a classic Counter-Strike match. They’re minor professional teams, far below the level of the Fnatics or Na’Vis of the world. But last weekend, they ended up making history: the first map of their best-of-three went into triple, then quadruple, and finally quintuple…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsAt 7-0, North America’s Best League Of Legends Team Has Nothing To Prove
The rise of a team like the undefeated Immortals might explain why some League of Legends fans feel that the pro game is getting boring. On Saturday night, Immortals crushed a gutsy, tied-for-second Counter Logic Gaming team with ruthless discipline and skill… and showed why discipline is so hard to love. Immortals have been one…
By Rob Zacny -
EsportsRidiculous Counter-Strike Comeback Breaks Opposing Team’s Spirit
In a single moment, you can see G2 Esports’ Counter-Strike squad realize they’re going to lose. One of the best things about Counter-Strike is that a round or even an entire match can turn on a dime.The in-game economy does create momentum and can make it challenging for a losing team to mount a comeback,…
By Rob Zacny -
Esports
2014 StarCraft World Champion Taken Into Custody In South Korea
The Korean e-Sports Association (KeSPA) announced this morning that 2014 StarCraft 2 World Champion and 2015 runner-up Lee “Life” Seung Hyun, has been taken into custody by authorities at the Changwon District Prosecutor’s Office in the South Gyeongsang province of South Korea. There is no official word as to the cause of the investigation, or…
By Rob Zacny -
Esports
Pro Counter-Strike Gets A Terrible TV Time Slot
Turner Broadcasting may be giving esports some of their biggest televised exposure yet, but it seems the media juggernaut still doesn’t think competitive gaming is ready for prime time. Turner’s upcoming ELEAGUE Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, with a $1.2 million prize pool, will be running games four nights each week starting on May 24th. Only…
By Rob Zacny
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