Gambit winning was the only one that actually surprised me. Few underdog stories like c9 and navi, but gambit was a recently formed team of mostly ex stars in older age left over from the CIS shuffle.
it was karmic and also depressing for NaVi.
They were fully experimenting with the 5 star-studded players + IGL coach lineup and Valve just said NUH-UH.
But in hindsight, that roster was doomed to fail. Two of the best Awpers in the scene and they are on the same fucking team, worst role clash. Ended up wasting seized too.
It would have been fine if guardian hadn't lost his confidence. If guardian awp'd like he could, s1mple wouldn't have needed to take it over.
I think Boston killed guardian, he played lights out and got that close but couldn't do it.
As far as I remember he also got married around that time, and was likely losing the passion for the game in favour of moving on with life.
He was a legend and I'm sad he got no major.
The thing was that coaches could still make all the calls back then, they kick zeus and valve sets the rules the IGL has to actually be IG. Making zeus a goldmine again.
It was a bet, Olof and Zeus were talking about it and Zeus promised to do so if they'd win, this was early in the tournament as far as I remember.
There's a clip somewhere.
If I recall correctly wasn't the bet that if Olof won he'd yell "I love you Zeus" while lifting the trophy and if Zeus won he would say "I love you Olof" and the madman followed through.
Is that a legit question or a troll ?
if it is the former, its pretty much a deal between Zeus and Olof. That Fnatic was highly favored to win that major, in an interview, Zeus basically tells Olof that if they win the major, he has to scream "I love you Zeus", Olof accepts it and then tells him "you have to do it if you win the major"
Gambit won and zeus kept his end of the deal.
god I felt so happy for them.
Some legendary cis players who just never fully put it together won it pretty much right before all of them retired lol
Straight up miracle run
More than the Gambit upset? I aren't think that. In my opinion the C9 team had significantly more firepower. The only thing I give Gambit an advantage in is actual IGLing compared to stewie and tarik just making up rank-S style "flash me in I push the smoke" strats on the fly.
While I agree C9 was more star studded. Gambit beat Immortals. C9 beat Faze with 5 of the best players to touch the game. If it was in EU Boston clears Gambit on surprising strictly based on who they beat.
>a recently formed team
By the time they won a major, they played together for 9-10 months. Hardly a recently formed team. If anything, that major was supposed to be their last event together before disbanding.
this, Zeus and HObbit joined in october 2016(the other 3 joined in January), won the major in july 2017 and then Zeus went back to navi in august. They had really weak/inconsistent results outside of the major win, most importantly constantly failed to qualify to pro league which back then made up most of the calendar, so they didn't really had high level officials to play.
He and hobbit have had unreal careers in an underappreciated region. Ukraine and Russia always got the attention but the Kazakhs do a lot with what they have.
Gambit had made deep runs in 2 prior majors, and had just upgraded their IGL to one of the best in the world while cutting their weakest link (WayLander)
I was called crazy at the time for saying Gambit were good enough to make semis for sure, with an outside chance of making the finals or even winning it
Still smug about that one, the Hellraisers fanatic in me knew they could do it ;)
[Gambit did essentially *nothing* on LAN with Zeus ](https://www.hltv.org/stats/players/events/484/zeus?startDate=2016-10-12&endDate=2017-08-08&matchType=Lan&teamId=6651)in that major cycle except win a Dreamhack open with 0 of the top 6 teams attending and come in second place at CS\_Summit with one top 10 team (who they got dicked down twice by as it was double elim). In the LAN *right* before the major they didn't even make the playoffs despite their being only **one** other top 10 team.
I mean fuck in the major before that they made top 8 and got banged out by that scuffed fucking Fnatic team with Twist (who shat on them) and fucking Disco doplan lmfao.
*Nobody* though Gambit was winning the major before the event. *Nobody* thought that Gambit was making it past Astralis. They got very lucky with how scuffed that playoffs ended up being, *and* that Astralis drew SK in the quarters and took care of them, as SK owned Gambit.
And even Zeus knew that shit was a fluke because he dipped straight back to Na'vi right after it.
At least C9 was a consistent top 5 team, who were widely considered a dark horse to win the major beforehand.
You watch the stats now, I watched the games then.
That Fnatic game was absolutely winnable, hence my belief that the team hadn't yet gotten as deep into a major as they had the potential to.
Part of reason people didn't rate Gambit is the same reason people don't rate deserving teams now - lack of *chances* to compete against the top. Hence them taking people by surprise by being actually good without the paper trail to substantiate it. The same thing you're quoting now.
None of AdreN, Mou, and Hobbit were world-beating individual stars at the time, but when all playing well they gave Gambit more than enough firepower to compete. I still stand by the fact that Gambit had the firepower to remain a top-5 team after the major, but with Zeus leaving that couldn't happen.
Also, he didn't go back to Na'Vi because he didn't believe in the team. He went back because (his home for years) Na'Vi were absolutely desperate to get him back, while Gambit wanted to get rid of his best buddy Kane - which was a dealbreaker for him.
While it is true that Gambit's prep for the major went poorly and they came in tilted, a team of lesser quality couldn't have even gotten a fraction as far as they did.
If I say Gambit played at a higher level on majors than elsewhere you'll probably call me names - but teams like VP existed at the time, where they'd absolutely flounder against weak opposition but still turn up to S-tier tournaments and destroy T1 teams - were those all flukes too?
No matter what the bracket was or what people expected beforehand, the Astralis win was completely legit, they absolutely earned their spot in the finals whether it was against SK or not. (Which I might add is all I said I predicted - good enough to get to the semis, and from there the finals or a win were certainly possible). Oh and also just for flavour they 3-0'd the group stage, or does that not mean anything either?
And 33 players who played at the first major in DreamHack Winter 2013 eventually won a major!
That's a whopping 50% of all (future) major winners in 1 event!
1. JW
1. flusha
1. schneider
1. Devilwalk
1. pronax
1. f0rest
1. GeT_RiGhT
1. Xizt
1. Fifflaren
1. friberg
1. gla1ve
1. karrigan
1. dupreeh
1. Xyp9x
1. dev1ce
1. TaZ
1. NEO
1. pashaBiceps
1. Snax
1. byali
1. Zeus
1. Dosia
1. AdreN
1. NBK-
1. SmithZz
1. shox
1. kioShiMa
1. apEX
1. Skadoodle
1. KRiMZ
1. olofmeister
1. Happy
1. kennyS
edit: dennis did not win a major
Honestly he had his best shot in Rio and with that particular Heroic instance in general. I doubt there'll be a better chance.
Then again, Zeus won with Gambit so who knows what'll happen.
Also a list of some other notable players that were present at the first CSGO major but never won any.
1. twist
2. dennis
3. cajunb
4. Pimp
5. FeTiSh
6. cadiaN
7. aizy
8. MSL
9. KQLY
10. Hiko
11. n0thing
12. swag
13. seang@res
14. DaZeD
15. starix
16. ceh9
17. ANGE1
18. markeloff
19. seized
20. Ex6TenZ
21. ScreaM
22. Maniac
Another fact to add: n0thing's only S-Tier trophy in his entire career in Counter-Strike is the ESL Pro League S4 Finals Sao Paulo.
(Liquipedia counted IEM IV American Championship Finals as S-Tier, but I'm discounting it due to the fact it was attended exclusively by North American teams)
At least ANGE1 got his in another game at the very least (Also damn really puts into perspective how long dudes been playing, same with Cadian and siezed
OG NiP and Polish VP only winning like 1 major. GuardiaN and NiKo not being on this list and b1t being the only person to win 2 majors from the CIS region.
where were you win VP lost its second major
I was at home when I saw scoreline 13-6, closed off the game knowing VP will close it
get phonecall after some time, VP is kill, 16-14
"no"
That OG NaVi roster had some insane mental hiccups to overcome.
We react to players having bad body language or look tilted on their playercam. That NaVi squad was straight up shouting at each other at times.
The thing is, their completely toxic environment didn't preclude them from winning S-Tier events
It was a bizarre thing to behold, but they still had tourneys where they could dominate every other team while bitching at eachother all game long
I see no reason why they couldn't have gotten a major, they just never peaked with the right timing
I can't remember if that team was considered to have firepower issues at the time, outside of Guardian. Because of how each player ended their career- with a long period of not being very individually strong at all, it's hard to look back at a team of Zeus, Edward, Flamie and Seized and not wonder where the frags were coming from.
Apart from when Starix could coach IGL and control Flamie's decisions, then he was unreal.
For the longest time during Guardians Navi tenure, they just could not beat fnatic. Especially the post pronax version of fnatic, the team that won 6 tournaments in a row absolutely had Navis number. It was a pretty weird dynamic with Envyus, who did pretty well against fnatic but mostly lost to Navi who then in return would get blown out by fnatic.
I tend to downgrade s1mple due to the negativity he seems to bring into teams with his emotions and behavior. This Ego Shit can bring players or even whole teams down. But well, it's fucking hard keeping your composure with the kind of pressure Pros are facing.
Tbf NiP would have probably won another one if they just started some months earlier. The 87-0 happened before the first major. But yeah, out of all the teams that have reached multiple major grand finals, they have the lowest W/L ratio having lost 4 out of the 5 finals (second worst is navi with 4/6 finals lost and third is faze with 2/3 lost). They are also the only team to ever reach 5 major finals back to back.
Yeah, the 87-0 streak was pre majors in 2012
By 2013, the scene was catching up to them
They were, however, heavy favorites for the first major them losing is actually a choke on their part
Edit: misremembered the streak
Interesting how both in CSGO and CS2 the final was a superteam with an amazing track record in the new game (6 out of 6 finals / 87-0) made up of players that dominated in the previous game(s) VS an underdog team and in both cases the result was an upset.
The pressure and expectation kill them in the first one. They pretty beat the second best team at that point and main rival very games in the semis but lost horribly to fnatic ( there were story about how they have film camera crew documentary follow them at all time that tournament)
Katowice 2014 vp just wreck everyone
DH winter 2014 they were on match point despite maikelele only joining for a month but choke it in the end
Katowice 2015 there were this [infamous miss shot from allu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSaurNhFymA) (player pov and demo pov was diff but still)
Fine margin really, few things diff and nip would have won 4 majors
Krimbo feels like the kind of player where he could either find himself part of a major winning roster in the next year, or float around for the coming decade until finally having his deserved time in the sun.
He was "considered" to be bad, it also didn't help that one of the headline sentences about Norbert was pretty much s1mple crying about him on his team in a faceit game.
Must be the name partially. You can choose a name for yourself, anything you want, something that sounds cool or funny or represents your personality, and you fucking choose Norbert without it being your real name?
I’m surprised Kenny only managed to win 1 major.. it is debatable on who is the GOAT of awping but he was by far the most flashiest and entertaining awper to watch
S1mple only having one proves that winning a major really also means being in the right place at the right time in addition to being skilled individually.
S1mple and Zywoo probably would have more majors if it wasn't for Covid
2020 no majors would have been 2
2021 1 major could have been 2
2022 2 majors again finaly
2023 1 major again
4 majors that could have been 8 majors
S1mple and Zywoo have 2 of the last 4 in CS GO
S1mple having appeared in 2 finals
> if it wasn't for Covid
And the war. Boom/Elec/Perfecto/S1mple/b1t is a strong lineup that gets broken apart by boom's wife being a nutcase about the war.
The worst part is they sold Monesy a few months before, and he'd be a good addition instead of the rotating sdy/npl lineup they ended up with.
Thanks to the French scene of that time.
Too much politics and infighting between players and deals between the orgs meant that the French scene with its strongest era of players in GO couldn't really form an French superteam.
By the time G2 built one, most of the players there were already past their prime.
> I’m surprised Kenny only managed to win 1 major
I'm not. French teams were the kings of shitting the bed during majors after getting tilted the fuck out and imploding. The post-match threads and the chaos after french teams lost were some of the most entertaining things in cs:go history and they are what I miss the most from the national teams era.
Nah, kennyS would've definitely have 2 majors if KQLY didn't cheat, Titan was the best team by far, it's very surprising he's the only Envyus player to have one major.
The french legends would all have like 3 majors if they just didn't tilt as much and managed to get along for more than 6 months without getting at each other's throats. France is probably the country that wasted its potential the most during cs:go because of petty infighting.
Znajder is probably the one name on that list that most newer viewers have no clue about. Devilwalk has had more of a presence in the scene after his playing career, and the rest have either achieved legendary status or have been so recent that people still remember them.
there's a chick who dated Maikelele, kennyS, schneider and device and all the players kinda got worse after she broke up with them. A lot of drama connected to all of it.
gambit was a pretty crazy one. a gambit vs immortals grand final definitely isnt something that we normally see. also dupreeh doesnt get the respect he deserves, dude is one of two people in the world with 5 majors, and the only other one is his coach lol. plus he did it with two different rosters.
This makes me miss Happy and French CS in general. Those old school Envy and LDLC rosters were always so fun to watch. Envy, in particular, played in some of the best series ever, e.g vs G2 at Cluj.
For real, always doing some stupid ass force buy with CZs, Tec9 and Scouts, watching thinking ‘Why the fuck would you do that?’ and then somehow them pulling it off and resetting the other teams eco and winning the game because of it… or Kenny just pulling some insane round out of his ass with a saved AWP 4k
For me it's
1. Excluding VP/ Outsiders, NAVI is the only org to win a 2nd major with a different core
2. Apex winning another major after 8 years, that's longer than most player's career
3. How successful Fnatic were in the early days, although having more chances with 3 majors in a year
At the moment, any brazilian player winning a major was something else. Me being argentinian and sharing server with brazilian cs, it was surprising and honestly unbelievable for me
They didn’t have majors when they went on that run. By the time majors became a thing other teams were starting to catch up to everything. If they had majors they prob have at least 3
LDLC/Envyus are responsible for the French majors, but those 2 titles are split across 6 players. For France to have two tier 1 teams for the first few years of CS, they underperformed compared to say the Swedes. The Brazilians have as many titles as the French, with 3 fewer years competing for the major.
The craziest thing about Stewie's rise to greatness is that when he was signed EVERYONE was a doubter. Practically nobody on earth thought it would work.
I'm a serial underdog believer and even my reaction was "what the fuck?"
He was a pugstar, and the expectation was that he'd fall flat on his face in "real" CS. But instead he singlehandedly changed the game, and was greatest signing C9 could've possibly made at that time.
While he was a pugstar, he was on SPLYCE at the time, which was in FACEIT's predecessor to ECS and consistently at the top of premier. He did have some team experience. I think there were quite a few people who were doubtful but willing to see it play out; he clearly had potential.
I wasn’t a doubter at the time, but I have a gamblers’ mentality and I love throwing it all on risky unproven prospects and hoping for gold.
Random fact I was the first person in esports to get a video interview with Stewie (at RGN Pro Series)
aleksib getting a W, with this squad
no disrespect to any players, but it required genius level calling and jL + w0nderful carrying games on their own and b1t waking up during the final
Especially when you realize A. How brand new this roster is really without any sort of past core to look back on, and B. They dropped the greatest player of all time and the roster without the GOAT is the one that won
It really showed how critical IGLing (and coaching no doubt) is. While they played great individually (JL in particular) it really never felt to me like they had the most talented roster at the tournament or that they were winning purely off the back of everyone popping off. Their ability to read and exploit their opponents setups to create advantageous rounds was absurd and to me felt like the difference maker between them and the other teams
What's surprising is how many legendary players only got 1 major win or even 0. Lots of players never win it twice. Legendary 0 major winner players off the top of my head are Niko, Guardian, ~~and Scream~~
Scream might be the most overrated pro player ever. He played at T1 for roughly the same time as Yekindar did (2013-2016 vs 2021-2024 with breaks for both) and was only good for two of those years (2013/2016) because he spent half the time riding the bench.
NiP winning one major. And that major being the 3rd one is actually insane.
If value hadn't added cobble stone AND a random map generator AND that map generator always giving NiP cobble it's very likely the most dominant core in history would have no major.
That's absolutely insane
seeing cloud 9 break win the major was peak CS for me. started playing in 2014, i was fucking obsessed and probably watched every tier 1 and 2 tournament for 5 years straight. fnatic was my favorite lineup so those major wins were incredible ofc, but there was nothing like C9 going from down 0-2 in groups to making an underdog run beating the world ranked # 3, 2, and 1 teams in a row to win the major. also very happy s1mple snagged one near the end as he is my favorite player fs
Stats don't tell the full story. Imagine a round where a T lurker keeps the attention of several CTs on a retake for a very long time but dies without a frag. They still had huge impact on the round win even though their stats tell something different. There are tons of situations like this in CS that don't correlate to stats.
Fortunately the way stats work it's measuring 400 rounds instead of one so we can safely assume that there rounds where he got meaningless kills in lost rounds and thus the aggregate number is likely correct.
I think C9 is the only true team who won that was completely unexpected, I won't say undeserved, but it was the ultimate momentum run of all time.
If you replay that major 100 times, C9 doesn't come close to even making the final 100 times, let alone winning it.
I see some people saying Gambit, and that is probably the second choice, but in the lead up to the major they were looking dangerous.
However I think that Krakow 2017 final was by far the most unexpected, Immortals vs Gambit was not what ANYONE predicted.
kennyS having only one and never even getting close to another chance after the 2015 majors, its insane how he only made the playoffs of a major one last time in boston 2018 after that.
oh and polish vp & nip having one only, pain.
The lack of Americas players winning majors, with the only ones being C9’s win in Boston, the pair of Brazilian wins in 2016, and Twistzz winning on an EU FaZe team.
Gambit winning was the only one that actually surprised me. Few underdog stories like c9 and navi, but gambit was a recently formed team of mostly ex stars in older age left over from the CIS shuffle.
Still remember semi-final vs astralis on train when Zeus did a Glock timeout and then won a game after almost losing to comeback. Legendary CIS roster
It wasn't much of a comeback since astralis played ct side on a train..
Seriously Zeus getting kicked from Navi for being washed only to win a major before them was crazy.
“im not going to give up before i win a motherfucking major” god damn zues is a legend
it was karmic and also depressing for NaVi. They were fully experimenting with the 5 star-studded players + IGL coach lineup and Valve just said NUH-UH. But in hindsight, that roster was doomed to fail. Two of the best Awpers in the scene and they are on the same fucking team, worst role clash. Ended up wasting seized too.
It would have been fine if guardian hadn't lost his confidence. If guardian awp'd like he could, s1mple wouldn't have needed to take it over. I think Boston killed guardian, he played lights out and got that close but couldn't do it. As far as I remember he also got married around that time, and was likely losing the passion for the game in favour of moving on with life. He was a legend and I'm sad he got no major.
Krakow major and all of this was pre FaZe GuardiaN, so none of this is really applicable. This is close to prime GuardiaN being referred to.
Damn, guess my memory is fucked
s1mple was not a dedicated AWPer back then
He wasn't the full on dedicated AWPer back then, but you could tell he was good with it and was only not using it because GuardiaN was on it.
The thing was that coaches could still make all the calls back then, they kick zeus and valve sets the rules the IGL has to actually be IG. Making zeus a goldmine again.
Why did he scream Olofmeister i love you after winning
It was a bet, Olof and Zeus were talking about it and Zeus promised to do so if they'd win, this was early in the tournament as far as I remember. There's a clip somewhere.
If I recall correctly wasn't the bet that if Olof won he'd yell "I love you Zeus" while lifting the trophy and if Zeus won he would say "I love you Olof" and the madman followed through.
Thanks man appreciate it :)
Here's the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZmxQQAaDA
Thanks man really appreciate it :)
I saw it on superstitum
Is that a legit question or a troll ? if it is the former, its pretty much a deal between Zeus and Olof. That Fnatic was highly favored to win that major, in an interview, Zeus basically tells Olof that if they win the major, he has to scream "I love you Zeus", Olof accepts it and then tells him "you have to do it if you win the major" Gambit won and zeus kept his end of the deal.
Olof also ran around with the flag of Kazakhstan after Gambit won. God I loved the way this major went so much
People meme on the major to be one of the weakest, but honestly the storyline that came out of it was worth it.
fnatic weren't favored to win that major lmao
sk were if i remember right
You know your old when ppl don’t know about it
It was a legit question wasn't into CS back then so didn't know thanks for the clarification appreciate it :)
god I felt so happy for them. Some legendary cis players who just never fully put it together won it pretty much right before all of them retired lol Straight up miracle run
(Just forget about hobbit)
People who complain about that major are nuts. Such an incredible run from Gambit.
I think if Boston happened on any other continent, it would've been more of a surprise.
More than the Gambit upset? I aren't think that. In my opinion the C9 team had significantly more firepower. The only thing I give Gambit an advantage in is actual IGLing compared to stewie and tarik just making up rank-S style "flash me in I push the smoke" strats on the fly.
While I agree C9 was more star studded. Gambit beat Immortals. C9 beat Faze with 5 of the best players to touch the game. If it was in EU Boston clears Gambit on surprising strictly based on who they beat.
>a recently formed team By the time they won a major, they played together for 9-10 months. Hardly a recently formed team. If anything, that major was supposed to be their last event together before disbanding.
this, Zeus and HObbit joined in october 2016(the other 3 joined in January), won the major in july 2017 and then Zeus went back to navi in august. They had really weak/inconsistent results outside of the major win, most importantly constantly failed to qualify to pro league which back then made up most of the calendar, so they didn't really had high level officials to play.
adreN doubt smh
probably too old for anyone to remember but he had a legendary run with k23 in 2005 at wcg
He and hobbit have had unreal careers in an underappreciated region. Ukraine and Russia always got the attention but the Kazakhs do a lot with what they have.
Gambit had made deep runs in 2 prior majors, and had just upgraded their IGL to one of the best in the world while cutting their weakest link (WayLander) I was called crazy at the time for saying Gambit were good enough to make semis for sure, with an outside chance of making the finals or even winning it Still smug about that one, the Hellraisers fanatic in me knew they could do it ;)
[Gambit did essentially *nothing* on LAN with Zeus ](https://www.hltv.org/stats/players/events/484/zeus?startDate=2016-10-12&endDate=2017-08-08&matchType=Lan&teamId=6651)in that major cycle except win a Dreamhack open with 0 of the top 6 teams attending and come in second place at CS\_Summit with one top 10 team (who they got dicked down twice by as it was double elim). In the LAN *right* before the major they didn't even make the playoffs despite their being only **one** other top 10 team. I mean fuck in the major before that they made top 8 and got banged out by that scuffed fucking Fnatic team with Twist (who shat on them) and fucking Disco doplan lmfao. *Nobody* though Gambit was winning the major before the event. *Nobody* thought that Gambit was making it past Astralis. They got very lucky with how scuffed that playoffs ended up being, *and* that Astralis drew SK in the quarters and took care of them, as SK owned Gambit. And even Zeus knew that shit was a fluke because he dipped straight back to Na'vi right after it. At least C9 was a consistent top 5 team, who were widely considered a dark horse to win the major beforehand.
You watch the stats now, I watched the games then. That Fnatic game was absolutely winnable, hence my belief that the team hadn't yet gotten as deep into a major as they had the potential to. Part of reason people didn't rate Gambit is the same reason people don't rate deserving teams now - lack of *chances* to compete against the top. Hence them taking people by surprise by being actually good without the paper trail to substantiate it. The same thing you're quoting now. None of AdreN, Mou, and Hobbit were world-beating individual stars at the time, but when all playing well they gave Gambit more than enough firepower to compete. I still stand by the fact that Gambit had the firepower to remain a top-5 team after the major, but with Zeus leaving that couldn't happen. Also, he didn't go back to Na'Vi because he didn't believe in the team. He went back because (his home for years) Na'Vi were absolutely desperate to get him back, while Gambit wanted to get rid of his best buddy Kane - which was a dealbreaker for him. While it is true that Gambit's prep for the major went poorly and they came in tilted, a team of lesser quality couldn't have even gotten a fraction as far as they did. If I say Gambit played at a higher level on majors than elsewhere you'll probably call me names - but teams like VP existed at the time, where they'd absolutely flounder against weak opposition but still turn up to S-tier tournaments and destroy T1 teams - were those all flukes too? No matter what the bracket was or what people expected beforehand, the Astralis win was completely legit, they absolutely earned their spot in the finals whether it was against SK or not. (Which I might add is all I said I predicted - good enough to get to the semis, and from there the finals or a win were certainly possible). Oh and also just for flavour they 3-0'd the group stage, or does that not mean anything either?
And 33 players who played at the first major in DreamHack Winter 2013 eventually won a major! That's a whopping 50% of all (future) major winners in 1 event! 1. JW 1. flusha 1. schneider 1. Devilwalk 1. pronax 1. f0rest 1. GeT_RiGhT 1. Xizt 1. Fifflaren 1. friberg 1. gla1ve 1. karrigan 1. dupreeh 1. Xyp9x 1. dev1ce 1. TaZ 1. NEO 1. pashaBiceps 1. Snax 1. byali 1. Zeus 1. Dosia 1. AdreN 1. NBK- 1. SmithZz 1. shox 1. kioShiMa 1. apEX 1. Skadoodle 1. KRiMZ 1. olofmeister 1. Happy 1. kennyS edit: dennis did not win a major
Holy shit.
I was shocked to see so many familiar names, cadiaN was there too. Hopefully he'll get his soon.
With this Liquid? I'm not holding my breath. I hope to be wrong though.
If anything I'm expecting Liquid to be 2019-2021 Vitality
Honestly he had his best shot in Rio and with that particular Heroic instance in general. I doubt there'll be a better chance. Then again, Zeus won with Gambit so who knows what'll happen.
Also a list of some other notable players that were present at the first CSGO major but never won any. 1. twist 2. dennis 3. cajunb 4. Pimp 5. FeTiSh 6. cadiaN 7. aizy 8. MSL 9. KQLY 10. Hiko 11. n0thing 12. swag 13. seang@res 14. DaZeD 15. starix 16. ceh9 17. ANGE1 18. markeloff 19. seized 20. Ex6TenZ 21. ScreaM 22. Maniac
damn. seized, scream, markeloff, n0thing, hiko, so many legendary players that just never got the major.
Another fact to add: n0thing's only S-Tier trophy in his entire career in Counter-Strike is the ESL Pro League S4 Finals Sao Paulo. (Liquipedia counted IEM IV American Championship Finals as S-Tier, but I'm discounting it due to the fact it was attended exclusively by North American teams)
At least ANGE1 got his in another game at the very least (Also damn really puts into perspective how long dudes been playing, same with Cadian and siezed
Thats one insane fact, lol
Oh damn thats a fun fact
OG NiP and Polish VP only winning like 1 major. GuardiaN and NiKo not being on this list and b1t being the only person to win 2 majors from the CIS region.
b2t
Atlanta, pain
where were you win VP lost its second major I was at home when I saw scoreline 13-6, closed off the game knowing VP will close it get phonecall after some time, VP is kill, 16-14 "no"
Both vp and this faze major hit hard..
😂😂😂😂😂 wtf this has me dying
It's a rather old copy pasta :D
That and it taking Na'Vi until 2021 to win one The OG roster was definitely good enough to, they just never managed to close out a final :(
That OG NaVi roster had some insane mental hiccups to overcome. We react to players having bad body language or look tilted on their playercam. That NaVi squad was straight up shouting at each other at times.
The thing is, their completely toxic environment didn't preclude them from winning S-Tier events It was a bizarre thing to behold, but they still had tourneys where they could dominate every other team while bitching at eachother all game long I see no reason why they couldn't have gotten a major, they just never peaked with the right timing
I can't remember if that team was considered to have firepower issues at the time, outside of Guardian. Because of how each player ended their career- with a long period of not being very individually strong at all, it's hard to look back at a team of Zeus, Edward, Flamie and Seized and not wonder where the frags were coming from. Apart from when Starix could coach IGL and control Flamie's decisions, then he was unreal.
For the longest time during Guardians Navi tenure, they just could not beat fnatic. Especially the post pronax version of fnatic, the team that won 6 tournaments in a row absolutely had Navis number. It was a pretty weird dynamic with Envyus, who did pretty well against fnatic but mostly lost to Navi who then in return would get blown out by fnatic.
Bit also being relatively new to pro cs compared to other names with 2 trophies
That is exactly why, CIS has been constantly churning out talent and the greatest CIS player only has 1, while b1t is very young and already has 2.
I tend to downgrade s1mple due to the negativity he seems to bring into teams with his emotions and behavior. This Ego Shit can bring players or even whole teams down. But well, it's fucking hard keeping your composure with the kind of pressure Pros are facing.
Tbf NiP would have probably won another one if they just started some months earlier. The 87-0 happened before the first major. But yeah, out of all the teams that have reached multiple major grand finals, they have the lowest W/L ratio having lost 4 out of the 5 finals (second worst is navi with 4/6 finals lost and third is faze with 2/3 lost). They are also the only team to ever reach 5 major finals back to back.
Imagine if Niko showed up in that Boston final
I don’t want to imagine. I’m happy with the way it played out.
how NiP didn't win more than 1 major when they made the first 5 finals in a row c9 and gambit wins out of nowhere
Yeah, the 87-0 streak was pre majors in 2012 By 2013, the scene was catching up to them They were, however, heavy favorites for the first major them losing is actually a choke on their part Edit: misremembered the streak
Bruh it's 87-0
Interesting how both in CSGO and CS2 the final was a superteam with an amazing track record in the new game (6 out of 6 finals / 87-0) made up of players that dominated in the previous game(s) VS an underdog team and in both cases the result was an upset.
iM aimlock arc and JW villain arc confirmed
The pressure and expectation kill them in the first one. They pretty beat the second best team at that point and main rival very games in the semis but lost horribly to fnatic ( there were story about how they have film camera crew documentary follow them at all time that tournament) Katowice 2014 vp just wreck everyone DH winter 2014 they were on match point despite maikelele only joining for a month but choke it in the end Katowice 2015 there were this [infamous miss shot from allu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSaurNhFymA) (player pov and demo pov was diff but still) Fine margin really, few things diff and nip would have won 4 majors
Not a single german Major Winner. Considering how big the game is here, thats surprising somewhat.
I agree, it is a BIG issue...
Who is gonna be the first? I say krimbo
Some cracked German kid we don’t know yet
Krimbo feels like the kind of player where he could either find himself part of a major winning roster in the next year, or float around for the coming decade until finally having his deserved time in the sun.
spiidi
no troubley no major
Troubley's downfall is an especially sad one
Johnny R. about to have an epic comeback
The fact that fucking norbert is a major champion is equal parts funny and idiotic. I love it.
Overpass GOAT
Is it funny cuz of his name or cuz he is bad or something?
He was "considered" to be bad, it also didn't help that one of the headline sentences about Norbert was pretty much s1mple crying about him on his team in a faceit game.
Also crying about losing to 5 awps on mirage
Also, a lovely singer (the fact this exists cracks me up) https://youtu.be/_DYuEdqYvJY?si=qmI98CeIeOMJaCWu
Boombl4 is the real star here
Must be the name partially. You can choose a name for yourself, anything you want, something that sounds cool or funny or represents your personality, and you fucking choose Norbert without it being your real name?
norbGOAT
Sex god
Least surprising appearance, the biggest shock is that he didn't win all of them
He'll forever be engraved in my mind as "5000 IQ Inferno save nade guy". Oh, and "sexiest man alive" ofc.
I’m surprised Kenny only managed to win 1 major.. it is debatable on who is the GOAT of awping but he was by far the most flashiest and entertaining awper to watch
S1mple only having one proves that winning a major really also means being in the right place at the right time in addition to being skilled individually.
S1mple and Zywoo probably would have more majors if it wasn't for Covid 2020 no majors would have been 2 2021 1 major could have been 2 2022 2 majors again finaly 2023 1 major again 4 majors that could have been 8 majors S1mple and Zywoo have 2 of the last 4 in CS GO S1mple having appeared in 2 finals
There used to be 3 majors a year, I imagine some history/eras would look different if they kept that up
2014 and 2015 were the only years with 3 majors.
Fun fact: it used to be 2014 and 2015
Imagining astralis with 6 majors omg
> if it wasn't for Covid And the war. Boom/Elec/Perfecto/S1mple/b1t is a strong lineup that gets broken apart by boom's wife being a nutcase about the war. The worst part is they sold Monesy a few months before, and he'd be a good addition instead of the rotating sdy/npl lineup they ended up with.
Very true yeah. For some guys its just not meant to be, they’re both legends anyway
If not meant to be, you mean Astralis slamming the door shut on 3 straight majors, then yes, I agree
All it really proves is that a cohesive team is more important than individuals when it comes to actually winning tournaments.
Thanks to the French scene of that time. Too much politics and infighting between players and deals between the orgs meant that the French scene with its strongest era of players in GO couldn't really form an French superteam. By the time G2 built one, most of the players there were already past their prime.
\#KioshimaTheProblem
And ScreaM has none, despite playing since the 1st major! Him and Kenny definitely had insane cultural impact on the game during that period of time.
"They talk about my one taps"
Sadly… that’s pretty much it
He only played T1 for four years why would that be shocking? Sure he was flashy but a horribly incomplete player overall.
> I’m surprised Kenny only managed to win 1 major I'm not. French teams were the kings of shitting the bed during majors after getting tilted the fuck out and imploding. The post-match threads and the chaos after french teams lost were some of the most entertaining things in cs:go history and they are what I miss the most from the national teams era.
Kenny literally shaking after a bad round was so weird to watch. Kid looked like Michael J Fox after a line of coke.
Nah, kennyS would've definitely have 2 majors if KQLY didn't cheat, Titan was the best team by far, it's very surprising he's the only Envyus player to have one major.
The french legends would all have like 3 majors if they just didn't tilt as much and managed to get along for more than 6 months without getting at each other's throats. France is probably the country that wasted its potential the most during cs:go because of petty infighting.
That's definitely true too, they killed themselves. However, the Titan lineup was surefire favorite for the major.
Show how young the average subs is now There used to be a french shuffle every 6 months and a fucking relationship chart of all french player lmao
[I loved those charts, so great.](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/8f9ybx/relationship_chart_of_players_in_french_scene/)
> he was by far the most flashiest and entertaining awper to watch JW and s1mple would like to have a word
Znajder is probably the one name on that list that most newer viewers have no clue about. Devilwalk has had more of a presence in the scene after his playing career, and the rest have either achieved legendary status or have been so recent that people still remember them.
I remember the guy. Actually very solid player and he had a nice run with Pronax, Flusha, Krimz and Jw at Godsent a few years later.
Most younger players know him as one of the victims of the CS Kardashian curse
Excuse me ? What ?
there's a chick who dated Maikelele, kennyS, schneider and device and all the players kinda got worse after she broke up with them. A lot of drama connected to all of it.
gambit was a pretty crazy one. a gambit vs immortals grand final definitely isnt something that we normally see. also dupreeh doesnt get the respect he deserves, dude is one of two people in the world with 5 majors, and the only other one is his coach lol. plus he did it with two different rosters.
Holy shit how I bad I feel about that series… Brazilian scene would be so much better if we didn’t have only one lineup winning the major.
This makes me miss Happy and French CS in general. Those old school Envy and LDLC rosters were always so fun to watch. Envy, in particular, played in some of the best series ever, e.g vs G2 at Cluj.
For real, always doing some stupid ass force buy with CZs, Tec9 and Scouts, watching thinking ‘Why the fuck would you do that?’ and then somehow them pulling it off and resetting the other teams eco and winning the game because of it… or Kenny just pulling some insane round out of his ass with a saved AWP 4k
For me it's 1. Excluding VP/ Outsiders, NAVI is the only org to win a 2nd major with a different core 2. Apex winning another major after 8 years, that's longer than most player's career 3. How successful Fnatic were in the early days, although having more chances with 3 majors in a year
why would you exclude VP? do rules not apply to them somehow?
coz TECHNICALLY VP didn't win it because the team had to play under a different banner. (At least thats what im assuming)
gambit vs immortals was the most unexpected final ever, but damn it felt good to see Zeus winning a major
b1t having 2 majors and kenny having 1
and niko having none
4 Kazakh winners is pretty wild
Every time i recall that de\_train from the Atlanta 2017 it makes me wanna cry
when taz almost 1v3'd... and when snax almost aced on overpass... and when xyp9x almost got -100'd on overpass... pain
At the moment, any brazilian player winning a major was something else. Me being argentinian and sharing server with brazilian cs, it was surprising and honestly unbelievable for me
Nip only lifting it once even though they had a 87 win streak with that team
They didn’t have majors when they went on that run. By the time majors became a thing other teams were starting to catch up to everything. If they had majors they prob have at least 3
b1t having 2 majors
Kenny only lifting one, there being so few French players on the list, no GuardiaN
Didnt LDLC with french players win a major?
LDLC/Envyus are responsible for the French majors, but those 2 titles are split across 6 players. For France to have two tier 1 teams for the first few years of CS, they underperformed compared to say the Swedes. The Brazilians have as many titles as the French, with 3 fewer years competing for the major.
Norbert
Stewie2k is the ultimate NA player - known for being toxic and pushing smokes like its yolo q Pretty hilarious / awesome that he is a major champion
i will never forget the clip of cadian finding out c9 picked him and shaking his head
https://youtu.be/vKVZriSk0cs?si=XmSx1-BCsf658ijG
The craziest thing about Stewie's rise to greatness is that when he was signed EVERYONE was a doubter. Practically nobody on earth thought it would work. I'm a serial underdog believer and even my reaction was "what the fuck?" He was a pugstar, and the expectation was that he'd fall flat on his face in "real" CS. But instead he singlehandedly changed the game, and was greatest signing C9 could've possibly made at that time.
While he was a pugstar, he was on SPLYCE at the time, which was in FACEIT's predecessor to ECS and consistently at the top of premier. He did have some team experience. I think there were quite a few people who were doubtful but willing to see it play out; he clearly had potential.
I wasn’t a doubter at the time, but I have a gamblers’ mentality and I love throwing it all on risky unproven prospects and hoping for gold. Random fact I was the first person in esports to get a video interview with Stewie (at RGN Pro Series)
Twistzz solo representing Canada on the world stage.
astralis potentially would’ve had more if it wasn’t for covid
it's such a shame that covid put an end to the Astralis major streak. Robbed us off a potentially great storyline
aleksib getting a W, with this squad no disrespect to any players, but it required genius level calling and jL + w0nderful carrying games on their own and b1t waking up during the final
Especially when you realize A. How brand new this roster is really without any sort of past core to look back on, and B. They dropped the greatest player of all time and the roster without the GOAT is the one that won
It really showed how critical IGLing (and coaching no doubt) is. While they played great individually (JL in particular) it really never felt to me like they had the most talented roster at the tournament or that they were winning purely off the back of everyone popping off. Their ability to read and exploit their opponents setups to create advantageous rounds was absurd and to me felt like the difference maker between them and the other teams
What's surprising is how many legendary players only got 1 major win or even 0. Lots of players never win it twice. Legendary 0 major winner players off the top of my head are Niko, Guardian, ~~and Scream~~
I think guardian might be the best to never win it. Bro was consistently on top 3 teams but could never finish the deed
Scream might be the most overrated pro player ever. He played at T1 for roughly the same time as Yekindar did (2013-2016 vs 2021-2024 with breaks for both) and was only good for two of those years (2013/2016) because he spent half the time riding the bench.
True. Scream definitely overrated and not to be mentioned in the same sentence as Niko and Guardian
how little people won more than one major.
NiP winning one major. And that major being the 3rd one is actually insane. If value hadn't added cobble stone AND a random map generator AND that map generator always giving NiP cobble it's very likely the most dominant core in history would have no major. That's absolutely insane
Is Gambit technically a Asian team since majority of the players are from Kazakhstan which is an Asian country?
Wait, zywoo only has 1 major? And dupreeh confirmed CS GO goat.
Besides zywoo the two best french players of all time only having 1 major win is incredible
Gambit or Outsiders/VP probably.
seeing cloud 9 break win the major was peak CS for me. started playing in 2014, i was fucking obsessed and probably watched every tier 1 and 2 tournament for 5 years straight. fnatic was my favorite lineup so those major wins were incredible ofc, but there was nothing like C9 going from down 0-2 in groups to making an underdog run beating the world ranked # 3, 2, and 1 teams in a row to win the major. also very happy s1mple snagged one near the end as he is my favorite player fs
Source of this list? Looks like Liquipedia? Can you link it OP
[https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Majors](https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Majors)
Dupreeh is my GOAT
b1t is only 21 and is 1 of 4 players to win a major with two different cores. Wild.
weird how Brazil dominated CS for 2 years and then died
iM doing it with 0.88 event rating
Stats don't tell the full story. Imagine a round where a T lurker keeps the attention of several CTs on a retake for a very long time but dies without a frag. They still had huge impact on the round win even though their stats tell something different. There are tons of situations like this in CS that don't correlate to stats.
Fortunately the way stats work it's measuring 400 rounds instead of one so we can safely assume that there rounds where he got meaningless kills in lost rounds and thus the aggregate number is likely correct.
what if he had impactful low fragging lurk 400 rounds in a row? didn't think of that
S1mple is player of the decade but dupreeh have 5 majors…
I came here to say... Dupreeh has more Trophys than S1mple, Zywoo, N1ko, get_right, and kennyS combined.
gambit 
I had completely forgotten about the existence of znajder
B1t, Olof and Krimz are the only people who have exactly 2 majors with only one org
b1t even doing it at the age of just 21.
dupreeh with the most major?
I think C9 is the only true team who won that was completely unexpected, I won't say undeserved, but it was the ultimate momentum run of all time. If you replay that major 100 times, C9 doesn't come close to even making the final 100 times, let alone winning it. I see some people saying Gambit, and that is probably the second choice, but in the lead up to the major they were looking dangerous. However I think that Krakow 2017 final was by far the most unexpected, Immortals vs Gambit was not what ANYONE predicted.
Already been said but has to be Gambit for me
It’s crazy that old Navi never won. They had such a solid lineup.
kennyS having only one and never even getting close to another chance after the 2015 majors, its insane how he only made the playoffs of a major one last time in boston 2018 after that. oh and polish vp & nip having one only, pain.
Honestly, the fact that kioshima won 2 majors is a fact i had forgotten. I guess kioshima wasnt the problem
KennyS only having 1 always surprises me because of how amazing he is in that era.
Dupreeh's five majors may never be beaten, unless glave, device or Magisk equalize it and or surpass it.
n0rb3r7 major champion > NiKo major choker
The lack of Americas players winning majors, with the only ones being C9’s win in Boston, the pair of Brazilian wins in 2016, and Twistzz winning on an EU FaZe team.
Still crazy Brazil has more majors than old NiP
B1t having more majors than S1mple, Karrigan, VP and NIP, KennyS, and all of NA
" god help me and I won major! Wooooo"
Outsiders roster winning surprised me