IEM Rio Major starts on Halloween. We don’t know if ESL is going to play around that fact, but out of seventeen previous CS:GO Major tournaments only one was played at the end of October.
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We talk about DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015. That tournament became the biggest esports event in the Romanian city’s history. Seven years later, the CS.MONEY Blog goes on a nostalgia trip and remembers what happened back then.
Different format
In 2022 we consider the Swiss group stage format as a standard that was refined with time. But in 2015 things were different. You could reach the playoffs by winning only two maps. What’s worse, you could be eliminated by losing only two maps. First part of the promo code for GameChanger Hub: 6R2.
Current Majors are a long celebration of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. You get two weeks of matches between the best teams in the world. DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca lasted only four days. However, there were not one, not two but three CS:GO Majors with a break of about two-three months. The players had little time to miss the biggest stage. The winners also earned less: the prize pool of the Major was “only” a quarter of a million dollars, and champions took $100 000.
Now we have qualifiers in which even the champions must prove themselves, but back then, the eight best teams from the previous tournament secured their places in the next Major, thus leading to a somewhat stable and yet stale scene.
Because of a short period between CS:GO Majors, the top teams were able to stay fit. Imagine that 14 participants of the Cluj-Napoca tournament previously played in ESL One Cologne 2015. However, we could say that they were the best of the best. Only Vexed was not in the top 16 of world rankings at the start of DreamHack Open, yet they were #18.
What stayed after seven years is the play-offs format. Both in Cluj-Napoca and Rio, there is a single elimination bracket with best of 3 matches. Seems like we won’t go away from that tradition any time soon. Not that we wanted to.
No surprises during the Group Stage and great upsets in the Playoffs
Looking back seven years later, we might say that the group stage of the Major in Romania was ultimately boring. All legends retained their spots, the third-seeded teams placed 9th-12th, and the fourth seed couldn’t win a single map.
Yet it brought back some intense storylines. The fans were happy to see another round of world-class rivalries. There was one team, however, who was somewhat in its own class: Luminosity Gaming was a definite and stable top-8 team in the world, but in 2015 the quarter-finals were the ceiling for FalleN and his squad. Their time would come a year later, but they had to swallow the bitter pill and train to become a tier-1 team in Cluj-Napoca.
The two favourites to win the tournament, TSM and Fnatic, failed to deliver. Both teams were stopped in the quarter-finals. Some people expected Fnatic to slow down because after the Major win you might want to have a cooldown period, but other teams didn’t wait and punished the Swedes.
TSM entered the Major as the #1 team in the world, but NiP managed to get in their heads and take the victory with the help of their huge experience. All five TSM players finished the quarter-finals in the “red”. The second part of the promo code for GameChanger Hub: MX4.
However, in Romania, we saw the rise of Natus Vincere. After finishing 5th-8th in Cologne, the team decided to relieve some duties from their captain, Zeus, and many calls were placed on starix, the team’s coach. (Yeah, in 2015 coaches had a greater impact on the game). That leads to a rematch against Team EnVyUs in the grand finals.
GuardiaN versus KennyS
The main story of the Cluj-Napoca tournament was the rivalry between two top snipers. GuardiaN and KennyS were having the tournament of their lives, showing outstanding performance during the whole competition. Ladislav and Kenny finished the tournament with an average rating of 1.30 and 1.23, but the French sniper was triumphant in the finals.
It is funny that both Na`Vi and EnVyUs were placed in group D. Despite the initial win, Team EnvyUs had a much harder time in the playoffs. While Na`Vi swept Luminosity and demolished NiP, Team EnVyUs had two intense matches. The semifinal against G2 Esports was a thriller: it took 46 rounds to determine a winner on inferno. On the decider map rain even managed to score an ace, but KennyS was simply too good.
In the finals, KennyS put out a legendary performance. GuardiaN did the best he could, but he couldn’t stop the French AWPer. 43-26 in total and 1.48 rating cemented the legendary status of his “Magic Stick”.
Kenny’s AWP Asiimov became a legend, and many people bought this skin only because of the impressive performance from the player. You may choose the white and orange AWP or create your own legend with the other skin. Either way, you can get your own skin on CS.MONEY.
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