There’s one forbidden magic that only the hungriest of players will turn to in order to get a leg up over their competition. By almost all accounts, it’s entirely unsustainable but it has been proven effective. Zeus’ Major winning Gambit invoked it. Various eastern Europeans have been known to rely on it. Sometimes it is used even more so by the teams just trying to make it to the Major.
Grinding Counter-Strike like your life depends on it is not going to solve all of your team’s problems, but it can definitely amplify your individuals’ abilities. I am scraping the Steam and FACEIT profiles of the incoming Stage 3 players at Cologne, producing whatever numbers are available and making a read based on what I’ve found.
I’ll start everyone off with a bit of a bummer here by announcing that only 4 players that are coming into Stage 3 had public profiles on Steam which showed their recent hours. This makes sense given the fact that many of them have been competing in Tier 1 for long enough now to know that if those public Steam hours ever dip beneath 100 in the past 2 weeks, angered fans and haters will use it against the professional players to say they aren’t working hard enough.
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My personal feeling on total hours is that professionals should attempt to sustain 70 hours in the past 2 weeks which may seem low given the average working citizen is clocking in for 40 hours, but I’ll remind everyone that 1 hour per day is allotted per lunch for regular workers. Also, studies are beginning to show that an average 40 hour work week is perhaps outdated. An experiment in Sweden showed that 6-hour days lead to nurses taking half as much sick time as nurses taking 8-hour days. Only 2 of the countries in the top 10 for highest GDP per capita have workers that average 35 or more hours per week (United States and Singapore).
Without further ado, here are the 4 incoming Stage 3 players with public hours:
- ropz – 163 hours past 2 weeks
- bLitz – 86 hours past 2 weeks
- XANTARES – 78 hours past 2 weeks
- Wicadia – 68 hours past 2 weeks
From the looks of it, ropz has been trying to beat some movement (kz) records. It’s also fair to assume that some of the time is leaving Counter-Strike 2 open without playing (known as idling). bLitz has a reasonable amount of hours leading into the Major.
The concerning part about this is Wicadia. 68 hours in the past 2 weeks is beneath my threshold which is more forgiving than others, especially leading into the world championship. Even more concerning is that upon looking into his FACEIT profile, he’s played 17 FACEIT games since June 1st. With each game averaging about 45 minutes including time sitting in the server waiting for it to start (subtract about 12 hours), that leaves only 55 hours in the past 2 weeks dedicated to the game outside of FACEIT. Under 30 hours per week for 2 consecutive weeks of team practice is simply too low to expect any shocking performance from Aurora at this Major.
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I still feel like the team has improved tactically to merit their position in the Top 8 of IEM Cologne, but I would be shocked if it isn’t through a scrappy 3-2 finish or even missing out in close fashion.
Looking at bLitz, the only Mongolz representative to have public hours, he definitely exceeds the bare minimum and even seems to be putting in some individual efforts with 16 FACEIT games in the last 10 days. Roughly 70 hours of non-FACEIT time is definitely enough to go par for course regarding whatever Mongolz’s expectations are leading into the IEM Cologne Major.
Now ropz, these numbers are just ridiculous. 163 hours in the past 2 weeks is more than likely an indicator that a player is leaving his game open while he walks away to take care of whatever other daily tasks are part of his routine. As a reminder, there are 168 total hours in a week. Reaching 163 in the past 2 weeks would require ropz to dedicate about 50% of his total week’s hours into Counter-Strike. Even though there was chatter around ropz that he was trying to beat a movement (kz) records, it’s impossible to take that number seriously unless he shows the fruits of his labor and obliterates the competition in Germany. We’ll have to see.
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Moving on to FACEIT totals, the most FACEIT games is kyousuke and it isn’t particularly close. Clocking in with 53 total games in 10 days makes you wonder where he finds the time assuming the rest of Falcons is practicing with him for at least 8 hours per day. A rough assumption would lead me to think he’s playing 8 hours for 6 days a week for 48 hours total with his team with an additional 5 pugs per day which rounds out to a nice 53 hours not including individual aim training which there’s no doubt he spends time with. I would safely assume that kyousuke came into the Major with over 100 hours in the past 2 weeks. We’ll see if his performance is characterized by the loose, careless and individually-serving FACEIT brain which zonic was trying to move away from or if his individual mechanics will prove sharp enough to bail Falcons out of a teething period as karrigan gets integrated.
The big surprise for me at #2 is Techno4k from The Mongolz at 28 FACEIT games since June 1. Given the fact that Techno4k is generally at the bottom of the scoreboard for The Mongolz, this comes as a surprise. It would be great to see him translate some of the FACEIT experience into more round wins that are won by imposing his individual skill, but Techno is the last player on The Mongolz that I would take to break the system by going for an individual move. I actually just don’t think this fits who he is or what he brings to the team. We’ll see if it means anything as the Stage plays out. Next to him with 26 pugs is his teammate, cobrazera. So, this could just be a bonding experience between the two players.
In 4th is m0NESY. You wouldn’t really expect anything less as he found time for 24 pugs. So much of what makes him good is the ability to handle a variety of tense, chaotic situations. He may even favor those moments over the stiff, structured rounds. You can see the itch that m0NESY has in most late round situations to break out and let his world class dueling ability do the talking.
In order with their FACEIT pugs played since June 1:
- makazze, 21
- soulfly, 20
- mzinho, 20
- Wicadia, 17
- bLitz, 16
- xiELO, 15
- zweih, 15
- w0nderful, 14
- donk, 14
- woxic, 11
- TeSeS, 10
- Spinx, 10
- b1t, 10
- torzsi, 8
- 910, 7
- molodoy, 6
- xelex, 6
- Brollan, 4
- BELCHONOKK, 2
The rest of players entering Stage 3 (who didn’t play Stage 2): 0.
