We Are At IEM Oakland For Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Tournament

Posted on 20 November 2016

Knock On Wood is at Intel Extreme Masters Oakland to watch talented Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) players win for first place for the prize money of $300,000. League of Legends (LoL) teams are also there playing to compete for $100,000, but we love watching competitive CSGO more than LoL. The teams that are playing are:

SK Gaming

Players: coldzera - FalleN - fer - fnx - TACO

Team Liquid

Players: nitr0 - EliGe - Hiko - jdm64 - Pimp

Astralis

Players: device - dupreeh - Kjaerbye - karrigan - Xyp9x

Ninjas In Pyjamas

Players: f0rest - friberg - GeT_RiGhT - pyth - Xizt

G2 Esports

Players: bodyy - RpK - ScreaM - shox - SmithZz

Natus Vincere

Players: Edward - flamie - GuardiaN - seized - s1mple

mousesports

Players: chrisJ - denis - NiKo - oskar - Spiidi

Heroic

Players: MODDII - gla1ve - Snappi - Friis - Valde

TyLoo

Players: Mo - fancy1 - DD - somebody - Attacker

Immortals

Players: HEN1 - LUCAS1 - felps - boltz - steel

Cloud9

Players: n0thing - shroud - Skadoodle - Stewie2k - autimatic

Faze

Players: rain - aizy - allu - karrigan - kioShiMa

In the photo, Faze is playing against Ninjas in Pyjamas at De_Train. For people unfamiliar with Counter-Strike competitive scene, there are two sides: Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists. The goal of the Terrorists side is to plant the bomb within 1:55 minutes and the goal of the Counter-Terrorists is to defuse the bomb or prevent the terrorist from planting the bomb. Another way of winning is to eliminate all of the other team's players. Teams have to play for 15 rounds and then they switch sides and play for another 15 rounds. Winners are decided by best of 30 rounds.

We enjoy playing csgo for the competitive strategy. Players would have to think about the economy, how to throw smokes, molotovs, or flash bangs correctly to distract and push the enemies away from position. CSGO is similar to a game of Chess and relies on a lot of mind games. We enjoy watching our favorite United States team, Cloud9. However, they are eliminated from the tournament from Day 1 Nov 19, 2016. We are now rooting for Ninjas in Pyjamas!