I used your suggestions in the comments on my last blog and here is what I came up with.


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I was at Cape Verde on vacation with my mother. We had just shared a caipirinha at a bar and were heading out through the wild western style two-part wooden door. Just outside, a local youngster was kicking on a plastic bottle as if it was a football. After shooting it towards a brick wall a couple of times he held his arms up in the air and screamed --“Ronaldo! Ronaldo!” – obviously referring to the younger one of the famous footballers, who also happens to be Portuguese (Cape Verde was a part of the Portuguese empire until the mid 70’s). The local youngster had a dream. For now, let’s talk about your dreams.

Some of you want to play Counter-Strike professionally and some of you don’t. This is my story and my thoughts on how to be successful.

When I started playing CS I had no intentions of ever being a pro. Heck, I didn’t even play online until a year after my first contact with the game. I started playing on a café (I guess you can’t call it an internet café, due to the fact that it lacked an essential part – internet) with eight computers. In the beginning we (as in all the people hiring computers) played a lot of Quake 2. When CS came out, we switched game. I spent countless of hours battling it out with the local talents. It was a wide variety of players, ranging from ten year olds to people in their mid thirties. The atmosphere was great. It was back in the days when the M4A1 had zoom and only silencer, and when the maps played were Assault, Mansion, Militia and a few others. I get all nostalgic when I think about it. After countless of hours I was one of the best players among the “regulars”. On the weekend we spent nights there, playing from ten in the night to ten in the morning. I remember walking home just to collapse in my bed every time.

When I got internet at home, I stopped going there. Part of the social fun was gone, but the competition online was a lot tougher and I was clearly an underdog. My ping was bad on my cable connection, but I had loads of fun playing and didn’t really care. From there on, it’s been a long development process to become the player I am today. I have a lot of clans behind me, a lot of friends lost because the team grew better than them or things didn’t work out socially and countless hours spent in front of Counter-Strike. So, did I have any ambitions to be this good? Not really, I was just trying to test my abilities all the time and when I saw that people were better than me, I played a lot to try to catch up.

Six years ago, in June 2002, my clan at the time, Backstab, had reached the semi finals at Dreamhack. Our opponents were the players in the most well-known clan in the world at the time, NiP. It was a fun game, but we quickly got dismantled with 2-0 on Train and Dust2. From there on, when realizing that I could be good, I guess I got lucky and managed to get to play with some good teams. And, as the cliché goes, the rest is history.

So, with all that said, how do you get good? This is obviously not an easy question because, as always, it depends. Some people can get away with playing very few hours of Counter-Strike, but when they do play they think clearly and really focus and thus pick up new things and constantly learn. Others need to play constantly because they are not focused when they play. You will become the best when you can figure out what works for you. Just like some players use a one handed backhand in tennis and some don’t, different players like different things in Counter-Strike, that’s just how it works. Don’t try to use a config, both in-game keys and mouse/keyboard etc, that you feel doesn’t really fit you just because some pro is playing with it.

Always try to surround yourself with better players and try to get them to give you tips and insight. That is probably the best tip I can give any aspiring pro. And have fun guys, if you are not having fun it’s probably best to throw in the towel and play when you feel like it instead of trying to pursue a pro gaming career.

I know that this is probably not what most of you guys were looking for as far as game advice go, but I truly believe that true skills come from inner enlightenment. Think, like a Zen Buddhist sitting under a tree on a windy spring day, and let your play profit.

The Fnatic site has some problem with the uploading of demos right now, but I will try to find an alternate mirror so you can get access to our recordings from E-STARS.



Playing the Swedish Kode 5 qualifier 2006, picture courtesy of fragbite.com.


Good luck,

Harley, ‘dsn’.