I haven´t really caught up with my normal life yet, the fact is I´ve only been home for one day and I´m feeling very tired since the jet-lag. Anyway, before I forget anything I better write a summary of how I experienced August, the busiest month of the year so far.

Preparations
After winning E-stars with Team West in late July we went back to Sweden and started our preparation for ESWC Finals in San José, the most important tournament of the year, and a title we´ve been longing for ever since our pitiful losses in the final vs. Mibr(2006) and in the semi-finals of last years edition against our biggest rivals MYM.PGS.
After a week online practise or so all players gathered up at Archi´s place a few miles outside Gothenburg for a week of bootcamp and constant gaming.
I think we played at least six of these days and the total game time ended at approximately 50 hours, considered low compared to other pro-teams, but we felt this was enough.

There were two obstacles we had to deal with at this bootcamp, one was that we all changed keyboards to Steelpad 7G, an awesome product but it took us at least two days to feel comfortable with this new equipment.
The second problem was that instead of playing practice matches against other European top teams, we had to attend the online qualifier of the ESL Extreme Masters. This meant we had to play Swedish teams which had some impact on our training, since you have to win the match, but you don't want to use all your new tactics and gun-rounds. In other words this was a dilemma, eventually we lost to SK but managed to grab our spot and will attend the German online league which will take place later this fall.

The 20th August we packed our bags and headed for the airport, before our departure to USA and the ESWC finals we had to attend the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. There waited the ENC finals for Team Sweden and a Kode5 qualifier for team fnatic.



Games Convention
Since the lack of flights to Leipzig we had to go through Berlin where we rented a car, but to be honest this worked out pretty well, the autobahn(Germans high way) worked super and I think my world-class driving to Leipzig took less than 90 minutes.

Since the Kode5 event started(and finished) on the 23th August, Ins and Archi had nothing but waiting to do, since they were not a part of this years national team. Instead they had to kill time at an one- star Etap hotel in the middle of nowhere meanwhile me, f0rest and dsn fought for Sweden.
Eventually both survived their tasks, the Oskars had filled their laptop with “The-Wire” and went out for some sponsor parties. And the rest of us managed to grab the gold medal together with Tentpole and Allen from SK.

As I mentioned we had the Kode5 qualifier on the Saturday, where only four teams were attending. But it was still important since we really don´t want to waste time going to qualifiers here in Sweden.
Anyway, our first opponent was TBH.esports from Germany with players such as Roman, Blizzard and todi. We didn't really get our game together but managed to beat them with 2-0 after some tight rounds.

On the other part of the single elimination bracket mTw.dk and aTTax faced each other, where the danish guys came out on the top.
For the third time this year, we had to face mTw in an official game, after losing the previous ones, we felt really eager for a victory, and also gain some respect prior the ESWC finals.
The match really turned out in our favor, we begun ridiculously badly as terrorist on de_train, but ended up winning the first map after an intense overtime.
Second map, their pick, was de_inferno. A map we´ve feared them at in the past, since Sunde´s amazing AWP, but today nothing could stop us winning 16-8 and we qualified for the Kode5 2008 finals which will take place in the first part of year 2009.

After the victory we had to rush to the cars to go to Berlin, where we recovered our sore bodies with some sauna and pool and awaited Sunday´s flight.



ESWC 2008 Finals
The hotel(finally a good one), the Fairmont hotel in downtown San Jose, fulfilled all our expectations. This hotel had several restaurants, a awesome pool and big American beds.

After having a look around we went to the opening ceremony a couple of blocks away.
We went there with the intention to only have a short look and just attend it. However it was a bar serving ice cold Corona's or Miller´s so we all had a couple of beers and just talked with other players and people in the scene.
After a couple of hours we decided it was time to call it quits, we had a quick dinner and crashed back home at the Fairmont.

Groupstage 1
This group looked pretty easy on the paper. The only obstacle we had was aTTax representing Germany, who managed to beat us 16 to 13.
After losing on our favourite map de_train, we felt very disappointed, but since two teams advanced we just tried to relax and cheer up, our adventure was far from over and now a second group stage waited for us.

Groupstage 2
Since we passed as the 2nd team in group E, we had to face two group winners, Mousesports and Mibr, and one team qualifying as 2nd place, Frag eXecutors from Poland.
Our first opponent was Mousesports, and as in the first stage we had problems with the Germans. It just felt weird playing them, our tactics and team play didnt work out at all.

Losing this first important match basically meant that we had to win the upcoming ones versus first MIBR on de_nuke. The match really turned in our favor, we stepped up a lot and played out the game perfectly, even we knew the pressure. We got no less than 12 rounds as CT, but were informed that MIBR used a bug, climbing on the highest mountain, and three rounds were removed from there score. Then winning the gun-round as T sealed the match and 16-0 to us.

Winning with that round score against the Brazilians, meant we could go into our last game against Frag eXecutors without the pressure we had before the mibr game. However, we really wanted to decide our own fate, put the focus we had left after playing double group stages, and just went into the game with the intention to win every round as in the previous game. However, this task is not easy, but we were close, only losing one round. 16-1 at de-train. And for the first time on the first day, we could finally breath out and have well-deserved rest at the hotel.

Quarter-final
In the quarter-finals we faced mTw.dk, who we played a week earlier at GC. We have had hard time getting our game together against Zonic & co, but maybe the win at Kode5 gave us back a bit of confident, we knew it was possible to beat them.

When the quarter-finals pair was announced we knew the task would be hard, but it didn´t scare us, some journalists called it the mini-final, since both mTw and us are capable of going the distance. But ESWC is played bo3 single-elimination and one team had to pack their things and attend the event from the spectator area.


Inferno
The first map inferno started out perfectly for us, winning the gun-round by a delayed B-rush with grenades. Usually inferno against mTw would be a disaster for us, Sunde´s awp is often a real pain in the ass, but I think he had problem using it with the awful LCD monitors which were used.
With 7 rounds as T, we switched to CT with the mindset that 9 rounds is far from impossible to achieve, and after winning CT gun-round and the first buy round we knew that there is no way we´ll give up this. With mTw only getting a single round we ended up winning inferno with a comfortable scoreline of 16-9.

Train
Our momentum still kicked in when executing first gunround as T. We decided to do a late attack against B(inner), where mTw eventually put 4 aggressive guys. The battle in the small halls was massive and two of each teams players ended up in a tight 2on2 with bomb planted, a duel we managed to win.

As many of you might know, train has been one of our strongest map. The only time I really find it hard to play it as T is when CT goes double-awp and manage to win the first buy-round. If they fail to win that important round we can easily end up with 12-13 attacking rounds. If they manage to win that round, we usually start to play a bit stiff and pending, a style which we far from master.
This was what happened against mTw, Zonic and Sunde went for the sniper on their first buy round, we ended up losing it and we had problems attacking, our fakes didn't work and we just got picked out everywhere.
Eventually we ended up breaking down their defense twice and grabbed two more important round, and the half-time score was 5-10.

As mTw showed us, it can be a walk in the park defending on de_train, of course we knew this, but also knew that we really really needed the CT gunround, sadly it didn´t go in our favor and I think we started to react a bit dejected. Mtw on the other hand, got their momentum and crushed our defensive colts winning de_train 16-6.

Nuke
When the “train ride” didn´t turn out well for us, it was inevitable to not start thinking about last years semi-final against MYM(former PGS), where we won the first map, but did not manage to collect the second map and winning the whole match.
I guess we´ve learnt a lot from that game, and basically we KNOW that we can beat ANY team, if we just play our own game, aggressive and not letting our opponents take the command of the rounds.
That morning, me and Harley went up a bit earlier to gain some intelligence from mTw, cause we know that de_nuke would come in the map list. We watched some recent demos and changed a bit of our set-ups and came up with some more suitable gunrounds.

We were a bit lucky, MTW can be really strong starting out as CT, but we were randomized to start defending and we just tried to gain back the focus from losing the second map and made ourself ready for the most important gunround so far.
MTW usually gives Sunde an USP, which he used to peak with on the gunrounds. We use this knowledge to flank him, we just waited for the right moment and I guess he got a minute seizure seeing 3 fnatic guys pop up from nowhere and taking him out on the yard, and left MTW with 4 guys in the lobby, and us knowing there exact positions and we stopped their attack easily.
Our CT side turned out pretty well ending 10-5.

I wouldn´t say that we had the luck on our side during the gunrounds, in San Jose we had. Started out T winning our 5th gunround of the match, followed up winning the upcoming anti-ecos put us in a superb position leading 13-5. From this point on we knew we had the game, it didn´t matter that the Danes got the fifth round, this was our day and we ended up winning de_nuke with 16-7, 2-1 in maps.

Semi-final
Together with mTw, we had aTTax and the Korean team eSTRO on our side of the bracket.
The Koreans, who have been fairly successful with a 2nd place finish at the ESL masters in March, sent back aTTaX to Germany in their quarter-final after winning 2-1.

It felt a bit scary to play eSTRO, we have had some really tight matches in the past, and this Tuesday would be no exception.
One of the reason I find it hard to play eSTRO is because you will never know what they are up to, obviously they are from another continent, and we have no chance to practice against them. I would say we have a minor disadvantage tactic-wise, they have tons of demos to study, we have nothing.

The maps were decided and the pool turned out to be train, inferno and nuke. Us removing dust2, they tuscan.

This time I won´t reflect anything about the first two maps train and inferno. Basically we were the better Train team, actually I can't remember the last time losing to Asians on this map. Inferno went to the Koreans, I reckon they are one of the best teams in the world on that map, we stand no chance.

Nuke
With 1-1 in maps, Nuke waited, with us starting as T.
The tactical problem I was talking about earlier came to surface here, we had no idea how the Koreans were playing on this map. We thought they just put one guy holding ramps, but eventually they turned to be two guys when we executed our attack.

In other words, we didn´t get our attacking side together at all. Hopeless might be a word to describe the situation, we tried everything and it just didn´t work.
We ended up with only three rounds, back in 2004 this wouldn´t be a big problem in Counter-strike, back then CT pretty much dominated all maps, but these days I´d say CT and T are pretty balanced.

It would need more or a less miracle in order to come out on top here, but we never gave up, with another gunround win in the baggage we started to tell ourselves that this is possible, we should not give up at this moment. Every round felt like a nailbiter, they were so close and eSTRO manage to get their first T round pretty early on, and we knew we couldn´t let up more than 3 rounds, and if we did, we still had a draw.

The Koreans got their 15th round in the 7th round, which means we had to win 8 straight CT-rounds.
This was a really hard task since we were out of cash, and had to go for deagles in order to survive in the tournament. That round ended up in a 1on2, dsn left with only a deagle. Somehow Harley managed to win this round, getting us back on track and the Koreans with bad economy, a fast turn around.

That round felt a bit like an ice-breaker, I felt if we can win with deagles we will win with colts. Eventually Koreans started slacking giving up their rounds way too easy and everything went in our way, it was such an amazing feeling getting that 15th round, we were pretty much out of the tournament, but had now probably an edge on the Koreans who probably had a lot of thoughts running thru in their head.

OT1
ESWC use MR3 with 16k in start money when Overtime. We had the privilege starting CT, started out 2-1 still felt pretty OK, cause now we still had a moment to talk to each other and have some changes done playing T.
We didn´t really succeed this time neither but we at least got the single round needed to make another draw 18-18.

OT2
This time we had to start as T, we made some adjustments but it didnt really work out tactical-wise.
I had the opportunity to give us a well-needed leading here, getting into tight situations, which I afterwards think I played fairly ok.

First of these rounds I was left alone against 3 eSTROs, I ran down in the vents to the lower bombspot taking out the first of them, planted the bomb and then waited for the next guy in the vent. I took him down, still with much hp left for the 1on1. I decided to open one of the doors and wait for him. I feel VERY comfortable with this situation, I´ve been there many, many and many times before and I'd say I win the most of them even if the CT has a smoke grenade left.
The last Korean had his smoke, and went for the quick defuse, I noticed what was going on but did not manage to hit the spray thru the smoke, even though I knew where the bomb was planted.
To make a long story short, I ruined our chance to get a super important T round, instead I failed when it most matters, I´ll never forgive myself for that.

I guess we got a bit shakey, knowing that we need 3 new rounds in order to make another draw. But we had done it before, it is possible.
Estro played out their first round very pending and defensive, we didn't know what was really going on, it was such a pain just waiting for the attack to come, but actually it didn´t, the Korean had gone up on the highest mountain, which is forbidden.
From there they had scouted the whole yard, and decided to try sneak around us under the catwalk. Their decision went in their favor, we lost that round and the Koreans got the single round needed to eliminate us from ESWC.



Summary
It was hard realizing that we were out of the tournament, it´s a feeling you can´t really describe, especially being kicked out in a way like this. First being up 1-0 in maps, then lose two consecutive maps in a row, and at nuke who was one of the closest game I´ll ever play in.
I won´t accuse the Koreans of cheating, obviously they did use an illegal thing against us, it did affect that round, but who knows if we had won the next two round, I guess we´ll never know that.

What the community should learn from the conflict we had against eSTRO, is that the rules should be better written, they should be very obvious and easy to understand. WCG did the same problem last year when they forbid duck-jumping. Now ESWC failed to inform all teams about this rule, it might have cost us a gold medal, but we failed on the finishing-stretch in a Marathon match.

However, we did lose the gold medal but won the bronze. I decided not to add that match versus Mousesports in this blog, the reason is that there is basically no reflections to do from it, we felt very down after losing in that manner against eSTRO, but we still did our job winning.

Finally, Harley, Oskar, Oscar and Patrik and I can still consider ourselves as one the best teams in the world, the last 30 months we have had so many top3 placings it´s ridiculous.
What still is to win is a major title such as ESWC, WCG or ESL Masters. At the moment we are failing to do so, the only thing that can cheer us up is the fact that there are more tournaments upon us, and we´re gonna go through more practice to have another chance on the gold medals we are so much longing for.

Hope you liked the blog, sorry that I did not spend a lot of time correcting my poor English.
If you have any questions about anything just post a comment here and I´ll try answer you.


The team at the Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco.