Over the seven years of its existence, Gambit has presented fans from the CIS with many bright moments – a star duet Dosia and Zeus, Fng with short hair, a 14-year-old Fortnite pro player and, of course, his first CS: GO major victory among CIS lineups. In honor of the organization’s birthday, we recall the five most important achievements in its history.
Gambit wins major in CS: GO – the first and only in the CIS
July 23, 2017 after winning the final PGL Major Kraków 2017 2-1 over the team Immortals Daniil Zeus Teslenko, who was kicked from the year before Natus vincerelifted the championship cup over his head.
Source: vk.com/gambitesports
Before the major, the composition had two victories in DreamHack series championshipsbut the team approached PGL Major Kraków with big problems. As Zeus later admitted, Gambit was close to dysband due to different views on the training process, but in the game itself, the participants had excellent mutual understanding, which inspired them to “ride the rink over rivals”.
A month after winning the major, Gambit ruled out Michael Kane Blaginaand Zeus left after him – both joined NAVI. According to the results of 2017 HObbit and AdreN entered the top 20 best players according to HLTV.org, taking 11th and 17th places respectively.
In May 2019, after a series of rearrangements, the main staff went into inactive. However, so far, Gambit remains the only team in the CIS that was able to win a major in CS: GO.
Seven years with League of Legends
Among CIS teams, Gambit has the richest history in League of Legends. In early 2013, she acquired a roster Moscow Fivewhich, after eight months, took 5-8th place in the World Championship. After that, only once did a team from the CIS manage to rise so high – it was Albus NoX Luna in 2016.
Season 3 World Championship. Source: vk.com/gambitesports
In total, Gambit has represented the CIS three times at the League of Legends World Championships – This is more than any other team in our region. After out of discipline Virtus.pro, NAVI and Team Empire have left, Gambit has remained one of the last large organizations to maintain their membership and continue to develop LoL in the CIS.
Gambit believed in Fng
In December 2018, Gambit took a rather risky step – at the height of the season. Ivan VANSKOR Skorokhod and Rinata KingR Abdullina sent to the reserve, and in their place invited Alexander Immersion Khmelevsky and Artyom Fng Barshak. At that time in the CIS there was a gap between Virtus.pro and other teams: in the region there was no stable second team that could impose the struggle on the grand tournaments to the giants. Four times in a row the second team from the CIS took the last place in the majors, and each time they were different teams. Fng was able to correct the situation. Under his leadership, Gambit twice became second in the minors, won silver at ESL One Katowice 2019, and also won two tournaments from WePlay !.
Source: vk.com/gambitesports
Gambit was one step away from directly entering The International 2019. On EPICENTER Major 2019 Barshak’s team destroyed the “curse of the CIS”, taking 7-8th place. In a decisive match for themselves, Gambit lost Alliance and lost the chance of a direct invite to TI9. After that, it turned out that the team had internal conflicts, because of which it failed closed qualifications and, in fact, broke up. However, the organization made one crucial decision – the club retained Fng. Gambit followed the path of Virtus.pro, starting to build a team around a strong captain and leader.
This season, the new composition Barshak has already managed to take second place at ESL One Hamburg 2019, qualify for the major, and also enter the top 4 at the tournament in Singapore and WePlay! Bukovel Minor 2023where Gambit lost 1: 2 to the future champion – Nigma.
Gambit gives way to young
Gambit is one of the few organizations in the CIS that has tried to educate its “youth team”. In early 2015, she created an additional roster for League of Legends – Gambit academywho performed on a semi-professional stage. The experiment turned out to be ambiguous – the team did not achieve serious results. The team took fourth place in the Russian Cup in e-sports in 2017 and last place in the group stage of the Challenger League. This ended the story of the team. However, nevertheless, this was a necessary experience for the region in creating youth teams and structures similar to the one that NAVI recently implemented in CS: GO.
Gambit Youngsters. Source: vk.com/gambitesports
In 2017, Gambit created the CS: GO Academy, called Youngsters. In 2018, the project was frozen, but a year later the young composition was again signed – the average age of the participants was 18 years. Now Gambit youngsters occupy 38th place in the ranking of the best teams in the world according to HLTV.org.
Gambit and new disciplines
The most popular in the CIS are two eSports disciplines – Dota 2 and CS: GO. This is clearly demonstrated by the statistics of Russian-language broadcasts of major tournaments. Despite this, Gambit ventured to expand the standard set, collecting compositions for Apex Legends and Fortnite. The organization signed the 14-year-old Mark Letw1k3 Danilova to the “royal battle” from Epic Games. He was able to qualify for the Fortnite World Cup in both personal and doubles. The young player did not succeed in breaking into the top 20, but CIS fans had another reason to turn on the broadcast of the tournament.
Letw1k3 and rapper GONE.Fludd. Source: vk.com/gambitesports
The Apex Legends roster is also not yet able to boast of notable achievements, apart from participating in the Apex Legends Preseason Invitational tournament. But the very fact of the existence of professional staff from the CIS fuels interest in the discipline and its competitive component in the region.
