UKCSGO August Top 10

This month’s edition of the Top 10 is now released (a few days later than planned), with results from the Gfinity UK Championships, the ESL UK Premiership, the DreamHack London Qualifiers and insomnia55 (among others) being taken into account. Once again we have kept to our in-house panel of writers and pundits, but now we will invite one competitive player from the UK Scene to give their input every month. This month, we have invited Jake “jakem” McCausland from CaZ eSports which brings the total panel to 7 people.

As per normal, all of our pundits put down their scores, 10 points awarded for the best team they feel and only 1 point for the lowest team they have, with 7 people on the panel, that means that the first placed team can obtain 70pts if all 7 pundits manage to award the same team 10points.

This month’s Top 10 are:

Of course, with insomnia55, we saw EZSKINS take the title over a very tired Choke Gaming, this coupled with a big OT win in the Dreamhack London qualifiers meant that it would be hard to argue against EZSKINS and their current placement on the table suggests that all pundits agreed that EZSKINS deserved the #1 ranking for August. Choke’s continued impressive performances means they slip from top spot to second for this month, but they overcame Infused, Reason, Molotovs n Marshmallows & Curse These Metal Hands in the lower bracket, which is an incredible run to the final. There is no doubt that they are second in the UK currently and I’m sure very few would be able to conjure an argument up against them being #2 in the UK.

With the top two out of the way, both Infused & Reason seemed to be grouped together which is intriguing. After Reason failed to qualify for UK Premiership back in July, it has meant that they have had to sit out of the domestic picture bar the LANs that have come up. They performed better than expected at insomnia55 reaching fourth place and narrowly losing out to Choke Gaming despite beating them in the Upper Bracket. It is fair to say they have the potential to show up and perform and I can imagine they will be challenging at epic.SIXTEEN in October for the title. Meanwhile Infused have been incredibly consistent and have had better finishes abroad too, they may not be setting the world alight at the moment, but the addition of Phil”Whindanski” Nicholas has made the team look incredibly solid in all areas.

Molotovs and Marshmallows & CSGOCasino come next up in what seems to be groups of two teams in our ranking system currently. MnM attended Insomnia i55 as a mix and managed to make a respectable 5th/6th finish. They didn’t qualify for UK Premiership either but put in some good fights at LAN as they beat CeX and then certainly ran close to EZSKINS in the Upper Bracket Semi-Final. CSGOCasino are currently top of the UK Premiership after three games, and have played incredibly well despite the team really being formed a few weeks before the season began. Beating Choke Gaming on Overpass in Week 3 was a highlight, although you do have to consider that Choke Gaming had only just returned from insomnia55 and weren’t firing on all cylinders, but Ben “b3n” Wood posted up incredibly strong stats against Choke and if this team does stick together and perhaps attend a LAN event as a 5, they will be incredibly interesting to watch.

The bottom 4 of our Top 10, are by all means incredibly close to call, CAZ eSports missed out on UK Premiership, fish123 are a complete mix, Curse These Metal Hands have as we are to be understood recently lost Craig “onscreen” Shannon, whilst Team CeX went to insomnia55 with Victor “mvicK” Meulendijks & Jonathan “Sheekey” Sheekey filling in for their two European players who have since departed the team, leaving them in a position of having to find a fifth player. Team CeX did finish in an incredibly respectable 5th/6th at insomnia55, but have really underperformed generally over the course of the UK Premiership with only taking their first win last week in overtime against Good Looking Gamers.

It’s also to note that uFrag and All4 were teams given points by our panel, but were unable to make it into the Top 10.

Here is what our Panel members have had to say this month:

Tom “Gumpster” Gumbleton

I continue to be amazed by Choke Gaming’s resilience as a team, despite being knocked down to the lower bracket by Reason a team in all fairness I put little stock into, they managed to garner the hardest possible route and beat every team they faced in the lower bracket. They certainly backed up their epic.LAN win, with a second placed finish at arguably a competitive iSeries. They will feel disappointed, but I am completely confident they will come back and reclaim their spot at the top of the pack somehow. EZSKINS definitely deserve to be #1 this month, yes they are annoyed they missed out on UK Premiership, but they proved everyone wrong at insomnia55 and produced the goods. The issue I personally have is there are some wobblies they seem to have, ie the group stage draw against All4 a team, they arguably should be thumping. The post LAN shuffle has already begun, and with University kicking off again, it’ll be an interesting month to see what teams do what. Hopefully we can get a UK team to the next CS:GO Major.

Michael “Duck” Moriarty

EZSKINS turned up to LAN and finally delivered on their promise of being a squad of “the best UK players”, going all the way through i55 and only losing one map (and drawing their final group game). But it was an incredibly strong performance after that, with a final between them and the second best side in the country, Choke, proving that. Choke themselves have also impressed, despite being knocked out of the DreamHack London UK  against EZSKINS in an earlier round (amongst controversy on seeding and starting times), but they were the team that took EZSKINS the closest in the whole qualifier, and even though they were knocked down to the lower bracket at i55 they managed to power through to get to the final, just to be beaten by EZSKINS at the end. All in all, they’re still cementing themselves at the top, and no-one can really touch them as of yet. For the rest, nothing spectacular has come out as of yet. Reason beating seed is a notable mention, and CSGOCasino going very well unbeaten at the top of the ESL UK Premiership makes sure they stay in contention at the middle of the table, but online results aren’t everything and are as of yet to prove themselves as a whole team on LAN.

That wraps up August’s Top 10, we hope you enjoy these articles as much as we do. Make sure you stay tuned to UKCSGO.com for further updates.