Pinnacle Cup III: Team Skade comes out of the blue for the win

By Brenden Parkins

The Pinnacle Cup III tournament came to a resounding end with team Skade taking the first place prize money of $80,000 and leaving their opponents, the Copenhagen Flames, with the second place prize award of $20,000.

The Pinnacle Cup III is an “esport”–meaning electronic sport–event and hosted by Relog Media.  The Pinnacle Cup involved multiple teams from around the world playing a game called “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,” a first-person shooter game known amongst the gaming community simply as “CS:GO,” in which teams of five players are out-witting and out-maneuvering each other in a gun-slinging shootout.

The primary layout to the tournament was known as a “Swiss Stage,” meaning that 16 teams would compete in bracket style rounds and only eight of those teams would advance, each team only advancing by kills in death matches against each other.  These matches included the grand finalists, team Skade, and the runner up team, the Copenhagen Flames.

The live stream event was hosted by Twitch.tv and featured by Champion of Champions Tour.  Coverage of the event was provided by two commentators from Champion of Champions Tour, ReTr00 and NeOKai.

Team Copenhagen Flames from Denmark, coached by Daniel Vorborg, received much praise from NeOKai during the livestream, just before the match started.  “The thing that scares me about Copenhagen Flames is the versatility.  Anybody can play any role, any position, any scenario, they can make it work.”  He goes on to mention that the Copenhagen Flames were at one point ninth in the world in CS:GO rankings.

Team Skade from Bulgaria, coached by Nikolay “pNshr” Paunin,  received their fair share of praise before the match began.  Commentator ReTr00 said, “They are a force to be reckoned with.  They are the best of Bulgaria and I cannot wait to see these guys play today.”

Round one began with team Copenhagen Flames being favored statistically and taking an aggressive first round win, a significant step in the right direction as each match is given to the team that wins the most rounds out of 30.

Each round is won by a “last-man-standing” elimination, whichever team of five players remains standing wins the round.  Both teams trading wins round after round, keeping at a near constant tie, in the beginning.

The first two rounds were taken by Copenhagen Flames, setting the pace to each round with an dominative playstyle, seeking out members of team Skade and getting kills by keeping them off balance, making it difficult to properly strategize.  Copenhagen Flame’s top player Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard led the team in their beginning offensive.

But it was not long before underdog team Skade would take the offensive and turn the match around against Copenhagen Flames, led by their own top player Simeon “dream3r” Ganev.

Timeout was called near the halfway point of the match with team Skade quickly pulling ahead against Copenhagen Flames by winning eight rounds compared to Copenhagen Flame’s three rounds out of the total of 11 rounds at the timeout.  Skade taking the much more direct approach rather than a more stealthy method, putting Copenhagen Flames into a spiral.

Team Skade began winning multiple rounds after the halftime break with a solid 11 wins over Copenhagen Flame’s four.  Skade’s top player having been Simeon “dream3r” Ganev and Coppenhagen’s top player having been Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard at the beginning of the halftime.  Shortly after halftime, team Skade won the first match with 16 points compared to Copenhagen’s four points.

Match two started with Copenhagen Flames under pressure, losing the first four rounds to Skade, and concern began showing on each player’s face just before Skade called a timeout to refresh.

Skade’s efforts were rewarded with a final score in match two of 16 to six, with the second match going to team Skade.  Skade’s aggressive approach having kept Copenhagen Flames off balance since match one.

Kamen “bubble” Kostadinov, one of the newest players to the team having only been a part of team Skade for two months, provided post-game commentary saying, “Last time we played versus them, I realized they fully out-strat’ed us, that is why I was fully prepared for them.  I knew exactly how we had to play versus them, so I think we showed them.”