4. SK.swe over Rival – CPL Summer 2004 – (22-19 in 3OT) – July 29th-August 1st, 2004

“The match that would never end”

HLTV Demo (de_cpl_mill)

SK.swe Roster

HeatoN
Potti
SpawN
Fisker
ahl

Rival Roster

Exodus
Ph33r
medias
hanes
torrez

When Rival faced SK.swe the hopes of the entire American CS scene rested on five men from California that most in the scene honestly didn’t like. I mean it’s kind of funny to say but a lot of people saw Rival as arrogant and they played like it: in your face and never giving an inch no matter which team they were playing.

That was just as true against the #1 team in the World at the time SK.swe. SK.swe came in as a bit of a question mark even with their top seed and ranking. Recently the entire community had been turned on its head with the changing of the “money bug” and the addition of $800 for a bomb plant.

The “money bug” refers to the idea of a team not being able to save out a round on the offensive side and being able to reduce the amount of money a defensive team can earn for winning the round. This reduction of money would basically allow the offensive team to save out in any situation where they might obviously lose.

SK.swe was notorious for using this bug, so much so that many people thought they would see a dramatic negative impact at this first event with the new system. Still SK.swe, the constant professionals, found a way to make it until the end working their way into the Winner’s Finals after defeating The Titans in double overtime 19-17. EYE defeated them dropping them into the lower bracket to face Rival.

Rival had been working its way through the lower bracket after an early loss to surprise USA team D!E, 13-7. Rival, surprisingly, didn’t lose their nerve winning extremely tough matches against #2 NoA (19-16 in OT), #3 Mouz (13-3), #5 The Titans (13-9) and #20 D-Skyline (13-8). All of those matches were back-to-back leading up until their game against SK.swe.

With SK.swe looking beatable, Rival went to work dominating early play. They jumped out to a 5-0 lead going right after the top placed team in the world rushing up the stairs on the defensive left side on the map CPL Mill. SK.swe manage to respond in their second gun round putting two rounds together with the same guns before Rival again put on the pressure. Three more rounds were added to Rival’s lead putting up a 8-2 score.

At that point Rival looked so happy that they lost their edge giving up the two final rounds on silly plays and gave SK.swe a glimmer of hope. It looked like that glimmer might disappear in the pistol round as Rival re-took the bomb site two versus one but Abdi "Spawn" Mohammed, last one left alive for SK, held them off just long enough. Rival was defusing but the bomb exploded.

SK put together two save rounds as Rival nearly won the second save round as they rushed Storage Area 1, but Christer "fisker" Eriksson clutched up the three versus one to get the round. That made the score 8-7, but before SK.swe even realized it was 12-7 in favor of Rival. Rival used the momentum from the save round to put SK.swe in a bad money situation and kept the pressure on with a very aggressive and arrogant style of defense that caught SK.swe off guard.

Then it all changed. Rival sensed they needed one round for victory and became tentative and emotional. The roller coaster they thought was leading up to the final was over but it had truly yet to begin. Playing more passively, Rival allowed SK.swe to do the impossible coming back from five rounds down to tie the match and force overtime.

Then the game became amazing. Back and forth the match went with Rival grabbing the first three overtime rounds and SK quickly tying it back up to force another overtime. Second overtime saw SK.swe jump out to the lead but Rival rallied back showing a very impressive resiliency that surprised everyone including the thousand or more fans watching on big screens in the venue and nearly 10,000 watching on HLTV.

The third overtime began but yet again SK.swe reached into their bag of tricks. Throughout the overtime period they continued to stall, waiting between each of the overtimes and often between halves of the overtimes. These stalling actions drove the Americans nuts causing them to complain to admins who finally got Swedes to play. The head games seem to work as Rival started wearing down and lost the first half of the third overtime 2-1.

This made the pistol round of the second half that much more critical. Rival had to win and pulled out a fake. Sending three guys through the sewers to the door in the left bombsite for the defensive they faked SK who rotating everyone. This left the right bomb site wide open as two remaining members of Rival sneaked in and planted the bomb. Then in a classic two versus three, SK.swe retook the bomb site nearly losing as Mike “medias” Kim fragged two members reducing Mohammed down to one health point before he defused to win. That win gave SK.swe the match because Rival was forced to make a desperation buy in the second round.

The impact on the match was extreme. A crowd that was rabidly favouring Rival was actually pretty ironic. The American scene really didn’t have any favoritism for Rival but were rather cheered against SK.swe. The crowd rooted against SK.swe and loved the passion and intensity that Rival showed. After the match ended Rival received a standing ovation from the crowd and boos reined down on SK.swe when they entered the BYOC.

The match length reinforced the need to reduce the round time which I proposed after the event and it also helped to prove the need for the $10,000 start money in overtime rules that Jason Baker, Editor-in-Chief of GotFrag’s EXE, put forth. Both rules were adopted shortly after the event. Also, Rival became the top North American team for quite a period after the match and would hold onto it through a couple of big CPL events to follow.