2006 is coming to an end with the New Year only a short five days away. The final LAN of the year was the CPL's annual winter event last week in Dallas, Texas. It was a great tournament that saw some surprising results with many close matches as well as a few unexpected blowouts. The tournament also witnessed the true debut of GotFrag TV (check out the VOD's here).

Fnatic finally managed to get that elusive title they have been searching for for so long despite many close calls (i.e. ESWC). Meet Your Makers surprised many by making it into the finals, but unfortunately were no match for the Swedish team. JaX Money Crew proved all naysayers wrong by once again placing as the top American team at the CPL after doing so at the Winter 2005 tournament where they finished 3rd.

Tournament Player MVP

Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg (fnatic) - f0rest has been a force to be reckoned with all year long. He has been one of the most consistently dominating players all year and is worthy of a player of the year award. In the first map of the Grand Finals game against MYM, he devastated the Norwegians with 30 frags and a +18 frag balance ratio¹. Overall he racked up 297 frags, a +98 frag balance ratio, 92.8 DAR² and 0.874 FPR³.

Top Three Team Performances

1. fnatic - Well this is as obvious as it gets as fnatic really brought their play to a whole new level this weekend. They lost just one game all tournament long at that was their opening map of their best of three series against 69°N-28°E. They rebounded quickly and took the remaining two maps in convincing fashion with 16-5 and 16-6 results. This is a very well deserving victory for a team that has come so close on many occasions but failed to get that illustrious championship.

2. Pentagram G-Shock - After a devastating result the week before at the WSVG Grand Finals, Pentagram really rebounded well. Right out of the gate the Polish team really showed why they have been one of the best teams in the second half of 2006. In the group stages they dismantled g3x 29-1 and beat a very strong Project_kr team 17-13. The team swept both JMC and Pandemic in the single elimination best of three bracket before falling to fnatic in the Semi Finals. In the consolation game, they just walked over Against All Authority with 16-4 and 16-5 wins.

3. Meet Your Makers - This team actually did not look too strong all tournament long, but still managing to come in second is saying something. This roster has not been together very long with ElemenT only joining up only a month before hand. Regardless of all that, this team was undefeated up until they had to play fnatic in the finals and they beat teams such as EG, Project_kr, JMC, Check Six, and aAa.

Top Three Player Performances

1. Filip "Neo" Kubski (PGS) - Neo went nuts this tournament blowing away all other players with a stifling 354 frags and +151 frag ratio. Filip was in the positive in all of his matches except for against United 5 when he had -6 frag ratio. Other than that small blip, he was consistently devastating his opponents throughout the tournament.

2. Harley "dsn" Örwall (fnatic) - Not to be outdone by his teammate, dsn really came to play at this event. In the second game of the Grand Finals he was red hot taking down a total of 24 enemies and only falling 8 times en route to helping his team seal the victory. Overall, dsn had 271 frags with a +73 ratio and 0.795 FPR.

3. Kevin "aZn" Wang (zEx) - aZn has really been tearing up the Counter-Strike scene this year and almost always is the top fragger for his team. Kevin really helped zEx all tournament long with his +71 ratio followed by m4gic who was only +25. In their game against compLexity, aZn was +20 throughout the game. Kevin was also the only player out of the entire tournament to have a FPR greater than 1 (1.033).

You can check out the GotFrag Got Skills? statistical awards on the next page.

¹ Frag Balance is total frags minus total deaths
² DAR stands for average damage dealt per round
³ FPR stands for frags per round (average)
⁴ Assists are when a player does 50+ damage to an opponent but his teammate gets the frag.