The CGS has announced a slightly different overtime ruleset for its North American Online Challenge than has been previously used. The new rule has already become a hot topic of debate as once again the CGS strays from the traditional Counter Strike ruleset. This ruleset has not been officially announced for the regular season but there is already much speculation that it, or another revised format, will be used this upcoming regular season.

The previously used ruleset for CGS CS:S overtime has been 1 round of sudden death, with $16,000 start money. This allowed both teams a full buy and gun round for the overtime. Teams remain on the side they are playing second half. This ruleset has been widely criticized for its lopsidedness in determining overtime outcomes. Many feel it puts the team playing T side at a disadvantage against the CT's and vice versa on certain maps.

The newly announced overtime ruleset for the CGS NA Online Challenge contains the following:

• In the event of overtime, teams will remain on the same side that they played the last half and play a single round with $800 start money.

This would effectively make the overtime round into a pistol round as players will not have money for a full buy or gun round. This is exactly the opposite of how traditional CS rulesets usually work. Normally, start money for the match is $800 with more for overtimes, giving the players pistol rounds early to earn money to buy guns. With this ruleset, teams will start the match halves with full buy money and the only overtime round will be a pistol round.

Players, for the most part, seem happy to see a change in the overtime ruleset.

"I think it will help balance out the more one sided maps such as T on dust2 (5 pick mid) and CT on nuke (needs no explanation)", stated Pandemic's Nick "nicknoit" Nowakowski.

Chicago Chimera's Garret "Grt" Bambrough said, "It's nice to see pistol rounds back into Counter-strike since, in my opinion, that was always the most exciting round in any match".

Source www.thecgs.com