DreamHack Winter 2013: It all started in Sweden

Countdown to the Major!

We are less than two weeks away from the start of the BLAST.tv Major in Paris which will be the last CS:GO Major in history. To ease the waiting time, we have created a countdown series, where we dive into the history of all previous 18 Majors.

DreamHack Winter 2013 - Jönköping,

Date: 28/11-30/11 - 2013

Number of teams: 16

Prize Pool: $250.000

Winner: Fnatic $100.00

MVP: Jesper 'JW' Wecksell

Map pool: Dust2, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke, and Train.

The first CS:GO Major to take place was the DreamHack Winter 2013. Before then there had been several big tournaments, but this marked the first time that Valve (the developer of the game) actively went into the planning of a tournament, which gave place for the "Major" term to be used. Valve announced DreamHack as the tournament organizer.

DreamHack Winter 2013 started on the 28th of November 2013. The first match to be played at a Major was Fnatic vs Natus Vincere. The tournament was dominated by Sweden, which had a total of 21 players participating including tournament favorites from Ninjas in Pyjamas. Alongside the French/Belgian roster from VeryGames, NIP was seen as the team to beat at the tournament.

In this video, you can see a comprehensive recap of the tournament.

Despite an excellent showing from Richard 'shox' Papillon, VeryGames lost one of their group matches, which ended up pairing them with Ninjas in Pyjamas already in the Semi-Finals. Here NIP dismantled the Frenchmen and qualified for the Grand Final, where they could look forward to an all-Swedish affair against Fnatic. At that time Fnatic had just switched from a Danish roster with Finn 'Karrrigan' Andersen and Andreas 'Xyp9x' Højsleth to an all-Swedish roster with now-legendary names as Jesper "JW" Wecksell and Robin "flusha" Rönnquist. The new roster had made a flawless run at the tournament under excellent guidance from in-game leader Markus "pronax" Wallsten.

In the Grand Final, it all came down to the decider map, Train. Here Jesper "JW" Wecksell (in photo) earned his nickname "Wonderchild". The young Swede annihilated his fellow countrymen going 23-8 in K-D and scoring a 2.04 HTLV rating. Fnatic won the decider map 16-2 to claim the first Major title in history. The "Wonderchild" was named the MVP of the tournament.

Tournament result:

1. Fnatic - $100.000
2. Ninjas in Pyjamas - $50.000
3-4. Complexity Gaming - $22.000
3-4. VeryGames - $22.000
5-8. LGB eSports - $10.000
5-8. Astana Dragons - $10.000
5-8. Recursive eSports - $10.000
5-8. Copenhagen Wolves - $10.000
9-12. Clan-Mystik - $2.000
9-12. Universal Soldiers - $2.000
9-12. n!faculty - $2.000
9-12. Reason Gaming - $2.000
13-16. SK Gaming - $2.000
13-16. Xapso - $2.000
13-16. Team iBUYPOWER - $2.000
13-16. Natus Vincere - $2.000

Highest rated players at DreamHack Winter 2013:

1. Jesper 'JW' Wecksell (Fnatic) - 1.26 rating

2. Morten 'coloN' Johansen (Reason) - 1.25 rating

4. Spencer 'Hiko' Martin (Complexity) - 1.21 rating

5. Andreas 'znajder' Lindberg (Fnatic) - 1.20 rating

8. Denis 'seized' Kostin (Natus Vincere) - 1.18 rating

9. Dennis 'dennis' Edman (LGB) - 1.16 rating

10. Nicolaj 'Nico' Jensen (Copenhagen Wolves) - 1.14 rating