EliGE

Facts about ElieGE

Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski (born July 16, 1997) is a Polish-American Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player who represents Team Liquid. He is regarded as one of the greatest North American players, and has been ranked in the top twenty by HLTV since 2017. StarCraft II is EliGE's competitive background. EliGE peeked at 4th best player on the HLTV best players list in 2019. Together with Team Liquid, whom he has played for nearly his entire professional CSGO career, he has won several trophies and individual honors. During his time with Team Liquid, EliGE had some problems with his attitude towards his teammates. Coming from a background of only playing 1v1 and as an individual player, he had a hard time understanding which skills was required in a team game. He was on the edge of getting kicked out of his team because of these problems, but he devoted himself to get the upper hand of his problems and learn to be a better teammate. He eventually got better at being and a teammate and therefore continued to play as a part of Team Liquid.

The story of EliGE

Growing up, EliGE didn’t play shooter games. With his brother deeply into mainly StarCraft and Age of Empire, EliGE followed his brothers’ footsteps and wanted to play these games. In the cause of only having one computer in their family home, there were constantly fights between EliGE and his brother about whose turn it is to play on the computer. These fights caused his family to buy EliGE his very own computer.

Despite many of the other professional gamers today, EliGE didn’t have any other plans in his head besides becoming a professional gamer. He even told his Taekwondo mentor, when he was only 8 years old, that he wanted to pursue his dream, when asked what he wanted to do in his future.

EliGE’s first taste of competition came in 2013 when he played StarCraft at the World Championships qualifier. Besides his StarCraft career, EliGE began to play Counter Strike 1.6, but he never saw it compete with StarCraft in potential as an esport game. Everything changed when CSGO was released. EliGE began to play it more and more, and became very good at it. He shifted his focus from StarCraft II to CSGO and many teams offered him a place on their roster. But one seemed more interesting than all the other, Team Liquid. Team Liquid recruited him as very young, but saw the potential that sooner transformed him into a CSGO superstar. EliGE started off very well with Team Liquid. Together Team Liquid rose to the very top of North American Counter Strike with EliGE as their main man. Conquering North America wasn’t enough for EliGE and Team Liquid, they wanted to win against the top teams in Europe and show that they belong at the very top of the sport. It all peaked in 2019 when Team Liquid won 7 A- or S-tier tournaments. A lot of that success was because of EliGE’s fantastic riffling and composure.

The rebuild of Team Liquid

Since then, it has gone downhill for Team Liquid and EliGE. They haven’t won an A- or S-tier tournament, which is very disappointing for a team that was so dominant in a year. As of now, EliGE still plays for Team Liquid and looks to rebuild their team and get to the very top of the CSGO scene again. Only time will tell if it is possible for EliGE and Team Liquid to rebuild their former momentum and strength. One thing is certain, and that is that Team Liquid once has risen out of a deep hole and developed into a global super team. There is no doubt that it can happen again, but it takes a lot of hard work from all of the individuals involved in Team Liquid, from players to CEO.