Mineski were one of the standout underdog success stories of the Frankfurt Major group stage. Having won the Southeast Asian qualifier, the Filipino team arrived in Germany as the top seed for their region and the only country representing the Philippines. In the group stages, they then managed to clinch 2-0 victories over both Alliance and EHOME that surprised everybody—even, apparently, them. This earned them a space in the upper bracket, and when their SEA counterparts Fnatic were eliminated by OG in the first round of lower bracket games they became the sole representatives of their scene at the Major.

Their fortunes at the main event haven't been as good, however. They faced a tough matchup against tournament favourite Team Secret in the first round of the upper bracket, which they lost 2-0. They then lost 2-0 against OG, as the latter continued their dream-ending streak through the lower bracket. Nonetheless, this was an impressive run. Like the Peruvian team Unknown.xiu, Mineski's success testifies to the fact that Dota is a truly international esport, with talent able to break through even in regions that lack the resources and training infrastructure of North America, Europe, and China.

A day after their elimination, I sat down for a chat with Mineski support player JessieVash.

PCG: What's the feeling like in the team at the moment, and for you personally?

JessieVash: It's good. We're still lacking in our practice schedule—we can't practice in the times we want. In the Philippines the teams are... in some practice games, they're not taking it seriously. That's the only problem for my team. We can't practice at the next level.

PCG: You had a really good group stage. How did you feel through those games?

JessieVash: I don't know, that day... we won straight 2-0 Alliance and 2-0 EHOME. We didn't expect to win against even Alliance, it was a surprise. But really we just played our game the way we want, the heroes where we are comfortable.

PCG: What happened coming into the main event? Did you feel more pressure?

JessieVash: Yeah! [Laughs] So much pressure. You can see in the game, the draft, in how we played—it gave pressure to every player on my team.

PCG: Did you feel intimidated by Secret at all?

JessieVash: In the Secret game, we had a chance to beat them. Really, the experience gap—how to end the game when we're the one who has the advantage—we still can't end the game to win.

PCG: That comes back to practice, right?

JessieVash: Yeah.

PCG: Many people, myself included were happy to see an SEA team and a Filipino team in the upper bracket at the main event. Did you feel any additional pressure because of that? Representing your country and your scene?

JessieVash: For me, I always like to represent the Philippines at the biggest events. For Kuku, this is only his second time getting to represent the Philippines.

PCG: This feels like a good patch from a spectator's perspective. How does it feel as a player? Are you happy with the metagame, with the heroes you're playing?

JessieVash: Yeah, but maybe that's why Europe is the one who has the meta now. They always draft some YOLO heroes—strength heroes. In Southeast Asia they play basic—two long-ranged supports. Here, we can see Secret picking four offlane heroes.

PCG: Support Tiny, yesterday.

JessieVash: Yeah, that's why they could pick Huskar—their opponent didn't expect them to pick the Huskar in the last draft. That's the experience gap again I think, for Puppey.

PCG: You did very well against a European team, however—Alliance. Was that different?

JessieVash: I'm not sure if Alliance are still in the top. I see them losing every game... before they played the Majors, they were winning. I think "Alliance is back!" already. I don't know what happened in the Majors games. Even in our game, it wasn't so hard to play against them. I see their skills and I felt that the team could match up against them.

PCG: What about OG? They were much more of an unknown.

JessieVash: In the OG games, we were really pressured by how they draft, how they play. They always pick Miracle- heroes that can carry them if anything happens. Even when they're losing early, we can't win the game.

PCG: We just saw exactly that, right? [This interview took place right after OG vs. Virtus Pro.]

JessieVash: Yeah.

PCG: Personally, then, which game did you most enjoy?

JessieVash: EHOME, I think. EHOME could be the number one team in China, I think. We played against them, I didn't expect to win even one game. We won 2-0!

PCG: Thanks for your time.

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Tonight s upper bracket series between Vici Gaming and Team Secret was crazy. These are two of the world s best teams with some of the very best individual players, and even so the standard was extraordinary. After a close first game that Vici ultimately took command over, Secret brute-forced a 2-1 result in their favour through a mixture of bravado, cheese, and whatever the opposite of tilting is. I'd strongly recommend watching the whole series: the VOD isn't available at the time of writing, but here's the Twitch link anyway.

I don t want to talk about the whole series, though. I want to talk about this:

Gfycat from this thread by redditor /u/handofskadi.

This is one of the most next-level things I have ever seen a Dota player do. It is also, I appreciate, almost completely impenetrable to somebody who hasn t invested time into this strange, brilliant game. For me, it s a reminder of why Dota is so extraordinary and why—despite looking like other games in its ostensible genre—it remains completely unique.

The player you re watching in the gif above is w33 from Team Secret. He s controlling that blue archer lady with the green trail, running back and forth at the top of the stairs. That isn t actually his hero—who is elsewhere—but an illusion of his hero, a duplicate that looks exactly like him but can be controlled separately and has next to no health or damage potential. The semi-transparent dragons and sea monsters and swordsmen running past amount to the entirety of Vici Gaming. Got it? Okay.

At the very highest level of play, the probability space of a given Dota game begins to narrow out. There are very rarely optimal decisions that a player or team can make, but there are certainly logical ones—strategies that teams might be expected to deploy, anticipate from their opponent, and so on. One example of this revolves around the use of Smoke of Deceit.

Every team has a limited (but regenerating) supply of Smoke of Deceit that they can purchase for gold. Using it grants every ally in an AoE a limited period of invisibility, and unlike regular invisibility Smoke of Deceit can t be detected by Sentry Wards or Gems of True Sight. Instead, Smoke invisibility breaks when the user enters a certain radius from an enemy hero—the hero themselves, mind, not any of that hero s pets or illusions or allied creeps.

Good players learn to anticipate a Smoke of Deceit and avoid it. If the enemy is behind or there s an important objective they need to take and they re all suddenly not on the map any more, it s a good time to play safe. Very good players learn to anticipate the direction that a likely Smoke of Deceit attack will come from and avoid that specific area—again, it s a matter of understanding the probability of certain decisions. The best players can anticipate both the timing and direction of a Smoke and actively play against it.

w33 did all of that and then some. He not only anticipated the timing and direction of Vici Gaming s Smoke of Deceit use, he derived a way to do the impossible: to prove without doubt that it was happening long before Secret were in any danger, to reduce the chance that his judgement was wrong to zero.

See, Smoke of Deceit isn t broken by running past enemy units, but the heroes it renders invisible are still physical objects in the world. They still block unit pathing. When w33 found an Illusion rune and spawned two copies of his hero, he used one of them in a completely unique way: he sent it into the enemy jungle, to the top of a flight of stairs that Vici were likely to pass through if they attempted a Smoke of Deceit attack. He then gave the illusion multiple queued movement commands, forcing it to run back and forth at the top of those stairs multiple times. Then he kept an eye on it.

The moment Vici Gaming pass, covered by Smoke of Deceit—that s the transparency effect—they re not revealed by the illusion. But they do cause the illusion s pathing to momentarily fail. It hitches as it hits first iceiceice s Tidehunter and then Fenrir s Winter Wyvern, proving that something has obstructed it even if that something is invisible. You see w33 s green map pings come out shortly after: Vici Gaming are here, and they ve used Smoke.

It s genuinely brilliant, and it s only possible because Dota 2 is fundamentally a game about systems rather than fixed rules. You might come up with rules to help you learn, and rules help you understand the metagame, but the moment somebody decides to break them—when they reach back past the rules to the systems that support them and twist them to their benefit—that s when you get real Dota. And that s why all of the Dota people you know are freaking out about a transparent blue archer momentarily hesitating when it bumps into a half-invisible watermelon man. Esports!

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Pistol rounds are among the most important rounds in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Winning your pistol rounds gives you an economic advantage that makes it much easier to take the following two rounds as well. In a game where the first team to get to 16 rounds wins, winning four rounds cheaply gives you a huge advantage. It s also important to learn to use pistols so that you can take advantage of an eco round . Your opponent have just won a round and now you re out of money. You can t afford a complete loadout but you don t want to throw a round away. This is the time to buy a pistol, some armor and be the John Wayne you know you can be!

Counter Terrorist pistol choices

Choosing the correct pistol is just as important as knowing how to use it, so let s get started with the buy phase. In the first round of either half you start off with $800. Currently, most professional players choose to use that money to buy kevlar with their default pistol. While I don t think all professional strategies work in matchmaking, this way of starting the CT side is hard to argue with. The accuracy of the USPS-S makes up for the shortage of bullets and having kevlar removes the aimpunch,making it a great pistol setup. If you re using the p2000 instead of the USP-s you ll have enough bullets to keep your enemies at a distance, allowing your team to rotate to your bombsite. Make sure someone in the team buys a defuse kit!

Terrorist pistol choices

The terrorist side isn t much different than the counter terrorist side when it comes to pistols. Most players will want to simply buy armor and stick with their Glock-18. The Glock is a great weapon to run and gun with which is what you ll be doing a lot of the time as a terrorist. A popular strategy among both professional players and matchmakers is the raid boss setup. One person buys armor while another player provides him or her with a Tec-9. They themselves buy a flash and a smoke, giving the team some utility. This way you end up with 4 armored players, one of which has a very strong pistol.

Eco rounds

Eco round buys are often decided on the fly but there are some guidelines for you to follow as you decide what to go for. Because communication in matchmaking is often not much better than Twitch chat, your buys can be decided entirely by what the rest of your team is doing. If nobody buys, you re best off following the group and saving for the next round. However, if all the planets do align and you get to buy a pistol, it s up to you not to buy the wrong one. Buying a p250 is a cheap way to get a gun out of your opponent s hands: it s a great pistol for getting quick, close range kills. You can spam it quite rapidly or take your time and go for the single headshot.

The Five-Seven is a second option on the CT side that offers you nearly the same pistol with a few more bullets per clip and higher armor penetration. The CZ75-Auto is a good gun for standing around a corner, waiting for someone to walk by and emptying a clip into the back of their head. The pistol is expensive, however, and it lacks bullets.Unless you have the perfect position for it, I would always buy the Five-Seven over the CZ.

On the terrorist side, buying the Tec-9 feels like the obvious choice. Being able to empty a 24-bullet clip into your opponent as quickly as the Tec-9 allows can turn a round in your favour. Buying Dual Elites is almost always a mistake, which leaves us with the fan-favorite Desert Eagle. There is no better feeling in CS:GO than shooting someone in the head with a Desert Eagle using only your first shot. Taking out a player who has just invested $6000 in their loadout with a $700 pistol feels like killing an mammoth with a Super Soaker. Using the Desert Eagle is hard so for most players, however, that it s not a worthy investment—but if you re feeling lucky it won t hurt to try it once in a while.

Scoring kills

The counter terrorist s USP-s is freakishly accurate and will get you one-shot kills if you hit your helmet-less target in the head. The small clip size forces you to use your bullets carefullyso aim for the head and don t spam too much unless you re in a close range battle. The Glock-18 requires the opposite playstyle. This gun is perfect for running at your target, shouting obscenities and spamming your left mouse button. Only put the gun on burst mode (right click) if you re going to attempt jump shooting and keep your crosshair on your opponent s head at all times, only correcting for recoil.

The p250 and the Five-Seven are played nearly identically. Because both these pistols can get one-shot headshot kills on close range—even against opponents with kevlar and a helmet -it s a good idea to try to put yourself in 1v1 positions. You do this by standing around the corner from a choke location and aiming at head height.

The terrorists s Tec-9 is a strong pistol for running and gunning . This gun s recoil pattern is about as random as a best of one group stage so the best way to use the Tec-9 is by spamming it whenever you get close enough for your bullets to actually hit your target. When you do get close enough you have a very good chance of killing your opponent, regardless of which weapon they re using.

The Desert Eagle is less like a pistol and more like a tiny AWP. Wildly inaccurate when you re moving, the Deagle requires you to come to a complete stop before firing off bullets that will instantly kill a helmeted player with a headshot, even from a long distance. For short range kills you can spam your deagle but the more time you give the pistol to reset to its default position, the more accurate your shots will be.

Improving quickly

You don t get to play too many pistol rounds during a competitive CS:GO game so jumping into a pistol-only deathmatch server is a great way to improve your pistol play. Try only using the USP-s and aiming for the head and you ll feel yourself get better every time you play.

A good pistol player can hand their team two of the most important rounds of the game. A great pistol player can turn an entire game around and create some of the most beautiful moments we ve seen in Counter-Strike history:

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Dota 2 pro Ravindu "Ritsu" Kodippili has been fired from Cloud9 following allegations that he leaked strategies and information about a rival team to another rival team. As noted by Kotaku and detailed on Reddit, the allegations first came to light last week, when Team Secret player Jacky "EternaLEnVy" Mao tweeted an image of a chat log showing Kodippili sharing information about Digital Chaos with other players in an effort to keep it from qualifying for The Summit 4 tournament.

@ritsudota Ya your a piece of shit pic.twitter.com/km4zRrtjtr

— EternaLEnVy (@EternaLEnVy1991) November 8, 2015

Cloud9 didn't reference the leaks specifically when it announced Kodippili's dismissal, but team captain Theeban "1437" Siva said that "the indiscretions of [Kodippili's] past inevitably lead towards this outcome. His recent efforts to improve his behavior came too late and following our elimination from the Major, it was determined that Cloud9 was no longer the place for him to be."

Cloud9 General Manager Danan Flander echoed that sentiment, adding, "Events preceding the attendance of the Frankfurt Major weighed heavily on both Ritsu and Cloud9 as an organization. His out-of-game conduct was consistently unbecoming of a professional player and although he began taking steps to change himself and how he interacted with the DOTA2 competitive community, his past indiscretions combined were too much for Theeban, myself, and the rest of the organization to overlook moving towards the next Major."

The information that was allegedly leaked would have been gleaned during scrimmage matches between Cloud9 and Digital Chaos, and while sharing secrets apparently isn't against the rules, it is in very bad form. It's another example of bad behavior in professional esports that, unfortunately for Kodippili, the maturing scene is growing less and less tolerant of.