Flusha

flusha
Current team
TeamEYEBALLERS
RoleRifler
GameCounter-Strike: Global Offensive
Personal information
NameRobin Rönnquist
Born (1993-08-12) August 12, 1993 (age 31)
NationalitySwedish
Career information
Games
Playing career2011–2023
Team history
2012SY_b
2012Western Wolves
2013Epsilon eSports
2013SY_b
2013–2016Fnatic
2016–2017GODSENT
2017–2018Fnatic
2018–2019Cloud9
2019–2021Fnatic
2021–2022GORILLAZ
2022Hellslayers
2022–2023EYEBALLERS
Career highlights and awards

Robin Rönnquist (born August 12, 1993),[1] better known as flusha, is a Swedish former professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player. He previously played for teams such as fnatic and Cloud9. flusha has won 3 CS:GO majors: Dreamhack Winter 2013, ESL One Katowice 2015 and ESL One Cologne 2015.

Professional career

Counter-Strike 1.6

flusha started playing Counter-Strike professionally in 2011. His team qualified, for Dreamhack Winter 2011, but ended up exiting out in the group stage. His teams did not qualify for any other significant events in 1.6.[2]

Early Years in CS:GO

After transitioning to CS:GO, flusha wandered around many Swedish teams, including Epsilon eSports and Western Wolves. flusha was a part of the first lineup which defeated Ninjas in Pyjamas (Nip), the dominant team at the time, in an online match.[3] flusha's team developed a reputation of being "onliners," a derogative term used to describe teams which perform better in online matches than ones in a LAN environment (LANs are used to describe tournaments where players play in the same building against each other). In March 2013, the team flusha was on at the time, Epsilon was disqualified RaidCall EMS One #1 after one of his teammates, Jerry "xelos" Råberg was found to be cheating.[4] Epsilon finished 2nd at Dreamhack Summer 2013, placing behind Nip. The team was soon dropped, even after this result. They ended up being signed by fnatic, an organisation which has traditionally been behind the top Swedish rosters.[3]

2013 with fnatic

flusha's teammates in the first iteration of fnatic included Jesper "JW" Wecksell, Jonatan "devilwalk" Lundberg, Andreas "MODDII" Fridh, and Andreas "schneider" Lindberg.

Dreamhack Bucharest 2013

At DreamHack Bucharest 2013, fnatic beat Nip in a group stage match. The tournament admins had the match played in a MR5 format, meaning each team will play 5 rounds as each side (Counter-Terrorist and Terrorist), and the team which reaches 6 wins the overtime match. If it's tied 5-5, another round of tiebreakers begin. According to DreamHack rules, the match should have been played in a MR3 tiebreaker format, where each team plays 3 rounds a side. Nip complained to the organisers, and DreamHack ordered the tiebreaker to be replayed, with fnatic up 2-1 from the first 3 rounds of the MR5 they played before. fnatic won the match, but afterwards, they refused to shake hands with Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund, and insulted Nip. flusha did not take part in the insults, and fnatic later apologised for the incident.[5][6][7]

DreamHack Winter 2013

flusha was briefly forced to take on the role of In-Game Leading, but the team soon signed a new IGL in the form of Markus "pronax" Wallsten in November 2013.[8] fnatic consistently reached the playoffs, but they didn't win any tournaments until the first CS:GO major, Dreamhack Winter 2013. In the finals, fnatic beat the favourites, Nip in a 3 map series. On the first map Dust II, fnatic were down 12–3 at the end of the first half, but managed to make a comeback and win the map 16–14. On this map, flusha had 25 kills, and a 1.31 HLTV rating, the highest on the server. Despite the Ninjas winning the second map, Inferno, fnatic beat Nip 16–2 on the last map Train, winning them the major.[9][10][11] flusha's teammate JW was awarded the MVP for this event; flusha was the 6th best rated at the event, and the 3rd best on his team. flusha was considered a consistent performer for fnatic, and was awarded the 13th spot on the HLTV top 20 in 2013.[2]

2014

fnatic were not able to repeat the same form they had against Nip in the start of 2014, and at the first major of the year, EMS One Katowice, fnatic went out in the quarterfinals. fnatic would go out in groups at Dreamhack Summer 2014, and replaced schneider (also known as znajder) and Devilwalk with ex-LGB esports players Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer and Freddy "KRIMZ" Johnasson.[12] After a 3rd-place finish at Gfinity 3, fnatic came into the second major of the year, ESL One Cologne 2014 as one of the underdogs.[13] fnatic topped their group, and faced Natus Vincere in the quarterfinals. flusha posted 30 kills on the third map, Nuke, and fnatic managed to win 16–14. After beating Dignitas, fnatic faced Nip in the finals. Even though Nip was the greatest team in CS:GO at the time, they were in a major slump and were considered the underdogs by this point. Despite this, Nip won 13–16 on the third map, and won their first and only major.[14] After this, fnatic would finally win their first event in 2014, at SLTV StarSeries X Finals, with flusha earning the MVP.[15] After a semifinal finish at Dreamhack Masters Stockholm, fnatic won the next 3 tournaments. Unlike the earlier tournaments, flusha wasn't the best performer at two of these, and only won 1 MVP: Fragbite Masters Season 3.[citation needed]

Cheating Allegations

On November 20, Titan's AWPer Hovik "KQLY" Tomvassian and Epsilon's Gordon "Sf" Giry were VAC banned.[16][17] There was already questions about many of flusha's plays after xelos' ban, but this caused a considerable amount of new speculation about flusha.[18][15][19][20] Nip coach Faruk "pita" Pita, LDLC player Richard "shox" Papillon, and Jacob "Pimp" Winneche all called out flusha for cheating.[21][22] pita called for flusha to be blocked from playing at DreamHack Winter 2014, saying "[It would be] a fcking disgrace...if @csgo_dev put flusha thru to play Dreamhack [Winter 2014]. Its obvious as it can be."[23]

Dreamhack Winter 2014

After winning the 3 previous LANs, fnatic came into DreamHack Winter 2014 as the favourites, with Team LDLC.com being considered the 2nd best team.[24][25] fnatic came out of the groups 2–1, and faced LDLC in the quarterfinals. The series was tied 1-1, and on the 3rd map, Overpass, LDLC were up 13–3. fnatic then utilised a "boost," where players stand on top of other players' heads to gain height, and this allowed them to see over a wall. Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer was boosted up, and fnatic utilised this advantage to win the game 16–13.[26] LDLC protested that fnatic were using a "pixel-walk," but there was no section in the DreamHack rulebook prohibiting pixel-walks. It was later discovered the boost fnatic used meant they couldn't be shot from certain angles due to transparent textures, so the half was going to be replayed. However, further investigation by DreamHack revealed LDLC had used a similar boost in the first half, so the entire game was to be replayed.[26] Due to fnatic's bad reputation at the time resulting from flusha's cheating accusations, fnatic faced considerable community backlash, and forfeited the match.[24][27][28] LDLC went on to win the event.

2015

fnatic won ESL One Katowice 2015 at the start of the year. fnatic would continue to win tournaments in 2015, including Dreamhack Open Tours 2015, Dreamhack Open Summer 2015, and ESL Pro League Season 1 Finals.[29] fnatic also won ESL One Cologne 2015. flusha had a 1.38 HLTV rating at the event, and won the MVP (most valuable player) medal.[30] At the time, fnatic were the only CS:GO lineup to win 2 majors in a row, 2 majors in total. Following this, fnatic would struggle to win tournaments and placed 5th-8th at the third major of the year, Dreamhack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015.[29] Following internal divisions within the team, fnatic replaced IGL Markus "pronax" Wallsten with G2 Esports player Dennis "dennis" Edman, forcing flusha to once again take on In-Game Leading duties.[31] flusha's personal form dropped off, but fnatic would win 3 tournaments in a row, FACEIT 2015 Stage 3 Finals, Fragbite Masters Season 5, and ESL Pro League Season 2 Finals.[29]

2016/2017

At the start of 2016 with dennis, fnatic would win another 3 LANs, StarSeries Season XIV, ESL Barcelona, and IEM Katowice 2016. bringing their total streak up to 6. fnatic's string of results in late 2014 and early 2016/late 2015 has led to people calling this time period "the fnatic era" (sometimes only 2015).[32][33][34][35] fnatic's dominance had ended after MLG Columbus 2016, where olofmeister suffered a hand injury.[36][37] After not fnatic didn't find much success, flusha, along with teammates JW and KRIMZ decided to join pronax's team, GODSENT.[38] GODSENT would struggle to place throughout the rest of 2016, with their best result being a semifinals finish at DreamHack Winter 2016. GODSENT went on to place 9th-11th at ELEAGUE Major: Atlanta 2017; flusha and JW subsequently returned to fnatic.[39] Despite these changes, fnatic would continue their slump, and did not have any major results during 2017. In August 2017, fnatic's star player, olofmeister, departed fnatic for FaZe Clan.[40]

2018–2022

After struggling for results for the past two years, fnatic had an upset victory at IEM Katowice 2018. flusha would be awarded the MVP after two aces against FaZe in the final map of the finals.[41] fnatic followed this up by winning World Electronic Sports Games 2018, taking the largest prize in the game at the time, $800,000. Even with these results, fnatic would soon make more roster changes after a few poor performances, dropping In-Game Leader Maikil "Golden" Selim. After failing to make the playoffs of a CS:GO major for the first time, fnatic decided to replace flusha.[42] flusha joined North American team Cloud9 in September.[43] flusha once again acted as the In-Game Leader, but Cloud9 had one notable result, a second-place finish at the ELEAGUE CS:GO Invitational 2019. After a period of inactivity, flusha returned to fnatic in September 2019.[44] flusha continued playing in the Professional CSGO ESL Challenger League and was a member of the team EYEBALLERS.

2023

In August 2023, flusha announced his retirement from professional CS:GO.[45]

References

  1. ^ @fnatic (August 12, 2020). "Stort grattis på 27-årsdagen, @flusha 🥳 Happy birthday, legend 🦍" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  2. ^ a b Milanovic, Petar "Tgwr1s". "Top 20 players of 2013: flusha (13)". HLTV. Retrieved 6 September 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ a b Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "fnatic sign ex-Epsilon". HLTV. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  4. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "Epsilon kicked from EMS for cheating". hltv.org. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  5. ^ Kovanen, Tomi "lurppis". "Organizers comment on NiP protest". HLTV. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  6. ^ "fnatic clôt la polémique". VaKarM.net (in French). Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  7. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "fnatic comment on NiP controversy". HLTV. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  8. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "fnatic sign pronax; MODDII out". HLTV. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  9. ^ "fnatic win Dreamhack Winter 2013". HLTV. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  10. ^ Jackson, Leah B. (3 December 2013). "Who Won Dota 2, CS:GO, and More at DreamHack Winter 2013?". IGN. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  11. ^ Shields, Duncan "Thorin". "10 Post-Dreamhack Winter 2013 CS:GO Storylines". Gamespot. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  12. ^ Švejda, Milan "Striker". "KRiMZ and olofm join fnatic". HLTV. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  13. ^ Kovanen, Tomi "lurppis". "ESL One Cologne 2014 preview". HLTV. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  14. ^ Shields, Duncan "Thorin" (3 November 2014). "The NiP slump – How the greatest CS:GO team of all time ended on a down note". The Dot Esports. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  15. ^ a b Milanovic, Petar "Tgwr1s". "Top 20 players of 2014: flusha (2)". HLTV. Retrieved 7 September 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "Epsilon's Sf VAC banned". HLTV. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  17. ^ Milanovic, Petar "Tgwr1s". "KQLY Handed Vac Ban". HLTV. Retrieved 7 September 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  18. ^ Masters, Tim. "Fnatic - flusha, a player like no other". Luckbox. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  19. ^ Lam, Kien (10 March 2016). "Global Offensive: A curtain of cheats and their inevitable fall". ESPN. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  20. ^ Lahti, Evan (22 November 2014). "CS:GO competitive scene in hacking scandal, 3 players banned". PCGamer. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  21. ^ Ehrnberg, Björn (27 November 2014). "Pronax om anklagelserna mot lagkamraten: "Det har känts förjävligt"". Aftonbladet Esports (in Swedish). Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  22. ^ Ouyang, Kevan "SeveN". "Flusha caught in cheating allegations". GOSUGAMERS. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  23. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "pita calls for flusha ban". HLTV. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  24. ^ a b "Olofboost: The Day CSGO Changed". The DotEsports. 15 October 2015. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  25. ^ Kovanen, Tomi "lurppis" (26 November 2014). "DreamHack Winter 2014 CS:GO preview: the top teams". PCGamer. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  26. ^ a b DH: "Overpass will be replayed", Milan "Striker". "Švejda". HLTV. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  27. ^ Masters, Tim. "Olofboost: The CSGO 'cheat' that changed the game". Luckbox. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  28. ^ Milanovic, Petar "Tgwr1s". "Fnatic forfeit LDLC match". HLTV. Retrieved 7 September 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  29. ^ a b c Švejda, Milan "Striker". "Top 20 players of 2015: flusha (5)". HLTV. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  30. ^ Malachowski, Michal "stich". "fnatic triumphant at ESL One Cologne". HLTV.
  31. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "fnatic sign dennis; pronax out". HLTV. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  32. ^ "Recounting the Eras: A Timeline of CS:GO". Esports Heaven. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  33. ^ Nordmark, Sam. "Fnatic is the team of 2015!". Fragbite. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  34. ^ Klim, Sigma (30 July 2019). "How Every Fomer [sic] CS:GO Era Ended? Will Liquid's Be The Next". GuruGamer.
  35. ^ Chiu, Stephen. "What makes an era and why Liquid are on the verge of theirs". Upcomer. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  36. ^ Kaha, Kia. "PlesseN steps in for olofmeister". Bpro Gaming. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  37. ^ Švejda, Milan "Striker". "fnatic miss DreamHack Malmö". HLTV. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  38. ^ Wolf, Jacob (15 August 2016). "JW, flusha, KRIMZ leave Fnatic, join Godsent". ESPN. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  39. ^ Van Allen, Eric (4 February 2017). "JW and flusha return to Fnatic CS:GO through swap with Godsent". ESPN. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  40. ^ "CS:GO Roster Update: Olofmeister Departs". fnatic.com. Archived from the original on 31 August 2017. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  41. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "flusha claims IEM Katowice MVP award". HLTV. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  42. ^ Esguerra, Lawrence Tyler. "Fnatic replaces Flusha with ScreaM on CSGO roster". Daily Esports. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  43. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "flusha signs for Cloud9". HLTV. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  44. ^ Mira, Luis "MIRAA". "flusha, Golden return to fnatic". HLTV. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  45. ^ "flusha retires from professional Counter-Strike". www.eyeballers.net. Retrieved 2023-08-16.