How'd He Do That: olofmeister 1v3 Retake on Inferno

Where:  SL i-League StarSeries XIV Finals
Map: Inferno
Teams: Fnatic v. Team QuestionMark
Player: olofmeister


[0:00 - 0:04]
"He can't be thinking of going for this." With a clean bomb plant and three terrorists still alive, getting a defuse is likely impossible.

The only situation that would warrant a push onto site would be if he peeks the corner and sees just one Terrorist. If there are two - say one in Pit and one in Graveyard, I doubt he would even try and spray one down. Even if he sees zero, and receives no new information, he likely would not push site.

As we see, he does kill cajunB out of position and decides to continue.




[0:05 - 0:09]
Olof makes a lot of decisions and a few gambles as he approaches site.


Most notably, he doesn't check the boxes at back site. In any other situation, I think he would clear these spots, but since he saw Cajun coming out of back site, he decides to not check behind the two boxes.

Also, it is now confirmed that there aren't any Ts in Pit, which narrows down the location of the remaining two Ts to either Apartments or Porch.

He chooses to focus on Apps, as the bomb is naturally protected from Porch by Boost Box. He sends a molotov up into Apps to weaken any of the Terrorists as they try to defend the Plant.

Sidenote: It's important to note just how badly TQM screwed up here. There's no reason cajunB should have been that vulnerable and out of position, especially without a teammate in Pit or Balcony to cover his movement. They do nothing to defend the plant position. Also, they don't have a player in Pit - one of the most powerful positions on any active duty map. Even if it predictable, it's almost always a good decision to play Pit. Most of these positioning errors come from them leaving site to get away from the explosion, which they committed to about 3-5 seconds too early.

[0:10-0:15]
Olof has to engage - and sucessfully kills - Xyp9x and then jumps on the bomb. At this point, the ten second music* has started and Olof knows he's on the clock.
 

The next few seconds are the product of excellent listening and game sense. Olof hears Devve (formerly Device) smoke out the molotov in Apps, and engages him as he pushes balcony. Throughout this, Olof had to be absolutely aware of the bomb timer, as he knows its approaching the five second point. Olof also knows that since Devve is in Apps, he can't just try and stick the defuse - whereas he could if Devve was coming from Porch.

Devve makes a big mistake here in pushing Olof before the timer drops below the five seconds. He could have waited a single second would have won him the round, because he still would have had the angle and time to kill Olof if he tried to stick the defuse and if Olof came off the bomb and got the kill, a defuse would have been impossible. Of course, this assumes that Devve would know within a second how much time is left of the clock, though many pros claim to have exactly this skill.

Final Notes:
I don't want to take anything from Olof here, as his risk management and game sense had to be perfect to win this round, but it should be noted that Team QuestionMark made some crucial positioning and timing errors that needlessly gave the round away. Most of these mistakes come from thinking that Olof was saving and thus vacating site too early,

* I've gotten a lot of feedback from people claiming that it's ridiculous to have music on. I assumed (probably incorrectly) that most people had their ten second music on the lowest possible level. I was wrong, though I do think it's useful to play with it on. Nevertheless, Olof knew, or atleast got lucky, in timing how long was left on the bomb.

Future articles will use demo footage instead of stream videos, I had an internet problem and couldn't download large files but I've resolved that.