SK win ESL One Cologne, get penalised for illegal technical timeout

SK Gaming have continued their run of dominant performances with their third big offline win this month, sweeping Cloud9 3-0 to win their second ESL One Cologne tournament in a row. 

SK have been competing in Europe for the past month, winning first the Dreamhack Open in Jönköping, Sweden and the ECS Counter-Strike finals in London. When we spoke to SK’s Felps before the ECS finals, he said that they came to Europe to win “three out of four events”

With this win in the bag, they’ve hit their target, with only the PGL major in Krakow, running from July 16-23, remaining. If they win that too, they’ve beaten down some of the best teams in Counter-Strike to prove themselves a dominant force. 

It’s a claim that SK can make already, snagging 6 offline wins in 2017. 

However, this win was not entirely without controversy. SK called a technical timeout during the second half of the game’s second map, Train, with the game tied at 10-10. No one mentioned why the game had taken a break. 

However, the positioning of a camera during the stream showed SK using the in-game team text chat to communicate to each other. Teams are not allowed to communicate via talk or chat during a technical pause, according to ESL’s rules, and an admin quickly noticed the issue and told the team to stop communicating. 

As a result of the misuse of the technical timeout however, SK have been penalised with a prize money reduction, with money docked from SK’s win and redistributed among the other competing teams. 

It’s a black mark on an otherwise stellar run of form for the Brazilian team.