CS:GO Tournament Accused of Match Fixing Scandal

An on-going CS:GO tournament LEGENDS.BET L33T CUP might be running multiple scams like cheating and match-fixing, according to Christian Andersen and Jake Lucky. Andersen is a freelance social media worker for ESL while Lucky is the owner of popular YouTube news channel Esports Talk.

The allegations state that LEGENDS.BET is allowing two lesser-known teams, Axis and Skin Ogres, to use cheats to influence the outcome of large bets placed on matches.

Via a series of tweets, Andersen has pointed out how the match between Skin Ogres and Na’Vi Junior seemed suspicious.

A game which was heavily favoured to be won by Na’Vi Jr witnessed around $15,000 being bet in favour of Skin Ogres, followed by Na’Vi Jr losing the match ‘16-7’.

In a tweet made by Na'Vi Junior's coach, Amiran “ami” Rekhviashvili, he alleged that there two teams were using cheats during the tournament to influence match results in favour of big betters.

“After 1st map 16-3 (we won) someone bet against us 1m rubbles ($15,000) on betscsgo and now we are loosing without any chances ? On this tournament we already played with 2 teams who is using cheats,I guess it’s time to quit this tournament,result doesn’t matter.”

Based on the heavy bets placed on Na'Vi Jr, Andersen predicted the team's come back in the third game to win the series. “Which means Ogres will not cheat and they will lose.” And that is exactly what happened, as Na’Vi Jr went on to beat Skin Ogres in the final game with a score of ‘16-8’.

He also went on to say that he doesn't think Na'Vi Junior is a part of the fixing scandal, but rather that the team is being used by the tournament organizers.

He went on to analyze the match between Copenhagen Flames and Axis which had taken place during the group stage, coming to a conclusion that some sort of cheating took place in that match as well. It turned out to be correct, as a statement released by Copenhagen Flames stated that the organization approached the admin team “to look into suspicious behaviour from the enemy team”.

Though the admin team found no concrete evidence against Axis and let them qualify to the Upper Bracket, Copenhagen Flames decided to look into the situation themselves and after further reconsideration, the admin team of L33T Cup decided to "disqualify Axis because of evidence that one of their players was not playing fairly.”

Jake Lucky raised suspicions about the credibility of inviting lesser known CS:GO teams like Axis and Skin Ogres alongside known and popular CIS teams like Nemiga, Na’Vi Junior, Copenhagen Flames, HellRaisers and more.

Additionally, one of Skin Ogre's players, Simeon “dream3r” Ganev, is currently banned from playing in Valve-sponsored events due to a previous VAC ban.

[Also Read: VPGame admin caught fixing Asian Dota2 matches]

The organizer of this tournament L33T Studios is relatively new. The official handle has less than 20 Twitter followers and their feed history only goes back to the start of this tournament.

Even their sponsors LEGENDS.BET and Overman have freshly made, unused Twitter accounts with no previous history. Finally LEGENDS.BET, the don’t even have a functioning website.

Lucky concludes by saying that “This is all based on speculation, none of this can be fully confirmed as of right now. I'm not trying to call anyone out, I'm simply trying to point out the obvious evidence out there that this entire event could have been hosted just for the fix."

We might have seen match-fixing in the past, but if all of this turns out to be actually true, then it might be a first that an entire tournament was held just to fix a few matches.

L33T Studios, LEGENDS.BET and Overman were not immediately available for comment.