The benches tonight (front row = tonight's featured guests)
(the fanfare, but in a minor key. Sunshine has brought a box of tissues for every bench.)
Livewire: Welcome back to The Benches. Tonight's theme is the one Sunshine has been dreading and The Ledger has been looking forward to: cursed finals. The teams and players who kept reaching the last match and kept losing it.
The Ledger: I object to "cursed." A curse is a small sample size with good marketing.
The Prosecutor: And I object to that. Nobody loses that many finals by accident.
Livewire: Two objections before the first tape. A personal best. Roll it.
▶ THE TAPE Case #1: NiKo, the best player never to win a Major, until he did
mousesports, then FaZe (2017), then G2 (2020), then Falcons (2025). In HLTV's Top 20 a record ten times, consecutively since 2016.1 Lost Major finals in 2018 with FaZe and 2021 with G2.
By the time he finally won one, he had played sixteen Majors without a title and lost twenty S-tier finals. With Falcons alone: eight lost S-tier finals in sixteen months, three of them in the four months before the Major.2
June 2026, IEM Cologne: Falcons beat FURIA 3-0. His seventeenth Major. The longest wait of any Major winner in history.1
16 MAJORS · 20 LOST FINALS · THEN 3-0
Sunshine: I said he'd win one. I said it every year. Every single year!
The Ledger: You said it about eleven teams a year, Sunshine. One of them was eventually going to be right.
Sunshine: And it WAS!
Livewire: NiKo lifts the trophy after twenty lost finals. In that moment, what does he believe about the previous twenty?
Footnote: That they were footnotes.
Livewire: You say that every episode.
Footnote: It keeps being true.
▶ THE TAPE Case #2: FaZe, three finals in eighteen months, then nothing
FaZe won the Antwerp Major in 2022. Then: lost the Copenhagen 2024 final to NaVi. Lost Shanghai 2024 to Spirit. Lost Budapest 2025 to Vitality, 3-1. Three lost Major finals in eighteen months, and four overall, tied for the most of any org.3
Then the roster came apart. rain, a FaZe player since the 2016 roster purchase, was benched in September 2025 and released that October. karrigan was sold to Falcons in April 2026. broky was benched in June 2026. And FaZe didn't qualify for IEM Cologne 2026, the Major their old in-game leader won with someone else.3
The Prosecutor: Three finals. Then they sell the man who won them their only Major, and he wins the next one somewhere else. I'm not alleging anything. I'm noting it's on the board, next to a lot of red string.
Dusty: Nearly a decade. rain was there since 2016. In my day you got a plaque. He got a release date.
The Ledger: For the record: no org has lost more Major finals. FaZe is tied with NiP and NaVi at four each.3
Weekend Warrior: So NiP and NaVi are also cursed?
The Ledger: NiP lost four of the first six Major finals ever. They won one. NaVi lost four and won two. The difference between a curse and a career is how many you win in between.
Livewire: Write that down.
Footnote: Already footnoted.
▶ THE TAPE Case #3: Liquid, nine finals in a row
From July 2016 to December 2018, Team Liquid reached nine S-tier finals in a row and lost every one.4 Nine. Consecutive. No title in between.
Then 2019: Liquid won the Intel Grand Slam, the best season any North American team has had. They have still never won a Major: 16 Majors, one final, back in 2016.4
FLIP BOARD · The Ledger presents: How long the best waited (Majors played before the first title)
Livewire: Ledger. The dotted bar.
The Ledger: EliGE. Seventeen Majors, no title. Liquid, Complexity, FaZe, back to Liquid, still playing at Cologne this year. The longest active wait in the data.5
Livewire: And the ones who retired inside the curse?
Footnote: Edward: part of the 2010 NaVi triple crown, 18 S-tier titles, eleven Major playoffs, three lost finals, never won one. GuardiaN: eleven playoffs too, three finals, never. Eleven playoffs each, without a title. That's the cruelest line in the data.5
(The studio goes quiet for exactly one second. Then Weekend Warrior sneezes.)
Weekend Warrior: Sorry. Allergic to sadness.
Sunshine: Eight HP! The enemy had eight HP left! That's basically a win!
The Ledger: That's basically the plot of this entire episode.
Still being written
Three curses are still active tonight. FaZe is rebuilding after missing the Major. EliGE is at seventeen. And FURIA's KSCERATO and yuurih, eleven Majors each with one org, reached their first final at Cologne and lost it 3-0.5 The guests pick one each.
HOPES BOARD · for a story that's still being written
The curses still running: FaZe's rebuild, EliGE's seventeen, FURIA's first final
Dusty: FaZe: that the next roster gets to stay together long enough to deserve a plaque.
The Ledger: EliGE: one title, so the bar stops being dotted. I'll redraw it by hand.
Sunshine: KSCERATO and yuurih: they already did the hard part, getting there! Next time they win it! I'm writing it in ink!
The Prosecutor: FaZe: a public explanation of the last eighteen months. Unredacted.
Weekend Warrior: Whoever wins next: that it's someone who looks surprised. I love when they look surprised.
Footnote: That NiKo's wait stays the record. Nobody should have to break it.
Line of the night
"The difference between a curse and a career is how many you win in between."
— The Ledger (The Ledger declined to celebrate, then celebrated privately)
Next time: the Borrowed Players special. Both teams in the 2017 Kraków final leaned on players on loan. The greatest player of all time spent a year in temporary jerseys. And Taiwan's first-ever Major player was technically the assistant coach. Weekend Warrior still doesn't understand loans. That's the episode.
Footnote's footnotes (every "ding!" in tonight's episode, sourced)
- NiKo: teams, HLTV Top 20 streak (10 consecutive since 2016), lost Major finals 2018 and 2021, first Major at IEM Cologne 2026 (his 17th; 3-0 over FURIA). Liquipedia: NiKo · Liquipedia: IEM Cologne 2026
- 20 lost S-tier finals before the first Major; Falcons' eight lost S-tier finals in 16 months. Computed from Liquipedia tier lists and event pages (Stazione research). Liquipedia: Team Falcons
- FaZe: lost finals at Boston 2018, Copenhagen 2024, Shanghai 2024, Budapest 2025; won Antwerp 2022; rain released Oct 31, 2025; karrigan sold Apr 20, 2026; broky benched June 25, 2026; did not qualify for Cologne 2026. NiP and NaVi also lost four Major finals. Liquipedia: FaZe Clan · Liquipedia: Ninjas in Pyjamas · Liquipedia: Natus Vincere
- Team Liquid's nine consecutive lost S-tier finals (July 2016 - Dec 2018), the 2019 Intel Grand Slam, and 16 Majors with one final. Liquipedia: Team Liquid
- EliGE (17 Majors, no title), Edward (18 S-tier titles, 11 Major playoffs, no Major), GuardiaN (11 playoffs), KSCERATO and yuurih (11 Majors with FURIA; Cologne 2026 final). Liquipedia: EliGE · Liquipedia: Edward · Liquipedia: GuardiaN · Liquipedia: FURIA
- Challenge mechanics: base damage, headshot multipliers and armor penetration per weapon; worked helmet-headshot math. Stazione: The one-shot map
Liquipedia content is used under CC-BY-SA 3.0. The panelists are fictional archetypes; every fact they cite is real and checked.
Worth arguing about: is a "curse" in Counter-Strike real, or just a small sample wearing a costume?
Argue it out in the discussion thread. That's where this actually gets resolved.
The Benches · season one