Article by Max "Goodeh" Silver


Sam “RattlesnK” Gawn is a member of Birmingham Salvo’s Counter Strike: Source team, and like many CS:S players, his routes as a gamer stem from casually playing CS: 1.6 with friends.

Sam’s first success as a gamer came about after he founded Goldbrick, a team that would go on to defeat 4kings, the UKs top CS: 1.6 team. From there he and his team were offered an opportunity to take their careers to the next level by joining up with Team Dignitas, an organization formerly headed by Salvo GM Michael O’Dell.

Under the banner of Dignitas, Sam traveled the world with his team, doing very well in several events and earned the title as the top team in United Kingdom. Once CGS was announced the team decided to take a deep breath and launch themselves into a world of Counter Strike: Source. After some early difficulties the team dominated the Live Qualifiers and became reunited with their former manager at their new home, the Birmingham Salvo.

Live Qualifiers in Birmingham

During the tournament at the Live Qualifiers you had an early blip, losing to Xtremely Sneaky to put yourselves in the lower bracket, what do you think attributed to this loss against a team arguably below your standard? How did you pull yourselves back up to go on and win the tournament?

As a team we went into the game a little overconfident as we knew many of their players from our old days in 1.6 and thought that we would win the game quite easily, but in reality it was quite the opposite. They started off on the offensive side of Nuke and managed to get a few early rounds in against us and we never managed to get back into the game from that point. The main factor why we didn’t perform in our first game was our communication, we had a team talk in the lounge after the match and decided to get louder and call everything that we saw. This helped us in the latter stages of the competition especially as it demoralized some of our opponents, as they started losing rounds they began playing worse because of it.

Straight after this loss, you went on to play another team , Nocturnal Alcoholics, who would normally be considered below your standards, you went on to win a close match 11-7, before dominating highly tipped Infused Gaming in the next round 13-5, what happened in between the games to boost the team's morale?

In a way the game against NA was the turning point of our tournament, we were still making silly mistakes but we managed to identify what changes needed to be made for our game against infused. We had another chat before the infused game about keeping up our communication and to stop making the small mistakes that were costing us vital rounds. The first round against infused was the major turning point for us, mainly because we started hitting the shots we needed to if we were going to go on and win the tournament. We managed to pick up a lot of rounds early on which led to our team's confidence growing in a matter of minutes -- our defining moment so to speak.

You then went on to dominate, eMazing Gaming, 16-2, to earn a spot in the lower bracket final with tournament favorites 4kings, how confident were you before the match? Did you see the whole 4kings team as "underperforming" during the live qualifiers?

At the time we knew that we had a tough task in trying to overcome 4kings, the pressure was still on us to perform and prove to the GMs that we deserved to be picked for one of the franchises. We were always confident that when it came down to it we would have a good chance at beating them; especially considering most of our players were practicing with 40FPS before the event so we knew that we could play a lot better than we had online. As for the 4kings I really didn't see how people saw them as underperforming, it was just a few days before ago that they won the SGL Invite Tournament against some of the best teams in Europe.

At this stage in the game you faced the currently unbeaten ZBoard in the grand final, you went on to blow them out 9-0 on the defensive side of Inferno, and then won the game a few rounds later to make it 10-2. both teams were then told to play out the remaining 18 rounds, do you think this was an advantage, further increasing your lead over them for a psychological blow, or a disadvantage, potentially losing you vital momentum?

For me it wasn't an advantage, we all wanted to get onto the next map as quickly as possible so that all of the momentum that we had built up could be brought onto the next map. If we were able to swap straight to the dust2 game after we won it might have been easier, but of course that’s the way the tournament is set up and why it’s always better coming from the upper bracket.

With the overtime round, potentially deciding if you would or would not get the coveted job of a professional gamer, what was going through the teams minds at this point?

For us it was all or nothing at this point, we knew we had the advantage in the overtime as we won the coin toss and got to choose the offensive side. I called our last tactic and our hearts were literally in our mouths, we got the first pick with our three AWPers which made it into a 5v4 situation right from the go. At this point I started to believe we had done it, and after a minute of tense action we had managed to pull off a great result to win the combine. For me this was a great feeling as we managed to prove our many critics wrong while placing ourselves in real contention for the draft picks.

Straight after your win, if you were the General Manager, which two teams would be in consideration as a draft pick?

After our victory in the combine I think we placed ourselves in consideration for being a draft pick especially considering we came from the lower bracket to win the tournament after a shaky start. If it was me personally for my second choice I would probably have still gone with the 4kings despite their defeat against Zboard. I might have been considered crazy at the time but their game was still a close affair and from an outsiders view 4kings results from before the combine would have edged it for me.

What did the team do immediately after the final; did you have a celebration of any kind?

We had a small celebration after the final with a few beers in the local pub, but we still needed to perform in the challenge matches the next day to make sure that we placed ourselves squarely in the GMs eyes not only as a quality side, but also a team that they could rely on.

The Pre-draft and European Draft

How was the whole experience of the pre-draft for you? Obviously being a certain pick must have calmed any nerves you had before the draft, how professionally do you think it was done?

It was pretty cool just for a pre-draft, there was television coverage for the whole draft and we even got to meet some of the "big cheeses" of the CGS which was a surprise. It was done pretty well I think, whether I know anything about directing and producing I don’t know!

Watching the European draft, when favorites Fnatic were not picked, did this instill some nerves in you?

It really gave us a shock as we thought they were an almost certain pick for one of the GMs, it showed that no one was guaranteed a draft spot even if you won the combine or had performed consistently over the last year. In a way there was a similar situation with the UK in Dignitas, 4kings and Zboard as everyone had their opinion on who was in contention to get drafted. It did make me slightly nervous about the draft but I still believed we had the opportunity to impress the GMs further in London.

The UK Championship

During the trip down to the UK Championship, how well did you get to know the other players? Which people did you especially take a shine too?

I knew a few of the source players who used to play CS; 1.6 and had already changed to source, one of the guys I spoke to most was “vpr” as he’s my old home dog from Goldbrick where I first broke into the 1.6 back in the day. I've known him for a long time and we get on really well and still hope each other do well in the tournaments we compete in.

In the first game of the UK finals, ZBoard got the "easy route" against infused, while you had the harder opponent of 4kings, you blew out 4kings with a score of 10-4, at this point did you feel, "we're drafted", or did you still have the nerves?

At the time we all believed that we had done enough to justify being drafted by one of the GMs, we had beaten 4k at this point 4-1 and no one could complain if we were going to be drafted by either GM. The discussion before the tournament was all about whether ODEE would be a "biased" GM and pick us even if we did badly, but I’m happy that we made his decision an easier one by playing so well during the tournament. After our 4k game we all felt that we had probably done enough to get drafted but to be certain we needed to make sure we beat Zboard, not only for the draft but also for the prize incentive.

You defeated ZBoard in the grand final, how did you feel this affected your chances at being drafted?

If we wanted to prove to the GMs that we should get drafted we had to win the game,but there was probably more pressure on Zboard to win the game than us as if they could beat us it would have made them a strong candidate to be drafted.

The Draft

Onto the draft, you were picked early, as the first Counter Strike: Source team, what went through your mind the second "Dignitas" was read out by Paul Chaloner?

At first I didn't really realize the extent of how well or how important the next few minutes would be for me as a gamer, it had taken just under two weeks of hard fought competition against other great players for us to reach this point. I had finally reached my goal that I placed down a year ago to become a full fledged professional. Although I don't tend to let my personal feelings be known inside I was extremely excited about the prospect of heading out to LA and playing in my first major tournament in America.

How glad were you that you were reunited with your former manager, Michael O' Dell who managed you under the Dignitas banner, would you have minded if Sujoy had picked you instead?

I was really happy that I would still be working with ODEE even if it was in a different organization, some of my biggest success has happened within Dignitas and hopefully that will continue when we head out to LA for the world finals. Once you sit down with our team you realize the impact ODEE has to any team, it’s more like a family than a business and every player is considered an equal. If Sujoy had of picked us up I’m sure he would of done a great job, both of the UK GMs are extremely friendly and I can see both teams doing well.

Who was the first person you contacted once you had been drafted?

The first person I talked to about being drafted was my mum as she wanted to know what was going on during the tournament and how I was doing, I promised her I'd keep her up to date throughout and she was just as excited as me about getting drafted.

The World Championship

How does it feel to be representing the UK and Birmingham in Los Angeles? Have you ever been to America before?

It's great to represent your country at any level and it’s always been something that I've wanted to do as a keen sports fan, although I’m not personally from Birmingham our whole franchise will be trying our hardest to represent Birmingham well and take over the states! I have been to America before, but only on holiday to the big apple which was fantastic, to actually be playing in a tournament in LA is going to be really exciting and I can't wait to see LA in all its glory!

You have an obvious advantage of Demo's of the America CGS franchises being readily available, while demos for you are hard to come by. How much research have you done/are you doing on the Americans, and any other teams who will be at the World Championship?

In any sport whether it be Football or the NFL every team tries to get an advantage studying their opponents before they face off against each other and CS is no different. I'll be finding out as much as possible about every team who’s going to be at the World Championship and discovering their strengths and weaknesses to help us chink their amour. As for us it’s going to be really hard for teams outside Europe to find out the style of play we use which is going to make it harder for teams to predict what were going to do.

I understand your practice has been disrupted by one of the players having trouble with his internet connection, when will you finally be able to start practicing hard for LA? Does the lack of teams outside of CGS playing CGS rules hamper your preparations?

At the moment Stu (Harriman) is without an internet connection because he moved home but hopefully it will be fixed in the next few days so that we can begin practicing for LA. There aren’t that many teams within Europe that want to play CGS rules but there are still plenty of matches we can play against teams using mr15 rules to practice our overall game. It's not ideal but I’m sure that in the long run it won't have a big impact on our performance at the world finals as we can always practice CGS rules against other franchise like the London Mint.

In the final your team went down early, needing you to win 12-6 in the final game to win the match, you went on to lose the game 12-6, what went wrong? Did the pressure of having to win by such a big margin get to you?

I don't think we played as well as we can in the franchise game, we were sitting there for around 30 minutes before we actually got up onto the stage to start setting up for our game. In this sort of situation we would normally be able to deal with the pressure with our experience but sadly we didn’t manager to pull a rabbit out of the hat. If we had just needed to win the game we might well have won the game but because it was a franchise game once we had lost the determination and spirit was gone and we let a lot of silly rounds slip. The whole concept of a franchise match was new to our players and it’s something that I’ve never played in before, although we lost the franchise game I think we learnt a lot of valuable lessons for when we play the big boys in LA.

Thank you very much for your time Sam, best of luck in LA!




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