3 Successful past and present CS: GO pros who came from another game

Contrary to popular belief, not all CS: GO pro players come from a Counter-Strike background.

It’s true that most professionals come from a previous iteration of the game like 1.6 or Source, in which they put in a lot of hours and effort. However, there are a handful of well-known personalities to whom Global Offensive is the first Counter-Strike game that they have ever played.

So, in our list today, we will be mentioning 3 CS: GO pros (past and present), who before coming to CS: GO were competitive players in some other game.

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1. Noah "Nifty" Francis

Image Credits: HLTV.org

Not many are aware of this but prior to playing for Team Envy and Renegades on the CS: GO pro scene, Nifty was fragging heads in Call of Duty Black Ops II and Call of Duty Ghosts.

He started his esports career at the early age of 15 where he played Black Op II competitively on a console.

However, he didn’t gain much recognition until he was picked up by team ConqueR in 2013 to play in UMG Philadelphia for Call of Duty Ghosts.

He then joined Elevate and briefly became the captain of their eLevate.Black roster, before it got disbanded and a new team was formed around Nifty with the likes of ‘Gucci’, ‘Chino’, and ‘eGo’.

But not much success came his way during his Call of Duty days and Nifty soon found a new passion in the form of CS: GO

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2. Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham

Image Credits: HLTV.org

Skadoodle's esports career started all the way back in 2010 when he professionally started playing ‘Alliance of Valiant Arms’ for Defkon. He even went on to win the ieSF that very year.

After a short but successful career in AVA, Skadoodle found a new found love in CS: GO in which he started investing a lot of hours.

He soon got insanely good at the game and got his first shot at a CS: GO career with ‘Hold Mouse One’ during Season 12 of ESEA. The team would later be picked up by Cure and began to be called iBUYPOWER soon after.

In the latter part of his CS: GO career, Skadoodle was regarded as one of the pillars in the Cloud9 roster before he officially retired from the game. However, he has taken up playing Valorant professionally for T1, where he has reunited with former iBUYPOWER teammates Braxton "swag" Pierce and Keven "AZK" Larivière

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3. Jonathan ‘Elige’ Jablonowski

Image Credits: HLTV.org

Before being regarded as one of the best players in not just the Team Liquid roster but in the entirety of North America, Elige wasn’t exactly clicking heads in some other shooter.

Unlike Skadoodle and Nifty, Elige didn’t exactly come from an FPS background, and this is one of the least known facts about him. Before he started investing all his time in CS: GO, Elige was a competitive StarCraft II player.

He was initially signed by Clarity Gaming and even participated in a lot of tournaments for them, and this was back when he was just 15 years old.

2019 was one of the best years for Elige, as he was able to rack up a lot of HLTV.org MVP awards for his incredible performances on the Team Liquid roster.