The benches tonight (front row = tonight's featured guests)
(a brass fanfare that goes on slightly too long. The studio lights come up on two rows of benches.)
Livewire: Good evening and welcome to The Benches, the only show where six beings who are not technically people sit on a staircase and talk about Counter-Strike until something true happens.
Livewire: Every episode has a theme, and every guest is here because they have something to say about it. Tonight's theme: players a team threw away, who then won anyway. Front row, you're here because you have feelings about this.
Footnote: I have sources about this.
Livewire: That's a feeling with a bibliography. Roll the tape.
▶ THE TAPE Case #1: karrigan, the man teams keep letting go
October 2016: Astralis bench their in-game leader, karrigan. He joins FaZe. Astralis win the very next Major without him, then three more.
December 2018: FaZe bench him too. He's loaned to Envy, then sold to mousesports. February 2021: FaZe buy him back. In 2022 he wins the Antwerp Major, Liquipedia notes it as the first Major won by an international lineup.1
Then three more lost finals with FaZe. April 20, 2026: FaZe sell him to Falcons. Two months later, at 36, he wins IEM Cologne 2026.
The Ledger: Context the tape skipped: 22 Majors, 8 orgs, 6 finals, 2 titles. Six finals is the most anyone has ever played. Both titles came after a team decided it was better off without him.
Footnote: (ding!) Checks out.1
Weekend Warrior: Wait. You can sell a person?
The Ledger: You sell the contract.
Weekend Warrior: Oh. That's worse, somehow.
(Studio laughter.)
Livewire: karrigan walks onto the Cologne stage at 36, benched twice, sold twice. What does a man like that believe about chairs?
Footnote: That they're temporary.
Livewire: ...That's a better answer than I deserved.
BENCHED TWICE. BOTH MAJORS CAME AFTER.
▶ THE TAPE Case #2: Zeus, benched for the greatest player of all time
August 2016: NaVi buy s1mple and bench their captain, Zeus, a founding member from 2009 and part of the 2010 team that won IEM, ESWC and WCG in a single year.2
Zeus goes to Gambit. In July 2017, he captains Gambit to the PGL Kraków Major. Then he goes back to NaVi and reaches the London 2018 final.
Dusty: I remember that 2010 NaVi. Three of the biggest events in a year. When they benched Zeus for the new kid, I said it was the end of something.
Livewire: Was it?
Dusty: It was the end of me being right about things, I'll say that.
Footnote: Small correction for the record: people often say Zeus was calling for that 2010 team. I can't source that, so I won't say it. The trophies I can source.2
The Prosecutor: Benched for the best player alive, wins a Major first. If I were NaVi's front office I'd have hired a lawyer.
Livewire: Kraków is also a whole other episode about borrowed players. Don't spoil it.
Footnote: I would never.
(Footnote very clearly wanted to.)
▶ THE TAPE Case #3: Aleksib, the lame-duck captain
Finnish in-game leader Aleksib takes ENCE to the Katowice 2019 final. On August 23, 2019, ENCE announce he'll be benched after the next Major. So he leads the team at Berlin knowing he's already out. They finish 5-8.3
Then: OG, a trade to G2, NiP. NiP bench him on June 14, 2023. Sixteen days later, NaVi sign him. Nine months after that, NaVi win the Copenhagen 2024 Major, Finland's first-ever Major title, with only one player left from NaVi's previous championship lineup.3
Livewire: Aleksib walks into a pre-round huddle at a Major knowing he's already been replaced. What do you say in that huddle, as a ghost?
Sunshine: You say "let's go" and you mean it anyway! That's the whole point of being a person on a team! Even if you're not going to be on it next month!
The Prosecutor: Objection. Who announces a benching before the Major? Who does that?
Footnote: ENCE did. August 23, 2019. It's in the timeline.3
The Prosecutor: I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm saying it's on the board.
Speed round: the others who got thrown away
(a ticking clock. Livewire reads from cue cards as fast as possible.)
Livewire: dupreeh!
The Ledger: Record fifth Major with Vitality, Paris 2023. Benched by Vitality about a month later.4
Livewire: Magisk!
Footnote: Four Majors, three benchings. Let go by Astralis, benched by Vitality, benched by Falcons, then back in an Astralis shirt for the 2025 Budapest Major.4
Livewire: Vitality's whole transfer strategy!
The Ledger: Their best signings were players other top teams had just let go: dupreeh, Magisk and coach zonic in 2022, ropz in 2025. Three Majors.4
Weekend Warrior: So the move is... just wait by the door with a contract.
The Ledger: Statistically, yes.
FLIP BOARD · Footnote presents: tonight's scoop, which nobody asked for
Footnote: In 2011-12, karrigan and zonic were teammates on mousesports. In 2026 they won a Major together: karrigan as Falcons' in-game leader, zonic as the coach. Fifteen years apart.5
(The studio audience gasps.)
Dusty: I'm going to need a minute.
Livewire: Take all the minutes. It's a panel show. Time isn't real here.
Livewire: The veteran nobody on this panel would ever bench wins the benched retake.
Dusty: Knife out, kit bought. You don't need a new game for that. You need a habit.
Weekend Warrior: Ninety-nine percent. I want it on record that I was ninety-nine percent of a hero.
Still being written
Every episode ends on the stories that aren't finished yet. Tonight: karrigan is 36, a two-time Major winner, and the in-game leader of the reigning champions. Nobody knows how this chapter ends, so every guest pins one hope to the board.
HOPES BOARD · for a story that's still being written
karrigan, 36, reigning champion: what comes next?
Dusty: That he leaves on his own terms, not in a Tuesday afternoon press release.
The Ledger: A third Major, purely so his record becomes statistically unreasonable.
Sunshine: That nobody ever benches him again. I wrote this one twice, in case the first one blows away.
The Prosecutor: A full inquiry into the three organizations that let him go. I've already drafted the questions.
Weekend Warrior: That he gets to play one match that doesn't matter at all. Just for fun. He's earned a fun one.
Footnote: That whoever replaces him, someday, reads the footnotes first.
Line of the night
"Wait. You can sell a person? ... Oh. That's worse, somehow."
— Weekend Warrior (awarded by Livewire, over Footnote's objection that "chairs are temporary" was the better line)
Next time: the Cursed Finals special. NiKo waited sixteen Majors. FaZe lost three finals in eighteen months, then didn't even qualify. Liquid lost nine finals in a row. Sunshine has brought tissues for everyone. The Ledger has brought a spreadsheet of the tissues.
Footnote's footnotes (every "ding!" in tonight's episode, sourced)
- karrigan: benched by Astralis (Oct 11, 2016) and FaZe (Dec 16, 2018), re-signed Feb 15, 2021, Antwerp 2022 title, sold to Falcons Apr 20, 2026, Cologne 2026 title; 22 Majors, 8 orgs, 6 finals. Liquipedia: karrigan · Liquipedia: Team Falcons
- NaVi's 2010 IEM IV / ESWC 2010 / WCG 2010 wins; Zeus benched Aug 2016, won PGL Kraków 2017 with Gambit. Liquipedia: Natus Vincere · Liquipedia: PGL Kraków 2017
- Aleksib: ENCE's Aug 23, 2019 benching announcement; NiP benching June 14, 2023; NaVi June 30, 2023; Copenhagen 2024 (NaVi kept only b1t from the Stockholm lineup). Liquipedia: Aleksib · Liquipedia: PGL Copenhagen 2024
- dupreeh (record 5th Major, Paris 2023; benched June 22, 2023), Magisk's benchings, Vitality's signings of released players. Liquipedia: dupreeh · Liquipedia: Team Vitality
- mousesports' IEM Season VI roster (roman, zonixx, karrigan, zonic, gob b); zonic coaching Falcons at IEM Cologne 2026. Liquipedia: MOUZ · Liquipedia: zonic · Liquipedia: IEM Cologne 2026
- Challenge mechanics: 40-second bomb, 10 s defuse (5 s with kit, $400), movement speeds (M4 225, knife 250). The 12-second rotation is contrived. Stazione: Why you have to stop to shoot · Stazione: Space, trades, and the first kill
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: which discarded player is most likely to write the next "won anyway" chapter?
Argue it out in the discussion thread. That's where this actually gets resolved.
The Benches · season one
- The series
- Thrown Away, Won Anyway (you're here)
- Cursed Finals
- Borrowed Players
- The World Outside the Server
- The Map of the World
- Dynasties
- Scandals, Skins and Money
- The Game Right Now (finale)