After months without playing for a consistent stack, Akbar “SoNNeikO” Butaev is back with a new team heading into the final months of 2020.
The new team is calling themselves Live to Win, which is an apt description for a roster completely full of CIS veterans who are looking to bounce back to the top of the region.
Along with SoNNeikO, who split from Ninjas in Pyjamas back in July, Igor “iLTW” Filatov has also officially left Virtus.pro to join up after he was placed on the inactive roster along with the team’s other players last month.
Likewise, Alexander “Immersion” Hmelevskoy and Vasily “AfterLife” Shishkin are also leaving their previous teams, Natus Vincere and EXTREMUM, respectively. Both players were also moved to their team’s inactive rosters in the last month and are ready to get back in the fight.
The only player who was not directly tied to an organization in this announcement is Rostislav “fn” Lozovoi. Fn spent most of 2020 playing as a stand-in for various teams and stacks, including Gambit Esports and his most recent team, VP.Prodigy.
Only SoNNeikO and fn have officially joined the stack full-time, however. Immersion, AfterLife, and iLTW are all still under contract with their previous teams and none of them have been released publicly. More roster changes could end up happening depending on how those three player’s situations change over the coming weeks.
The team plans to compete in events starting in November, likely aiming for Omega League Season 2 or some smaller tournaments in the region.
