ENCE signed Olek “hades” Miskiewicz, the Finish organization announced today.
The Polish AWPer, former AVEZ and Wisla Krakow player, will effectively replace star Aleksi “allu” Jalli, who has been taking a break from competitive CS:GO since May 12 and will continue throughout the summer as he’ll weigh his future.
Hades had been standing in for ENCE since allu stopped playing due to personal reasons and impressed the Finnish organization with his performances, particularly at LOOT.BET Season 9 in May, where he finished the competition with an outstanding 1.34 rating, helping ENCE to win their first tournament in nearly two years.
“It has been just over a month now with hades as a stand-in, which is a long time in the competitive environment,” ENCE’s head coach Eetu “sAw” Saha said in an official statement.
“With more and more officials coming up, it’s good to make a decision about the roster. Things have been looking good with hades, and from the beginning, it just felt that everything clicked both inside and outside of the game. It is a great pleasure to welcome hades into ENCE and to start working even harder together!”
Although it has been only a month since hades started playing for ENCE, he feels that he knows the players for much longer than he actually has and said the team chemistry is really good. The international team composed of Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer, Joonas “doto” Forss, Lotan “Spinx” Giladi, Paweł “dycha” Dycha, and hades are currently playing at the Elisa Invitational Summer and Funspark ULTI Europe playoffs, which is helping them to prepare for the ESL Pro League Season 14 in August.
As for allu, his third stint with ENCE has definitely ended. The organization put out an official statement thanking him for his services and released a tribute video with some of the Finnish AWPer’s best plays. The 29-year-old joined ENCE in March 2018 following international experiences with FaZe Clan and OpTic Gaming, and helped to take the Finnish organization to another level, playing an integral part on titles such as StarSeries i-League Season six in October 2018, DreamHack Open Winter in December 2018, and BLAST Pro Series Madrid in May 2019.
During these last three years, allu also helped ENCE to reach the grand finals of the IEM Katowice Major in March 2019, where they were defeated by Astralis. The Finnish AWPer, though, faced community backlash in 2020 as some of his former teammates such as Jere “sergej” Salo criticized his personality and said there was a reason why allu was the only remaining player from the original ENCE lineup that won trophies.
After an internal investigation, ENCE kept allu on the roster for 2021 and he was supposed to help Snappi guide the international project. Allu, however, stepped down in May after ESL Pro League Season 13, explaining that “hectic years with minimal break” had really taken a toll on him.
“Every story has an ending and today my time with ENCE’s CS:GO team has concluded,” allu told ENCE’s official website. “This is a day that brings me a lot of different emotions when thinking back. The past three years feel like they’ve gone past so quickly. So many things have happened, both good and not so good. But I want to cherish the positives.”
“It has been an honor to bring a Finnish organization to the top and to have achieved so much here. Particularly because of all the people I’ve had the chance to do it with, both players and everyone behind the scenes. I would like to thank all my past teammates, especially my former coach Twista and of course everyone at ENCE. The biggest thank you goes to all the fans, who have been with us through thick and thin. I’m eager to see what the future holds and where it takes me.”
Allu has been playing professionally since 2010 during the Counter-Strike 1.6 days and became one of the best AWPers in the world in CS:GO. He also came close to winning a Major with Ninjas in Pyjamas at the ESL One Katowice in March 2015 and certainly helped to put Finnish Counter-Strike on the map.
For now, he remains under contract with ENCE and is allowed to “contemplate his options” during his break from the game.
