Today ENCE is officially signing Elias “Jamppi” Olkkonen, Finland’s most talented Counter-Strike prospect, to create a six-man roster
For ENCE, Counter-Strike is deep in its core. While our team has seen glimpses of hope with improvement in performance recently, we have all been disappointed with the results over the last months. Our goal is to be extremely competitive and fight neck-to-neck with the world’s best. To rectify the current lack of results, we have signed Elias “Jamppi” Olkkonen to a two-year contract.
"This is a chance I’ve been waiting to get and I’m hoping we can make ENCE fans happy with great results in the future”
- Elias “Jamppi” Olkkonen
Our mission has always been to build a long-term, sustainable, winning culture. Today’s Counter-Strike esports is a hard fought and straining world, taking its toll on the players mentally and physically. We are taking a new step in fighting the fatigue to improve performance by moving to a six-man roster composition.
“It has been a rocky road in the past few months, which has caused issues with the players mentally and affected their performance. We as an organization have to make steps towards further professionalizing the environment in a multitude of ways. Our results have been very disappointing, so changes needed to happen. Signing Elias to the team was an opportunity we couldn’t pass on and he deserves the chance to showcase his talent to the world.”
- Niklas "Willkey" Ojalainen, GM at ENCE
Elias is an exceptionally talented young prospect, who made waves playing for SJ Gaming for over one and a half years. He has an impressive 1.18 career rating in HLTV.org statistics while making his way through the lower tiers of Counter-Strike. He is best known for his flashy and highlight worthy AWP multikill plays, but is very versatile and doesn’t shy away from picking up the rifles.
We acknowledge the fact that he is currently barred from competing in VALVE sanctioned competitions due to his alleged connection to a VAC banned Steam account. ENCE stands behind Elias in his pursuit to overturn the decision and we believe the consequences he has faced are far too steep. We as an organization are urging the Counter-Strike Professional Players’ Association (CSSPA) to take his case seriously not only for Elias, but for its implications on similar cases in the future, which may deny talented individuals from a chance at a professional career for alleged mistakes years earlier, while in many cases underaged.
Giving Elias the opportunity to compete against the best despite the situation was an easy decision for us to make. He is an incredibly talented young individual, who deserves the chance and will surely elevate our level of play.
“I’m very happy to be joining ENCE today and can’t wait to get our games started. To be a part of a lineup with so many merited and accomplished players is an honour and I will surely keep on learning new things and improving as a player moving forward. This is a chance I’ve been waiting to get and I’m hoping we can make ENCE fans happy with great results in the future”
- Elias “Jamppi” Olkkonen, ENCE’s newest CS:GO player
Line-up plan for the upcoming tournaments
The team has set up a plan for the six-man lineup until mid-June for rosters in different tournaments. The situation will be evaluated later as the schedule continues to develop along with the current global health situation and its effects on competitive Counter-Strike.
Road to Rio line-up
Aleksi “allu” Jalli
Miikka “suNny” Kemppi
Jere “sergej” Salo
Jani “Aerial” Jussila
Sami “xseveN” Laasanen
DreamHack Masters Spring and BLAST Premier Qualifier
Aleksi “allu” Jalli
Miikka “suNny” Kemppi
Jere “sergej” Salo
Jani “Aerial” Jussila
Elias “Jamppi” Olkkonen
More on the addition of Jamppi on ENCE TV
“I’m happy to add a young hungry player in Elias to give the team a new spark after a demanding and very disappointing few months results wise. We’ve changed many things in our practice, preparation and execution of our gameplan in the past - but just haven’t been able to extract our full potential. We are also moving forward with Miikka taking up the in-game leader role and allu becoming his wingman. Hopefully we can enable Elias to get the best possible chance to show what he can do”
- Slaava “Twista” Räsänen, Head Coach of ENCE CS:GO
Follow Jamppi on Social Media
http://twitter.com/jamppicsgo
http://instagram.com/eliasolkkonen
