Gambit put primary line-up "on hold"; open to offers for players

After a lengthy period of inactivity of Gambit's main roster, the organization announced that the project has been put on hold until "closer to the end of 2019".

Gambit played their last official match back in February, when they lost 2-1 to Epsilon in the semi-final of the ECS S7 Challenger Cup qualifier 3. Since then, Vladyslav "⁠bondik⁠" Nechyporchuk departed to Winstrike while Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov was seen playing with Gambit's secondary lineup, Gambit Youngsters.

Gambit are ready to say farewell to Dosia and co.

Now, it was finally revealed that the main roster has been "temporarily put on hold", with the project set to continue "closer to the end of 2019". With that in mind, Gambit announced that they are ready to discuss transfer opportunities for their players.

Konstantin Pikiner, Gambit's Chief Gaming Officer explained the decision with the lack of potential candidates for the team which would meet their requirements:

"You have to keep in mind that we have to adhere to multiple diverse criteria to form this line-up. For instance, apart from high individual skill and competitive experience requirements, there has to be a psychological compatibility between players. Our pool of potential candidates is getting significantly narrower, since we are assembling a Russian speaking line-up. With that in mind there's only a handful of suitable candidates. Over the past two months we've been conducting a series of negotiations, however, a suitable combination of players hasn't formed to this day. There isn't a lot of time left until the beginning of a qualification cycle for the Major, therefore we made a decision not to settle on a suboptimal solution. Our goal is to assemble a competitive line-up until the end of 2019 and to support it to the best of our ability.

"Plans regarding our primary line-up have no implications on Gambit Youngsters. Youth squad will resume practicing and competing according to its existing schedule." -Konstantin Pikiner, Gambit Chief Gaming Office

Gambit is open to offers for the following players:

Mihail "⁠Dosia⁠" Stolyarov
Rustem "⁠mou⁠" Telepov
Nikolay "⁠mir⁠" Bityukov
Dmitry "⁠dimasick⁠" Matvienko

Meanwhile, the organization will be represented by Gambit Youngsters, their second team, which has received an invite to the CIS Minor Closed Qualifier following a good placing at Copenhagen Games 2019. Ax1Le's situation is currently unclear, he is expected to be joining the Youngsters squad as he was seen playing with them earlier this month instead of Danil "⁠Porya⁠" Poryadin, but hasn't been officially unveiled yet.

Gambit Youngsters feature the following line-up:

Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov
Timofey "⁠interz⁠" Yakushin
Danil "⁠Porya⁠" Poryadin
Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov
Anton "⁠supra⁠" Tšernobai
Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov (stand-in)