Hall of Fame: f0rest

An icon of Counter-Strike, one of the best players of CS 1.6, and a legend of CS:GO's formative years, f0rest is one of four inaugural inductees to HLTV's Hall of Fame.

Two clear names come to mind when considering who was the Greatest of All Time in Counter-Strike 1.6. Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg was simply unrivaled in his prime, dominating the game from 2007-2009, while Filip "⁠NEO⁠" Kubski's titles, longevity, and individual excellence made him absolutely unstoppable through much of the game's early years.

While f0rest believes the Pole edged him out in that race because of how much longer he played at the top, there is no argument about who finished in second.

f0rest's incredible mechanics and cockiness on the server made him lethal in his rise, and when combined with a long-time partnership with Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund that carried into a historic era in CS:GO, there is no question that the now 36-year-old is one of the franchise's all-time greats.

His innate talent was apparent early on, more so to others than himself. His early days playing Counter-Strike were spent LAN hopping around internet cafes in Sweden with his friends until his abilities were noticed by other Swedish players — mixed in with a healthy dose of skepticism.

"At some point people started calling me a cheater and I started to get some offers," f0rest tells HLTV. "I remember there was this internet cafe where I lived called Virtual Experience Online which had some well-known players at that time, you had cop, Tentpole, JAEGARN at some point as well.

"They asked me to come and try out for them and I was like, 'Hey, sure,' but then they said, 'But you have to come to the cafe and play,' and [...] they basically straight up said, 'We want you to play for us but we think you're cheating, so come here and play, and if you can perform, then join.' And that was the beginning of the whole journey of me realizing I might actually have some impact."

It was with Kristoffer "⁠Tentpole⁠" Nordlund that f0rest first broke out into proper competition with Embrace, a lineup that also featured Robert "⁠RobbaN⁠" Dahlström, at Optihack 2005. Only 16 years old then, f0rest beat NEO and Wiktor "⁠TaZ⁠" Wojtas's Pentagram lineup and finished as runners-up to Skolpojkarna (Swedish for "Schoolboys"), a mix-team that included f0rest's future fnatic teammate, Harley "⁠dsn⁠" Örwall.

That tournament marked a huge stride forward for f0rest in Sweden, but it wasn't until six months later that he played in an event that truly changed his mindset, one that he says kickstarted his whole career and set him on the path to greatness.

WEG 2005 Season 2, a month-long tournament in South Korea where some of the world's elite were absent, was that proving ground. It was f0rest's first-ever international tournament and the first big LAN he attended, and his BeGrip team (with Tentpole and RobbaN) came out of nowhere and won it all despite the three of them lacking any international experience.

"We beat all these amazing teams, all these amazing players that I've now seen and kinda like, 'Oh shit, they're good,' we went in there and we won that tournament," f0rest recalls.

"After that tournament, it felt like everything in my brain, everything surrounding Counter-Strike just unlocked. 'Okay, I can do this, I can do this [well].' My family was convinced, I was convinced, teammates around me were convinced, everything just made sense.

"From that point forward, there was no looking back. I just steamrolled ahead and now I had bigger ambitions where I wanted to be the best. I was not only playing Counter-Strike, I wanted to be the best Counter-Strike player."

It wasn't with BeGrip that f0rest would realize those ambitions, however, with other players on the team not wanting to travel frequently and forfeiting their spot in WEG Season 3 later the same year.

The team had its swan song with a sixth-place finish at CPL Winter 2005, and as the new year dawned, f0rest and Tentpole became a part of a brand-new fnatic lineup with dsn and Patrik "⁠cArn⁠" Sättermon.

It was a slow burn for that lineup to start 2006 as they made several deep runs and runners-up finishes, including second at ESWC and DreamHack Summer and third at CPL Summer and WSVG New York, but were stopped short of at the elite-tier events.

Ninjas in Pyjamas played spoiler in many of those tournaments and it was against that team that f0rest feels he faced his biggest rival — not NEO, despite the later conversations about who was the Greatest of All Time in 1.6 — in Marcus "⁠zet⁠" Sundström.

"He was the guy who I felt like I needed to beat to become something, he was my biggest rival I would say," f0rest said in a Reflections interview with Duncan "⁠Thorin⁠" Shields. "People were always comparing him with me, people were saying zeT was better this year or this year, and I was like, 'Hell no, he's not better than me.'"

That year zet had been better than f0rest, though, playing the very same cocky, in-your-face Counter-Strike that the latter would soon make his own. Tentpole's cerebral play was instead the large driving force for fnatic while f0rest's brute force and exceptional aim played second fiddle, but the pair still combined at the end of the year to bring home f0rest's first 1.6 Major title at CPL Winter.

There, fnatic beat NEO's Pentagram in the semis and Ola "⁠elemeNt⁠" Moum's MeetYourMakers in the final, with f0rest putting up a monstrous 31-12 K-D on Train to kick off the title-deciding series in a show of what would come in earnest the following year.

Tentpole departed fnatic at the start of 2007 and was replaced by Oskar "⁠ins⁠" Holm, and again it took some time for the team to regain their ground. They finished third at both Majors, IEM I and ESWC — both won by Pentagram — but it was then that f0rest leveled up to a world-beating level, able to single-handedly take over and dominate games.

He led fnatic's charge to multiple titles in the back half of the year, including GameGune, WEG e-Stars, and IEM II Global Challenge Los Angeles, and was named the best Swedish player of the year by a Fragbite community vote for his efforts.

Even f0rest's heroics weren't enough to make fnatic a consistent title contender in 2008, however, with many elite teams making changes to bolster their firepower while the Swedes tried to pluck on.

The team fell short at the biggest events, good for a few deep runs but typically only winning lower-tier events off the excellence of f0rest, and thus a significant overhaul was ushered in in 2009 with the organization taking the gamble on two young talents: GeT_RiGhT and Rasmus "⁠Gux⁠" Ståhl.

It didn't take long for fnatic to reap the rewards of their wager as the new team went on to have one of the most dominant years in Counter-Strike history, starting with victory at IEM III Global Finals and continuing with trophy lifts at ESWC, KODE5, DreamHack Summer, and IEM V Global Challenge Dubai.

f0rest was resurgent, and now his aggression worked in tandem with GeT_RiGhT's ability to close rounds for an almost unstoppable lethal pairing.

"I've always been a very arrogant player," f0rest told Thorin in the same Reflections interview. "When I play, I always see myself as THE best player, I have to think of myself as the best player on the server, so when I enter a server I will dominate you, that's what I'm thinking, I will own you.

"If you stand on this angle I'm just going to eat you up, and if you're not there I'm going to flank you and I'm going to kill everybody. And I'm going to keep abusing that, I'm going to keep abusing pushes, and I'm going to take aim duels against you because I feel so much better than you most of the time. Yeah, it didn't work all the time, but it did work a hell of a lot as well."

The partnership, which went on to become one of the longest-running in Counter-Strike history at 3,902 days, saw GeT_RiGhT eclipse an unmotivated f0rest to become fnatic's best player in 2010.

It wasn't nearly as dominant of a year as the previous amidst internal tensions with Gux, with fnatic scrouging a title at IEM V Global Challenge Shanghai while NAVI won all three Majors, and the Swedish lineup fractured at the end of the year after cArn and dsn tried to kick GeT_RiGhT.

f0rest stuck by the young Swede and the pair moved to SK at the start of 2011. It was a blockbuster move that reunited f0rest with RobbaN and the team dominated for part of the year, lifting trophies at DreamHack Summer, GameGune, and IEM VI Global Challenge New York and finally ending f0rest's six-year hunt for an ESWC Major crown.

ESC — NEO and TaZ's team — and NAVI regularly beat SK toward the latter stages of the year, though, and results in the next year started to spiral. The organization was dropped by its sponsor, opening up the door for f0rest and GeT_RiGhT to leave on the eve of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's release to join Ninjas in Pyjamas.

The early transition to the new title, while many top teams continued to compete in 1.6, was immensely fruitful for the new Swedish roster. They went on a historic 87-0 undefeated run to kick off competition in the new title, not dropping a single map on LAN from September 2012 to April 2013.

"I know people like to downplay it, early CS:GO, no teams, but at that time you had legit teams and we were unmatched," f0rest says, saying that the 87-0 streak is one of the few things he has taken time to reflect on.

"That's just the way it is. People like to say, 'People didn't want to [play], people didn't put in time,' sure they did, of course they did. And at some point, even at 10-0 or 15-0, teams come after you at that point because they want to be the team that beats you.

"Now you're hunted by the whole goddamn scene, they want to take your head off, they want to be crowned the Kingslayer, so now we have added pressure because every single team we're playing is a threat."

GeT_RiGhT and f0rest were the best and second-best players in the world, respectively, in those months, and Ninjas in Pyjamas won nine trophies in a row including ESWC 2012 and Copenhagen Games 2013.

Their unbeaten streak came to an end at SLTV StarSeries V Finals at the hands of VP, but even with that crushed, Ninjas in Pyjamas continued to dominate in 2013.

"Once we did lose, I stood up and I started applauding my teammates because we should not be disappointed," f0rest says.

"It was bound to happen, the question was not if, but when. This was the moment we lost and I started applauding and saying, 'Hey, we did one hell of a job, what we did throughout these months, no one will ever do this. Remember that. No one will ever do what we have done here.' It was a bittersweet moment, but holy hell... 87-0 rings good."

f0rest was named the second-best player of 2013 by HLTV, beaten only by GeT_RiGhT, but his form toward the end of the year had started to dip.

Ninjas in Pyjamas came up short in the final of the first two CS:GO Majors, DreamHack Winter 2013 and EMS One Katowice 2014, and by the time the third approached at ESL One Cologne 2014, were no longer the sure-fire title contenders they had been.

Despite that, they overcame the odds and went on a dream run in Germany to lift their sole CS:GO Major trophy, beating fnatic in the grand final.

The Swedish team's hegemonic reign firmly came to an end after that as the Frenchmen from LDLC and NEO's Virtus.pro regularly played spoiler in events.

Robin "⁠Fifflaren⁠" Johansson departed shortly after the Cologne victory, and NIP's runner-up finishes at the next two Majors, DreamHack Winter and ESL One Cologne 2015, marked the last time the team would make a Major final.

f0rest and GeT_RiGhT won a few more international titles over the years that followed, with f0rest notably having a resurgence in 2016 when Ninjas in Pyjamas won titles at IEM Oakland and DreamHack Masters Malmö, but regular success never returned.

It was a dreary and painful end to the careers of an illustrious pairing that dominated the scene for so long, but if things had just ended there, f0rest still could've walked away happy.

Instead, in 2020, an effort was made to reunite the historic NIP quartet on Dignitas, and this is one of the few things which f0rest pointed to as a regret.

"It was my first bad decision," he says. "I was too nostalgic about my former teammates. Yeah, sure, they're hungry. Me, GeT_RiGhT, friberg, Xizt, we have Fifflaren as coach, we're bringing this new young gun hallzerk. It's going to be banging. We won a lot, we can do this right?

"When I look back I do regret that a bit."

GeT_RiGhT retired from professional play after a short-lived stint in that team while f0rest continued to play on, but after that Dignitas roster came to an end in 2022 he never found his footing again. Despite still having the drive to play and compete professionally, no teams came calling, and in November 2024 he finally called time on his playing career.

Read more

f0rest announces retirement: "When I first thought about it, I felt sad. But I'm also very, very proud"

"I have been playing for like 17 or 18 years," he told HLTV. "I think I've done my fair share of playing."

Now, f0rest represents Ninjas in Pyjamas as a brand ambassador and content creator where he hopes to be more involved in the Swedish scene and help elevate new talent, looking to pass on a torch he said was never picked up by a new generation of talent save for a solo effort from Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin.

"We left enough room for somebody to pick it up and no one heeded the call. It's still laying on the ground. If you're an aspiring Swedish player out there, there's a torch laying on the ground, just pick it up and become the next big thing."

This feature is part of a series on HLTV's Hall of Fame 2024 inductees. For more information about this initiative, presented by 1xBet, you can read our introduction article.