The Story of the Sydney Peace Prize
The Sydney Peace Prize is Australia’s international prize recognising leading global voices who promote peace, justice and nonviolence. It is awarded with the support of the City of Sydney to individuals or groups who have made a significant contribution at an international level to building a more peaceful and just world. Past winners have included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Joseph Stiglitz, Patrick Dodson and the Black Lives Matter Global Network.
In 2023, sdy was invited to participate in the first CS2 tournament ever held in the history of sydney pools. This was ESL Challenger at DreamHack Winter 2023. The Monte team did well in the tournament and even went all the way to the finals, beating Eternal Fire and winning their first major LAN championship. This was the start of the incredible grind from sdy and Monte that would see them playing 44 official tournaments this year!
It was in this period that sdy really started to get into the game of Counter-Strike. He played countless games on the server, often spending up to 100 hours a week! He also did his research, learning as much as he could about the history of the game and its development. This helped him develop a unique style of play and eventually become one of the most recognized players in the world.
During this time, the Monte team also did some work on their own game, focusing primarily on team coordination and tactics. The result was that the Monte team became a much better team overall, and they started to win more matches than they lost. This would lead to more success in the future, and the Monte team began to win a lot of tournaments!
In the spring of 2024, the Monte team won the RES Eastern European Masters 2024. This would help them secure a spot at the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, and they took that tournament with ease! The Monte team were the second most popular CS2 team in the world at that point, and they continued to dominate the scene. However, the Monte team was not without its problems, and they would end up losing to both Astralis and Apeks in the semi-finals. Still, this was a great accomplishment from the team and a very important step towards securing their future in professional CS2.