Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo – Full Player Profile

Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo is currently the number one ranked Brazilian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player who is currently the member of the Brazilian CS:GO giants, SK Gaming. His career in Counter-Strike eSports competitions can be described as one of the most successful careers ever.  The big part of that success came with his current team.

During his career, he played for many teams. However no team came close to achieve what he has been doing with SK Gaming since the start of 2017. However, at one time, his career, as well as the career of other SK Gaming players, was plagued by controversies and even today many are calling upon those controversies in order to diminish the success that FalleN and SK Gaming had in the CS:GO competitions.

Biography

FalleN was born on May 30, 1991, and he is currently one of the oldest players in the entire competition. With his 26 years, many consider FalleN to be the veteran of the competition. However, FalleN has never played better, and it does seem that they will be slowing down anytime soon.

Until 2009, playing Counter-Strike was just a hobby for FalleN, but once his friends asked him to join their team, Firegamers, he decided that it was time to make a shift from amateur player to professional CS:GO, player. In the end, that turned out to be possibly the best decision that he has ever made.

FalleN started his professional eSports career back in the days of Counter-Strike 1.6. However soon that version of the game would be replaced with new editions. During the three years, he experienced some solid success while playing CS 1.6 and he decided to start his own academy program called Games Academy that would teach kids and others how to play Counter-Strike.

The growth of the Games Academy was not a quick one, and in the beginning, there were only fifteen students in the Academy. However, the word started spreading very quickly and thanks to his results in CS competitions, his name was everywhere. Eventually, the Academy will feature more than 1500 students at one point.

Professional Career

When it comes to FalleN’s career in eSports, it can be divided into three different periods. The first period was the start of his career when Counter-Strike 1.6 was still very popular. However, with the introduction of Counter-Strike: Source, CS 1.6 was replaced in the eSports competitions and with that, the second period of his career started.

A couple of years after CS: Source, the new edition of the game was released called Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and the CS eSports competition immediately made a switch from CS: Source to CS:GO. With the introduction of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive game in the eSports, the third period of his career has started.

In the first stage of his career, FalleN did not have that much success, and that is completely understandable because it was his first time facing such a competitive CS 1.6 gameplay. During those years while he played CS 1.6 professionally, he played for several different teams among which are crashers, Soldats, FireGamers Mandic, compLexity Gaming, Mandic, semXorah, and in the end playArt. Playing CS 1.6 was not very much successful for FalleN, so he gladly made a switch to CS: Source when it came out. However, CS: Source was not present a long time in the eSports competition for FalleN to make some significant impact.

Playing For Different Teams

He did play for three different teams during that period. However teams were not able to adjust to the new game and the new meta in time when Valve announced that CS: Source will be replaced once again, this time with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. During CS: Source FalleN played for vsONE, TargetDown, and TD.CoL.

First real big success for FalleN came when he made a switch to CS:GO. In 2013, he joined payArt once again. However he did not stay a long time there because he soon joined ProGaming.TD. After that, he also played for KaBuM! e-Sports, Games Academy, KaBuM.TD, Keyd Stars and most recently for two teams that marked his entire career, Luminosity Gaming, and SK Gaming.

After controversies with the Luminosity Gaming management over their contracts, all Luminosity players from that time, including FalleN decided to leave the team.  They decided to join SK Gaming while still being under contract with their previous team. The things were so bad at one point both teams were kicked out of the tournament because of those problems.

Personal Achievements

The biggest achievements that FalleN had in his career came with SK Gaming, especially since the start of 2017. SK Gaming has always been a CS:GO powerhouse. However their form in 2017 is something that has not been seen before in this competition.

In the last five tournaments, in which SK Gaming participated with FalleN as their member, they managed to win all five tournaments. Most recently, they won the first place at the ESL One: Cologne 2017. There they did not have any serious opponent who might harm them in the competition.

Before that, SK Gaming also won the title at the Esports Championship Series Season 3. There they defeated FaZe Clan in the final. Before that, they played against FaZe Clan once again. However that time it was for the title at the Intel Extreme Masters XII – Sydney. The first tournament that they won in that series of titles was played back in April 2017. There they participated at the cs_summit. At that tournament, SK Gaming defeated Gambit Esports for the title and the $100,000 share of the prize pool.

SK Gaming Team

Before the team became SK Gaming, they had some very good success as Luminosity Gaming. In 2016, Luminosity Gaming managed to win the second place at the Esports Championship Series Season 1 finals. There G2 Esports defeated them. However, before that, Luminosity Gaming together with FalleN participated in two tournaments, ESL Pro League Season 3 and MLG Major Championship: Columbus 2016.

In both of those two tournaments, Luminosity Gaming managed to reach the finals. At ESL Pro League Season 3 they faced G2 Esports, and in a very close match, Luminosity won the title. In their second tournament, in the finals of MLG Major Championship: Columbus 2017 they faced Natus Vincere. However Luminosity was too strong for them as they swept their way to the title.

In the end, Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo has been present in the CS eSports scene for a long time. During those years, he has evolved his game to the level where majority of people believe that he might actually be one of the best CS:GO players in the world, if not the best.