Counter-Strike legend TaZ announces retirement after 20-year career GamezillaPolish Counter-Strike icon Wiktor \u2018TaZ\u2019 Wojtas has announced his retirement from competition with immediate effect. The 36-year-old announced his decision in a brief Twitter post with the caption: \u201cI retire. See you around\u201d. He did not mention his future plans or whether he intends to remain involved in esports. The announcement comes just two days after HONORIS ceased all operations due to financial issues. The organization had been created by TaZ and his longtime friend and teammate Filip \u2018NEO\u2019 Kubski in 2020 with the goal of nurturing young Polish talent. Oftentimes, TaZ and NEO ended up covering the team\u2019s expenses out of their own pocket. \u201cThe players and associates always received their salaries on time and could count on the organization\u2019s support,\u201d HONORIS said in the statement announcing the organization\u2019s closure. TaZ was one of the oldest and most experienced players still active in the Counter-Strike scene, with a career that went back to as early as 2001. He and NEO were part of what was dubbed the \u2018Golden Five\u2019, the Polish team that dominated the Counter-Strike 1.6 circuit between 2006 and 2008. During his time playing under organizations like Team Pentagram, Meet Your Makers and Frag eXecutors \u2013 and sometimes while competing under no organization at all \u2013 TaZ won some of the biggest 1.6 tournaments in the world, including World Cyber Games 2006, 2009 and 2011, ESWC 2008, WEG e-Stars 2010 and 2011, and Intel Extreme Masters I and VI. TaZ remained at the top following the transition to CS:GO, though it would take him some time to lift trophies again. Between 2014 and 2017, his Virtus.pro team won several titles, including the EMS One Katowice 2014 Major, ELEAGUE Season 1 and DreamHack Masters Las Vegas 2017. They also came close to winning a second Major title at ELEAGUE Major Atlanta 2017, but lost in the final to Astralis. In 2018, after a run of mixed results, TaZ was benched by Virtus.pro. He went on to play for Team Kinguin, devils.one and Aristocracy before creating HONORIS, whose team peaked at No. 43 in the world rankings. CS:GO community pays tribute to TaZ On Twitter, many community figures paid tribute to TaZ and thanked him for his contributions to the game over the last two decades. \u201cSad news in the world of Counter-Strike,\u201d said Vitality coach Danny \u2018zonic\u2019 S\u00f8rensen, who faced TaZ\u2019s teams many times during his playing career. \u201c[An] impressive and long career, my friend. Poland and the world are proud of you!\u201d French CS:GO legend Kenny \u2018kennyS\u2019 Schrub said: \u201cHappy retirement. You had an amazing career, legend! Prague will forever be one of my best memory as a player.\u201d BIG captain Johannes \u2018tabseN\u2019 Wodarz said: \u201cLegend. Thanks for all the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Counter-Strike legend TaZ announces retirement after 20-year career GamezillaPolish Counter-Strike icon Wiktor \u2018TaZ\u2019 Wojtas has announced his retirement from competition with immediate effect. The 36-year-old announced his decision in a brief Twitter post with the caption: \u201cI retire. See you around\u201d. He did not mention his future plans or whether he intends to remain involved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}