Halo Infinite Pro Players and The Championship Series

Key Points

  • Halo has entered the Esports arena.

  • You'll learn who the current top Halo Infinite Pro players are.

  • Halo Infinite Pro Players and their teams are identified.

  • Tournament rules and gameplay are crucial to understand.

If 20 years ago, someone told you that you could make money playing video games for a living, you probably wouldn’t believe them. More often than not, your parents likely told you to stop playing video games and get a job. Now, Halo Infinite pro players are commonplace.

The video game landscape has changed since the early days of the original Xbox. In 2001, you had to be in the same room as a friend to play the same game. Halo Infinite pro players in 2022 play together — even if one of them is on the other side of the world.

Opportunities with video games have evolved as well. There are many ways to monetize your passion for gaming. Besides getting into game development to work behind the scenes, you can now broadcast your gaming skills on the internet for gamers across the globe to watch. 

Maybe you don’t want to settle for casual gameplay. Perhaps you want the world to see your skills and compete against other like-minded individuals. Well, there’s an avenue for that too.

Professional gaming has been around since October 1972, but it didn’t become a viable career path until the ‘90s when the internet and network technology took off. This spurred small and large-scale local area network parties and tournaments.

Halo then joined the growing list of games entering the esports arena. 

Halo Enters The Esports Arena

Players and business people alike knew that Halo: Combat Evolved would usher in a new world of gaming. Esports was already a rising industry with other first-person shooter games like Quake.

Red Annihilation was a Quake event in 1997 and one of the first nationwide video game competitions. That was long before Microsoft’s Xbox was ever conceptualized. It stood to reason that a game like Halo would see similar success.

Halo players found themselves in multiple leagues at the start of this esports era. Several different leagues supported major tournaments. Some didn’t last as long as others, and some didn’t pay as well. One thing was certain: Hardcore gamers wanted in on the action.

Cyberathlete Professional League

Halo's first cash prize tournament was the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) in the winter of 2003, with a payout of $30,000.

CPL was founded in 1997 with Quake and Counter-Strike as the primarily supported games. Unfortunately, CPL ceased operations in 2008 due to a saturated field of competing leagues. In 2010, a group out of Singapore acquired CPL and they resumed tournaments until 2014. 

Major League Gaming

Eventually, Major League Gaming (MLG) took over Halo events. MLG supported multiple big and small tournaments for Halo and other games. MLG offered significant cash prizes to tournament winners. Their prizes reached up to $200,000!

MLG hosted televised broadcasts of Halo 2 tournaments in the mid-2000s, putting Halo esports on the map.

Unfortunately, Halo wasn’t attracting the viewership MLG wanted. The esports giant had to remove Halo from its long list of supported games and replace it with a game that would bring in views. Where did that leave Halo in the esports arena?

Enter 343 Industries.

Halo Infinite main player rising from crouchPhoto source: Halopedia.org

Halo Championship Series

343 Industries, in association with Electronic Sports League (ESL), launched the Halo Championship Series (HCS) in 2014.

The way it works is this: As more fans watch tournaments, the grand prize payout increases, bringing a steady salary along with it. This means playing a video game professionally is a viable career path, not just a silly pastime. Halo has a good number of both professional and amateur players.

Top Pro Players

Halo is a household name in gaming. Almost anyone who has picked up an Xbox controller has played at least one iteration of Halo. Its popularity seemed to know no limits when it first launched.

As of this writing (mid-December 2022), Halo Infinite had 545,025 players enjoying its merits in the last 30 days. To give an idea of how exclusive professional gamers are, there are 706 professional Halo players. That’s less than one percent of its player base!

Justin Deese 

Justin Deese — or iGotUrPistola, as those in the gaming world know him — began his career in esports when he was only 15 with Halo 2. He played in two events during the 2007 MLG Meadowlands tournament. One was the team game where his team placed 25th-32nd. The other event was a solo free-for-all (FFA) event where his skills as a gamer shined.

Justin Deese has accumulated 19 major event wins over the years. 2010 and 2011 saw Pistola claim back-to-back MLG National Championship titles, cementing his place amongst the best Halo players. He’s played for multiple teams including Envy and Optic Gaming.

Paul Duarte

Paul Duarte — SNAKEBITE, as he’s best known in the gaming world — started his professional career in 2006 when he was only 11 years old. He attended the 2006 MLG New York Playoffs and played in the FFA for Halo 2 since he was unable to sign onto a team.

Duarte placed in the top 64 but wouldn’t rise to prominence until a few years later when he and his team (the Warriors) placed seventh at the MLG Dallas National Championship and earned $10,000.

In 2011, Duarte and his team attended the MLG Providence Championships and got second place. They took home $60,000 that time. Duarte is now with the Sentinels where he reunited with his teammate from the Warriors, Royal2.

Halo Infinite game sceneryPhoto source: Halopedia.org

Tony Campbell Jr.

Tony Campbell JR.goes by “Lethul” when he’s gaming. He wasn’t a successful Halo player in his first couple of years on the scene. His first event was the MLG Columbus in 2010 with his team “Fire Breathing Franks.” They placed 26th.

However, that all changed in 2014 when he played with the Evil Geniuses to replace iGotUrPistola. They took home third place at UGC St. Louis and first place at two subsequent events. They’d go on to win 14 titles across North America and Campbell Jr. consistently places near the top of the Halo ranking system.

Campbell Jr. now plays for the Sentinels alongside Royal2 and Snakebite.

Eric Wrona

Best known by his gamertag SNIP3DOWN, Eric Wrona began his Halo career in 2008 with a seventh-place finish for the Halo 3 MLG Meadowlands tournament. He went on to win over 20 major victories, including the 2008 MLG National Championship and the 2016 HCS Pro League Finals.

Wrona was 17 when he began his competitive career and now has over 14 years of experience starting with Halo 3 to Halo 5: Guardians. He eventually left the Halo pro scene in favor of Apex Legends to play for FaZe Clan.

Tom Ryan

Ogre2 is a name you are familiar with if you follow competitive Halo. This player (Tom Ryan) is regarded as the best and most successful Halo player of all time. He came to prominence along with his brother (Ogre1) in 2004. The pair attended their first major tournament, Halo50K. Their team, Shoot to Kill (STK), won second place, losing to The Dream Team (TDT). That would be the first, but not last, time Ryan's name would make esports headlines.

It’s difficult to forget the name of the player that won the National Championships in 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010, and 2011. Ryan eventually retired from gaming and transitioned into coaching teams in 2017. Ogre2 holds the world record for most wins (40) in Halo tournaments and console esports.

Halo Esports Teams

Halo esports began to struggle with viewership between 2010 and 2012 with Halo 4 and Halo: Reach. Viewership continued to falter with Halo 5’s Halo Championship. 2017’s World Championship for Halo 5 saw a total of 69,923 viewers.

The 2019 HCS Finals only reached an audience of 22,562 and by 2019, the Halo viewers peaked at 24,503 for a casual tournament on Twitch. The Halo Championship Series then became inactive.

In 2021, the Halo Championship Series relaunched with Halo Infinite and originally included nine teams. Those teams were Cloud9, Envy, eUnited, FaZe Clan, Fnatic, G2 Esports, Natus Vincere (NaVi), Sentinels, and Spacestation Gaming.

Luckily, the HCS has grown since its relaunch, reaching 267,279 viewers for the HCS Kickoff in Raleigh, North Carolina. There are now hundreds of teams in the professional gaming arena for Halo Infinite. The top 10 teams, based on overall winnings, are as follows: 

  • Chiefs Esports Club: $44,200

  • Natus Vincere (NaVi): $48,750

  • Gamers First: $52,100

  • Oxygen Esports: $58,900

  • Acend: $94,400

  • eUnited: $164,600

  • FaZe Clan: $176,800

  • Sentinels: $264,960

  • Cloud9: $612,800

  • OpTic Gaming: $722,800

Halo space vehiclePhoto source: Halopedia.org

Tournament Rules/Format and Gameplay

343 Industries and ESL have very specific rules for Halo Infinite games in a competitive setting. These rules cover everything from map rotation, game modes played, number of players on a team, all the way to which maps will be played for which game modes.

When it comes to game modes for tournament play, Halo players have to be on top of their game for every game mode as a tournament will cycle through all of them.

Capture the Flag

Capture the Flag (CTF) is a returning game mode from previous Halo installments that pits two teams against each other to acquire points by stealing each other’s flag. There are no points for killing opposing players. Communication is key in this format because finding the opponent that stole your team’s flag is paramount.

Killing the flag carrier and standing near your stolen flag will return it to your base, forcing the opposing team to attempt another steal. It’s worth noting that flag carriers are weaker than other players in the game to make retrieving the flag easier.

The first team to obtain five flag captures is the winner.

Oddball

This is a straightforward game mode, although difficult to accomplish. The objective is for your team to hold onto the ball for a collective 100 points. The first team to do so wins. One point is added to your score for every second a teammate is holding the ball. As soon as it’s dropped, the timer stops.

To be the first to accumulate 100 points, strategy is paramount in Oddball. Ball holders will have entire teams hunting them down (although the teams can have no more than four members), so defense needs to be heavily practiced.

Slayer

As far as straightforward games go, Slayer takes the cake. The objective is simple: kill more opponents than the opposing team. There are two ways to win in the Slayer game mode. Either be the first team to accumulate 50 points (which you get from killing players) or have the most collective kills once the clock gets to zero.

The time limit in a ranked game of Slayer is 12 minutes, which is plenty of time to acquire the required 50 points.

Strongholds

The last and final game mode requires your team to acquire 250 points before your opponents. This is accomplished by holding two of the three different zones (strongholds). Each second that you maintain control of the zone equals one point for your team.

You’ll acquire two points for each second if your team controls all three strongholds.

However, no points are rewarded when a stronghold is contested or if your team steps out of the zone.

Halo Infinite advertisement and Xbox controller

King of the Hill

This type of game is a little different than the others. While the other objective modes have stationary objectives, King of the Hill throws a curve ball and utilizes a moving objective. Once a hill is captured, meaning the “capture meter” is filled, it will move to another location.

This requires both teams to search it out while allowing the losing team to regroup and catch up. 

The first team to acquire four points or have more points than the opposing team at the end of the time limit wins the game.

Game Mode Order

Some game modes are played twice depending on how many matches are played in a tournament. It’s important to note that the Halo Championship Series categorizes the game modes as either Slayer or Objective. Objective refers to any of the game modes that aren’t Slayer, and the game modes are decided at each tournament.

During a regular season and the playoffs, there are five matches, and the order of game modes for those matches is as follows:

  • Game 1: Objective

  • Game 2: Slayer

  • Game 3: Objective

  • Game 4: Objective

  • Game 5: Slayer

In the case of the finals in a series, there are seven matches. The order of game modes is as follows:

Xbox gamer places Halo Infinite

Map Selection

Rules extend to map selection as well. Certain game modes are allotted specific maps to be played. Before a map is decided, one team (the home team) will ban a map, then the opposing team will ban a map. Only then will the home team choose the first map to play.

Once there is a clear winner from Game 1, said winner will ban a map for Game 2, and the loser will choose the next map to be played. The previously played map is not allowed to be selected next, but it can be selected in a future game along with previously banned maps.

The game modes and their available maps are as follows:

Capture the Flag:

  • Aquarius

  • Bazarar

  • Catalyst

Oddball

  • Live Fire

  • Recharge

  • Streets

King of the Hill

  • Live Fire

  • Recharge

  • Streets

Slayer

  • Aquarius

  • Bazarar

  • Live Fire

  • Recharge Streets

Strongholds

  • Live Fire

  • Recharge

  • Streets

Gamer looks at TV with Halo Infinite advertisement

Final Thoughts

Playing video games professionally is more lucrative than ever with access to Twitch.tv and YouTube. You can showcase your skills or join a professional team to push your skills to their limits and prove how good you are at the game.

Professional players live a life most people only dream about. They make an exorbitant amount of money playing a video game they love and showing off their skills to the world. They become role models who casual players look up to and emulate.

It’s not a profession you have to wait to dive into until after high school either. A lot of players start when they’re 15 or younger. Most professional leagues have the minimum age set at 18, but all that time before your 18th birthday can be spent fine-tuning your skills.

Pick up your controller or grab your mouse and keyboard and become the best player you can be. You could be the next Ogre2!

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