Corin Cole

Over the past few years Corin has had experience in numerous areas of competitive video gaming, and has a wide range of knowledge and experience in this area.

Currently working for Heaven Media Ltd. as Technical Editor, Corin has extensive experience in other areas of work, including IT consultancy, editorial work, project management and both the creation and management of gaming events, and is in particular a mine of knowledge about the CSS scene.

"April was far from a dull month, and the rankings seem to reflect it perfectly.

When someone asked me to guess the top3 for this month, I couldn't decide who would get the better votes, Crack or Reason, so to see them tied in second place is great, and should certainly add some tension to Lan79.

Lan79 is the only big feature of May, but it's quite big enough on its own, and we can expect to see some ranking changes come next month!"

Max "Goodeh" Silver

Max started out writing for Cadred in early 2006, since then he has helped transform the site into the largest Counter-Strike: Source news portal in the world, he is currently the editor in chief. Max has also worked as a freelance Journalist for other companies including the Championship Gaming Series.

He is renowned for his in depth interviews and event coverage and is an expert across the Counter-Strike: Source scene.

Crack Clan's rise up the table has continued and they put a disappointing i-series behind them with some fine results at the AW51 event. They find themselves joint second with a resurgent Reason who are the current reigning i-series champions, something that caught a lot of people by surprise. It is also interesting to see Redline in as a new entry at sixth spot as buzz about their online performances continues to grow. "

Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner

Appearing on WorldsOldestHuman.com isn't all that Paul has to his name, he is also one of the most knowledgable and experienced men in eSports.

With a CV that won't fit into an average word processor, Paul is a director of QuadV, a broadcasting company he founded at the start of 2007.

Paul has been commentating for six years now, has appeared on major television networks in three continents, and is one of the most in-demand experts in gaming.

"It’s nothing if not interesting this month with a big shift around in order. After several telling tournaments, the pecking order is finally jumbled up, although I wouldn’t say I agree with how it’s all panned out just yet.

Sitting on top once again however are the class of 2009 Verygames and that despite replacing their talisman RegnaM. Impressive as it is, they head in to every tournament now as overwhelming favourites, almost as heavily fancied as Team Dignitas were in 2008 when they won everything.

Behind them is Crack Clan and although I am sure some will dispute this position, there is no doubt that the stability they have had and the practice and hard work they have put in is finally paying off. They have to live up to expectations at LAN79 however if they are to truly challenge VG for number one, but my gut feeling is they can do it, particularly with the addition of the experienced HenryG.

The rest of the chasing pack aren’t far away and despite more changes amongst almost all of the teams, LAN79 will go a long way to showing just how accurate or inaccurate this months Top Ten really is.

As a foot note, its great to finally see FM Toxic reach the Top Ten, although sitting in 9th is bound to bring out the 9th-12th jokes again, they thoroughly deserve their place in the Top Ten after putting on some good performances in recent weeks. The real test for the new line up however comes this weekend and I will be watching to see if they can go even better."

Robert "KleX" Pinsler

Robert came in touch with eSports two years ago and has become more and more interested in the CSS scene since then, and also loves to play the game himself.

Last year he started working for the up and coming German eSports site eFever.de and helped to make it to what it is today. With some changes coming across in the last couple of weeks he quit this job after almost two years.

Nevertheless, Robert says that he will "give himself a go as a free agent from now on, so you better watch out!"  

"VeryGames is on top, Crack Clan is on the way to become top 3 in Europe and teams like Adastra or Roccat haven't shown their full potential as of yet. Welcome at the end of Mar... April. So, as you can see there have been only few changes on top of the Cadred Top10 this month. i36 and GSL have pretty much stated the obvious and underlined the top5 of March. However, the last five teams were no easy votes for me. Most notably MoD made it into it thanks to some good online results such as the victory against Eindbazen. To stay there they have to show that they can repeat this on lan soon though, otherwise they will pretty much drop all the way to the bottom again. Anyway, this whole stuff will be cold coffee just in a few days when the French LAN79 is coming along. It's been the event everyone's waiting for and hopefully all teams can live up to their expectations. Bonne chance!"

Jason "Jay" Atkins

Since starting his shoutcasting career at the now defunct Team Sportscast Network Jay is now a quadV shoutcaster.

Having covered a multitude of games his primary focus has been on CSS and CS 1.6. In the 2 years he has been covering CSS he has seen most if not all of Europe and North America's top teams duke it out in countless leagues and LAN's.

Jay has been around eSports for 5 years now, and broadcasting for 3. In his time he has seen leagues, teams and organisations both flurish and fail.

"With the recent Verygames performance at the Alienware Area 51 Invite to take into account and also Crack Clan's seemingly superhuman effort in almost coming back on Nuke in the final (also their victory over Verygames on the first day of play) I felt almost obliged to rank them #1 and #3 respectively. Reason coming off the back of their iSeries victory over Dignitas take my #2 spot while Dignitas slide to 5th. However I do feel with Sam now back and the whipped being cracked they will get back on top of their games and at least approach the form we have come to expect from them by the time LAN 79 roles around.

Everything below that is kind of a turkey shoot, with the revolving door seemingly now coming to a stop the teams seem have adjusted their rosters, folded or just been relatively inactive. I have Redline at number 7 but that's largely in part to watching the Nations Cup final this weekend just gone. LAN 79 is the big question mark but with the reduced prize fund and teams like 4-Kings apparently pulling out it seems no resolution is in sight for the muddled 5th to 12th spots. Perhaps with more EPS play and via an event like TeX we will get some definitive answers."

You'll be able to catch more thoughts from our panel with Cadred's May Rankings in a month's time!