TEK9 QuakeLive Rankings February - The Top 10

TEK9's inaugural QuakeLive ranking launches with a new number one and plenty of controversy from our expert panel.

February's top ten reflects the recent results we've seen at the IEM EU finals as well as Shane "rapha" Hendrixson's disappointing start to the year after an outstanding 2009. Defeat at the IEM American finals coupled with strong performances for his trans-Atlantic rivals have condemned the dominant player of the last twelve months to second place here but our panel was by no means unanimous.

Serious-Gaming's IEM EU champion, Alexey "Cypher" Yanushevsky, claims the top spot in Hendrixson's absence as the voters back the Eastern European youngster after a strong showing in Cologne. The Belarusian's disappointing Dreamhack results were clearly considered an anomaly by the majority of the panel but, with just four points separating the top three, the global finals are likely to hold the key to this dilemma.

For many of our panel, one of the big surprises of 2010 so far has been the offline improvement of Kevin "strenx" Baeza, former fnatic whipping boy and much-maligned "online hero". The French starlet played some great Quake at the EU finals and takes a deserved eighth place here for February.

Votes are collected each month from our community panel as well as (starting next month) the previous month's top ten players. The scoring system is simple, with 10 points for a first place vote, 9 for a second place vote and so on. Information on the voting panel can be found on page two along with some thoughts from each of them on how and why they voted.

1.		Alexey "Cypher" Yanushevsky		47 points
2.		Shane "rapha" Hendrixson		45 points
3.		Maciej "av3k" Krzykowski		43 points
4.		Anton "Cooller" Singov		34 points
5.		Tim "DaHanG" Fogarty		31 points
6.		Magnus "fox" Olsson		20 points
7.		Alessandro "stermy" Avallone		19 points
8.		Kevin "strenx" Baeza		18 points
9.		Richard "noctis" Gansterer		7 points
10.		Alexander "Z4muZ" Ihrfors		4 points