OTL sits down with Elijah Ballard as he opens up about how playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive sent him down a dark road. How a 16-year-old gamer turned into a compulsive gambler An estimated 26 million copies of the $15 game have been downloaded since its debut four years ago, helping make its manufacturer, Valve, the world's leading distributor of PC titles. 22-29 in Atlanta, can have million-dollar prize pools and as many as 27 million streaming viewers. Its biggest tournaments, such as the ELeague Major scheduled for Jan. The first-person-shooter game pits terrorists against counterterrorists and was played by an average of 342,000 people at once in 2016. They were about to move into a new multibillion-dollar world that had virtually no regulation - a burgeoning Wild West of gambling centered on a game they'd spent countless hours playing online, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Now, as they settled in under the shade of a palm tree, the men plotted their next fortune in esports. Fans would line up to meet them at conventions, and their endorsements were enough to make or break new games. Martin, who has 3.2 million subscribers on YouTube, was dabbling in real estate Cassell, whose videos are seen by his 10 million followers, had his own clothing line.

Both had already leveraged their fame to make themselves wealthy. The sky was a turquoise blue and the weather a perfect 86 degrees as the pair, known to their fans as TmarTn and Syndicate, found a quiet spot to chat. Trevor Martin and Tom Cassell had rocketed to fame as teens by streaming themselves playing video games and now, at 22, were two of the most recognized gamers on YouTube. One was clean-cut, with hypnotic green eyes, the other more rakish, with a British accent slightly muted from the time he'd spent in LA. 9, 2015, two young millionaires worked their way through a pool party on a hotel rooftop in the Hollywood Hills.

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