Sean Ryan Gares, better known as sgares or Seang@res, is an American professional player. In December 2016, he was released from TSM over a player rights controversy and played for Misfits between January 2017 and January 2018.
Starting from local Arizona teams before 2010, when he joined Ruins, Gares distinguished himself for being one of the most aggressive AWPers in North America. During his tenure in Ruins, the team was undefeated and won ESEA-M, moving up to ESEA-I. Sean and his mates played at Arbalet Cup in Dallas placing in Group B with SK Gaming, mTw and lions. Ruins began to have internal problems after the tournament, so Sean moved to Loaded in early August of that year, whose captain and in-game leader was ex-Evil Geniuses Nazar "steno" Vynnytsky. Vynnytsky's would introduce IGL'ing to Sean's life. In October of the same year, the roster was acquired by Damage Incorporated. Composed by Sean Gares, Steno, Paul "pauLy" Guerboyan, Scott "evolution" Cavallero and Liridon "quas" Ademaj, the team's first challenge was IEM V NYC. The team did great, and finished 3rd losing to EG in the semi-final. In early 2011, Nazar "steno" Vynnytsky left the team and Gares went on to join Full Gaming as an IGL with his former teammate from Ruins Kory "Semphis" Friesen and the new talent in NA, Braxton " swag" Pierce. They would play together ESEA Invite Season 9 with Full Gaming where they would finish 2nd. Sean then joined Back2Back in 2012, with Kory "Semphis" Friesen, Brennan "ele1Nt" Webster, Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert and Braxton "swag" Pierce. Sean Gares being the IGL, this team won ESEA Invite Season 10 and would win ESEA Invite Season 11 under the name Maximum Effort. Gares gained fame when came out in 2012. He joined Area 51 in early August 2012 with Sam "DaZeD" Marine, former CS: Source player; Spencer "Hiko" Martin, Semphis and Josh "PineKone" O'Connor. They would win the ESWC 2012 Na Qualifier, the first CSGO tournament they played. After swapping Pinekone with Trey "tck" Martin they would play ESWC 2012 where they would lose to VeryGames and finish 3rd. They would later win ESEA Invite Season 12. Sean and his teammates moved to team 4Nothing for 1 month and then to Lurking and Working. After 4 months and some roster changes, in May 2013 they were acquired by Quantic Gaming and in August they moved to Complexity Gaming with a roster including Spencer "Hiko" Martin, Braxton "swag" Pierce, Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert, Kory "Semphis" Frieson. This team had many impressive finishes, including a 3rd-4th-place finish at Dreamhack Winter 2013, the first ever CS:GO Major. Complexity was then considered the best Counter Strike team in North America. However, losing Pierce cost them that title. He was replaced by Todd "anger" Williams. This team remained a close second. In the summer of 2014, Cloud9 acquired the Complexity roster. They dropped Williams and acquired Mike "shroud" Grzesiek. Martin was disappointed with the team's lackluster results and left the team in January 2015, replaced by Shahzeb "ShahZam" Khan. Things went pretty poorly until iBUYPOWER was banned in March 2015. This left Cloud9 as the best in North America. Cloud9 replaced Khan and Friesen with Ryan "fREAKAZOiD" Abadir and Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham. This was Gares' most famous lineup as in game leader and captain of Cloud9. With his strong ability to read the enemy and, he led his team to the ESL ESEA Pro League Season Finals, Faceit 2015 stage 2 and the Electronic Sports World Cup 2015. Cloud9 then won almost every event in North America, acquiring a huge fan base. The team's performances dropped off over the year until Gares left the team in November 2015, announcing that he would take a break. However, in January 2016 he returned to the game with his new team Echo Fox made up of A2z, Moe, Tck, and Ryx. In April the roster would improve by swapping A2z, Moe and Tck for Freakazoid, ShaZham and Roca. This team qualified for the 2 million dollarE-League on TBS. Later that year in October EchoFox showed a poor performance at ELeague Season 2 and got offered to leave the organization and pursue other offers. In December 2016 Gares signed with TSM but got kicked from the team just a week later over a players rights movement. However, in the beginning of 2017, Misfits would acquire Sean Gares, ShaZham, Skyler "Relyks" Weaver, Russel "Twistzz" Dulken and Hunter "SicK" Mims. The team would play a lot of qualifiers and would play DreamHack Las Vegas where they didn't pass the group stage, and IBuypower Invitational 2017- Spring. In April they swapped Twistzz and Relyks for AmaneK and Devoduvek, 2 players from France, chosen by Sean Gares mainly because of stats in HLTV. The team saw a lot of improvement, finishing 10th in ESL Pro League Season 5, qualifying for the Eleague Boston Major in 2018 and finishing in the top 4 in ESL Pro League Season 6.
