Play a game of DA vs a bot, after the first game the item positions seem to reset so they are removed, two bots join before the client reconnects and both are removed. Server log says that "player.mdl" is not precached which it is in worldspawn.
Found out that worldspawn calls gmapn_init which calls gmapn_game_start if the matchless flag is set. That's probably why and the solution is to start the game at earliest 0.3s after worldspawn.
Play a game of DA vs a bot, after the first game the item positions seem to reset so they are removed, two bots join before the client reconnects and both are removed. Server log says that "player.mdl" is not precached which it is in worldspawn.