s1mple claims StarSeries S5 MVP award

Na`Vi superstar Aleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev is the winner of the StarSeries i-League Season 5 Most Valuable Player (MVP) award by HLTV.org and betway.

The Ukrainian prodigy capped off a phenomenal tournament with a team-leading 1.47 rating in the final against NRG to help Natus Vincere to cruise to a 2-0 victory and win their first title of the year. With that performance, s1mple pushed his event rating to 1.40, his next closest teammate being Denis "⁠electronic⁠" Sharipov at 1.19.

The 20-year-old ended all 19 maps that he played with 1+ ratings and was Natus Vincere's best performer in all but two of the eight series that the team played in Kiev, excelling against SK (1.55 rating, +48KDD) and mousesports (1.37 rating, +24 KDD).

s1mple led the tournament charts in 11 categories besides rating, including ADR (91.6), kills per round (0.94), percentage of rounds with at least one kill (57.6%) and opening kills (78). He had one of the best headshots per round ratio (0.44) and was ranked third in AWP kills (145), which shows just how versatile he can be.

This is the fifth MVP award of s1mple's career, the third since the start of the year, after he scooped the honour at the previous StarSeries event and at DreamHack Masters Marseille - two events where Natus Vincere were defeated in the final.