Top 20 players of 2019: Xyp9x (14)

Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth comes in at No. 14 in our ranking of the top 20 players of 2019, powered by Xtrfy and LOOT.BET, making this the third year in a row in which he makes the cut.

Top 20 players of 2019: Introduction

Xyp9x launched his career mere months before CS:GO came out, but, unlike his longtime teammates Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz and Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen, he came from 1.6 instead of CS:Source. Not having been ingrained in the scene, Xyp9x was quick to jump into Valve’s new game with CPLAY before joining the Scandinavian roster of fnatic with players from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Xyp9x was one of the standouts on that team, which had big 1.6 names in it including Michael "⁠Friis⁠" Jørgensen, Martin "⁠trace⁠" Heldt, and Andreas "⁠MODDII⁠" Fridh.

Marred by internal conflicts, that fnatic roster broke up, and Xyp9x, together with Friis, went to CPH Wolves, which put him in contact with the two players with whom he would go on to define an era of Counter-Strike years later, device and dupreeh. The trio has become legendary under the Astralis banner, and it is a miracle that they managed to stick together in an unstable scene at the dawn of CS:GO, a time when teams changed players from one day to the next.

Their time in CPH Wolves came to an end, and it was under the Dignitas banner that Xyp9x and company really started to show potential, becoming a force to be reckoned with on the CT side and became habitual playoff contenders. Known to struggle to make deep runs, it was finally after removing Henrik "⁠FeTiSh⁠" Christensen and adding Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen to the lineup as in-game leader that they were able to make it past the dreaded semi-finals and lift trophies, which they did on five occasions in 2015 as TSM.

Xyp9x’s fate hung in the balance after months of poor individual performances despite the team’s newfound ability to make title runs. The Dane dipped below average repeatedly in early 2015 and would have been out the door were it not for Philip "⁠aizy⁠" Aistrup being locked into a contract with Dignitas. A couple of good results and big performances, including at the ESL One Cologne 2015 Major, ended up cementing his place on the roster, as Xyp9x explained in an interview last year:

"It's true that I was almost cut, it was right after we failed horribly and placed 7-8th at Acer Predator Masters. During the year I was finishing my studies, and after I completed them I felt like I had to 'relax' a bit. Looking back, I was just drained and I should have taken a small break to regain motivation. But the motivation came to me quickly when they told me that they wanted to replace me and—I'm not sure this is public knowledge, but now it is—said that if they were able to buy out aizy, who was under contract with another team, they would make that move. It turned out that they couldn't get him and I started to play better, so that fell to the ground.

"I took it as a motivation and I just wanted to improve, but to think back that I might not have been here if they were able to get aizy is a bit scary. I wish that I'd received a 'normal heads up', but that was back in the days where the norm still was to change players to solve problems."

In 2016, Xyp9x picked back up and started to post much better numbers despite the fact that he and the newly-christened Astralis were unable to reach the heights they had in the past. Results were all over the place, from group-stage exits to semi-finals runs, but Astralis couldn’t make it back to the top. It was at the last event of the year in Anaheim, California, soon after bringing in Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander as the team’s in-game leader in a bid to revamp the stale roster, that Astralis once again hoisted a trophy, at the ECS Season 2 Finals, with Xyp9x dropping 1.44 tournament rating, which remains a career high.

The new Astralis kept their lustre through the new year and lifted their first Major in Atlanta at the ELEAGUE Major, and although Xyp9x was the lowest-rated player on the team, the style of Counter-Strike he would eventually be recognized for by the public was starting to show. The Danish support player got seven clutches, six of which in the playoffs, just weeks before IEM Katowice, where he would go on to win an MVP medal thanks to a 1.21 rating and a record-breaking 13 clutches. Other than the $250,000 ELEAGUE Clash for Cash showmatch which they won against Virtus.pro, Astralis went on to have a dry year after their early victories. Their best results were three second-place finishes at StarSeries i-League Season 2, ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2017 and BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen 2017, the latter during a period marred by device’s absence due to illness late in the year. Xyp9x managed to have enough impact in his team’s runs to earn No.13 in that year's top 20 player of the year ranking.

Markus "⁠Kjaerbye⁠" Kjærbye, the ELEAGUE Major Atlanta MVP, decided to step away from the team and move to North after the following year’s Boston Major in what is considered one of the worst moves in top-flight Counter-Strike history. Eventually, however, with Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif in tow, Astralis once again found their way in 2018 and became the most dominant team in the game’s history. They won 10 tournaments that year, over 50% of events attended, including one Major, and the first season of the $1 million Intel Grand Slam. Xyp9x finished 13th in the top 20 players of 2018 ranking after a year that had proved crucial for Astralis, both the team and the organization, as they had found new ways to become the best team in the server thanks to a shared history between the players and a group of professionals trying to squeeze the maximum out of the players.

“Astralis made us think that we are professionals and made us understand the responsibility that each person carries for the team to be successful. The continued progress and rhythms we have built up with the performance team has worked wonders. The scene is getting more and more competitive and it’s important to try and find those few extra percentage points, both inside the game but also outside the game.

“The players have a very tight bond. I think it is important for any team to bond on both a professional but also on a personal level to be able to travel and spend as much time together as we do. In Astralis we talk about everything, if there are issues we deal with them before they get out of control and no one holds a grudge. Besides that, we have become close friends—as you do when you spend more than 150 days a year together, and the chemistry is great. We make each other laugh and I think that's a key component.

"Right now I do not understand what we have accomplished, being drawn into this and being on this ride is amazing and nothing like I would have imagined when I started playing CS, but things go so fast and one tournament is right around the corner of the next one. We don’t get as much time to celebrate and enjoy the wins, as you need to reset and start practicing right after the tournament you just won. Once I stop playing CS I will definitely think of our era as something that changed the way Counter-Strike was played, but right now I don’t want to think of that. We are not done reinventing.”

Xyp9x kicked 2019 off with a bang on a personal level, becoming an EVP at the first three tournaments Astralis played: iBUYPOWER Masters, IEM Katowice, and BLAST Pro Series São Paulo, being a runner-up in the MVP race at the first two and third in line at the Brazilian tournament. The most impressive aspect of this hot start to the year was his tendency to perform well in the latter stages as he averaged playoff ratings higher than 1.30 at all three events.

Despite missing out on the title at their first event of the year, the pre-Major iBP Masters, Xyp9x and his teammates started off the year with flying colors, winning the Major and the BLAST Pro Series stop, and Xyp9x was already starting to show some of his hallmark statistics with low DPR, high KAST, and 12 clutches across these three tournaments. Particularly emotional for the Danes was the IEM Katowice victory, which came just two weeks after dupreeh's father had passed away.

“Winning the Katowice Major was definitely my highlight of 2019. It was a very emotional ride for all of us due to the whole situation and being able to claim the trophy and dedicate the win to Michael (dupreeh's dad) was a heartwarming and important feeling for me, and for us as a team."

Astralis were playing roughly one LAN tournament per month at the time, and they failed to show up at their next event on the calendar, BLAST Pro Series Miami, where they lost to FaZe, Liquid and MIBR on the first day of competition and bombed out of the tournament in fourth place. They then lost the grand final of BLAST Pro Series Madrid, their third straight LAN tournament hosted by RFRSH (without counting the ESL Pro League group stage), to ENCE in an underwhelming two-map series. The ECS Season 7 Finals would ensue, and Astralis went out in 5-6th place after suffering losses to FURIA in the opener and decider matches. Xyp9x had his worst three events of the year as the team slumped mid-season, going below a the 1.00 rating mark at all three (respectively 0.94, 0.98 and 0.99), the only time his rating dipped below average all year long. As an interesting bit of trivia, the ECS Season 7 Finals were also the only tournament in which Xyp9x didn’t get a single clutch.

“I'm not sure I would call it a mid-year struggle. 2019 was extremely competitive and a lot of teams accelerated to a whole other level. It was a rough year for everyone, but also an exciting year. It is obvious that the industry is still growing and that is a good sign.

"Us not ending all tournaments with a trophy and not being number one in the rankings gave us the motivation we needed and made us hungry again. I guess that was all we needed to get ‘through the struggle’.”

Xyp9x was able to pick up some slack individually at the last two events of the season, the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals and ESL One Cologne, although Astralis would still struggle, going out in 5-6th place in Montpellier and hitting the semi-finals at the event in Germany. It would be at the latter event that the Danish support player would once again shine, getting an EVP mention thanks to his team-high 1.27 rating, as well as 83.1 ADR, 79.8% KAST and a 1.15 impact rating.

After not playing to the extent of their abilities during the first season of 2019, Astralis once again found it in them to show their best form at the StarLadder Major in Berlin. Despite a group-stage slip-up against NRG, the Danes went on to dominate with a 3-1 record in the New Legends stage before going on a clean sweep in the playoffs, taking down direct rivals Liquid, retaliating against NRG, and obliterating AVANGAR in the final. Xyp9x tallied another EVP mention and was the third highest-rated player on Astralis with a 1.14 rating and third in line for the MVP award. He also ended with eight clutches and a 75.1% KAST, performing better in the playoffs (1.19) than in the group stage (1.11).

“The Major was right after the player break and before the break we didn’t play our best CS. Going into the Major after the break we had a lot of motivation to be the best team again. It’s always different to play as a team and all other teams are playing differently after a break. Liquid was dominating right before the break and I think that also sparked some energy in us.

"We worked really hard leading up to the Major, although there was still some uncertainty about whether we would perform as it was the first event of the season and the previous events had been shaky. It ended up working out pretty great, beating Liquid in the quarter-finals and then winning the whole tournament to get back to the No.1 spot in the ranking."

Like the previous events that had come in threes, Xyp9x had three quiet appearances following the Major at ESL One New York, DreamHack Masters Malmö and BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen. He scored 1.02, 1.00, and 1.04 ratings respectively, and had below-average ratings in the playoffs at the North American and the Swedish tournaments. ESL One New York would also mark the beginning of a rivalry with Evil Geniuses, a team that seemed made to compete against the Danes, who they dominated in a four-map best-of-five grand final in Brooklyn, while in Malmö, gla1ve's side became collateral in fnatic taking the center stage on home soil. It was at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen where Astralis really dropped the ball, losing their first two matches in landslides against FaZe and Ninjas in Pyjamas before bowing out with a tie against Natus Vincere.

“It is always a challenge facing the Danish crowd after a loss like in Copenhagen at Blast Pro series. We had a rough first day, and coming into the second day in the arena with our backs against the wall having to fight for a spot in the final was rough. We knew it would be tough and when we drew 15-15 with Na`Vi and everyone in the arena realised there was no chance for us to advance, it was heartbreaking having to face all the fans. We knew we had let them down and we really wanted to play our hearts out in a final in front of that amazing crowd. Even though it is just another tournament, it is just not another tournament for us. Blast Pro Copenhagen is definitely special for us."

On foreign soil, at their first event in China, a country they had avoided due to long flights and difficulties adjusting to the timezone difference, Astralis once again showed a glimpse of the team that had awed the world in 2018, and it was gla1ve—who is notoriously bad at adapting to long trips — who bagged the MVP title. Xyp9x was no slouch at IEM Beijing, where he finished third in rating with 1.31 and was behind the two top performers, gla1ve and device, in the race for the MVP. Xyp9x had an impressive year-high 82.7% KAST, a 1.17 impact (his best of the year at a Big Event), and a ridiculously-low 0.43 DPR.

Astralis closed the year out with two more wins, at the ECS Season 8 Finals and BLAST Global Finals, and a semi-final run at the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals. Xyp9x had quiet showings in the Arlington victory and the semi-final run in Odense, with 1.02 and 1.01 ratings—including a year-low 64.5 ADR at the former. At the BLAST Pro Series Global Finals, he came alive once again, earning his seventh EVP of the year with a 1.15 rating and a 76.7% KAST as Astralis once again paraded their hegemony, twice beating Liquid in two-map series in Bahrain.

"Our goal for 2019 was to be first in the ranking, as it had been in 2018, and being able to reach that goal once again was very important for us. We feel like the No.1 spot belongs to us, so being able to claim it is the perfect way to end the year and also cement we were the best team during the year. It’s satisfying going into a break as the best team, but it’s also easy to forget how hard we fought for that number one spot. So when we get back from the break it’s even terms and we need to start over again and work really hard.

"Even though we had some rough times in 2019, it still beats 2018. We became better, I became better and we stayed on top in an even more competitive scene. We managed to take three Majors in a row and became the first-ever team to have four Major victories overall. So 2019 will never be forgotten—unless we do even better in 2020."

Why was Xyp9x the 14th best player of 2019?

Xyp9x is the only player in the top 20 with below-average fragging and multi-kill numbers, which he made up for in other ways, as he had done in the past. He was one of the best clutchers with 66 1vsX situations won, the third most in 2019, and was one of the hardest to kill with the second-lowest DPR (0.58), while also having the second-most utility damage per round (7.6). All of the aforementioned numbers boosted his KAST percentage, as he contributed in some kind of measurable fashion in an incredible 74.9% of his rounds, becoming the third-best player of the year in that category.

The biggest reason why he ranked higher than more directly impactful players, including his teammate dupreeh, was his great peaks at some of the biggest events of the year. While he had no MVPs to his name, he was an EVP at both Majors (including a very close second in the MVP race at IEM Katowice), as well as ESL One Cologne, IEM Beijing and the BLAST Pro Series Global Finals. He was also in the running for the MVP title at iBUYPOWER Masters and BLAST Pro Series São Paulo.

"Even though it sounds like a cliché, it is all a team effort. As said before, getting the space from my team to do what I do best and play my game is what makes me the player I am. I put in all the hours and work like all the other pro players do, of course, but the consistency comes from having a team you trust and being able to play exactly how you do best.

"The team has always been good at supporting me in my role, they have been good at appreciating the work I do even though I'm not at the top of the scoreboard. I think it's a hard role to fulfill without that support. They are always there with a pat on the back and don't blame me if I don't clutch the round—they don't expect it, but always appreciate it.”

While Xyp9x’s high peaks could have justified an even higher placing in the final ranking, he had several disappointing events in the Spring, as well as other more periods. This, combined with his overall lower impact when compared to the players ranked higher, grounded him at No.14 in 2019.

“It is hard to predict how the CS scene is going to evolve and which players are best at adapting to the meta changes, but I'll definitely do everything is in my power to stay consistent and on top with my team."

Bold prediction

Xyp9x is cheering for a fellow countryman in his bold prediction, going with Complexity’s Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer. The Danish in-game leader will have a chance to take North America by storm with fellow European imports Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke and Valentin "⁠poizon⁠" Vasilev in 2020.

Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer

"blameF has shown some great potential and I’m excited to see what he can do with Complexity. This could definitely lead to a leap in his career and eventually to a spot on this ranking."

Stay tuned to our Top 20 players of 2019 ranking and take a look at the Introduction article to learn more about how the players were selected. This year's ranking is supported by:

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