Top 20 players of 2019: Twistzz (9)

Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken takes 9th place in the top 20 players of 2019 ranking, powered by Xtrfy and LOOT.BET, three spots higher than his 12th place in 2018.

Top 20 players of 2019: Introduction

Twistzz, who began to play videogames at a young age with his father and was introduced to the FPS genre with Quake, first appeared on record in our database in December 2015, when he was brought out of obscurity by none other than SKDC's Kyle "⁠OCEAN⁠" O'Brien, who picked him up from Tectonic. Twistzz, who is part of the generation playing at the top level being younger than the game of Counter-Strike itself, had also made his way through the ranks in ESEA’s Rank S and FACEIT’s FPL, learning the ropes by playing with some of the best players in the world, although he would go on to trade pick-up-games for other forms of practice.

The Canadian youngster gained a reputation as one of the fastest-growing players in North America after having taken his first steps in ESL Pro League, and it didn’t take long for him to get signed by a bigger outfit, TSM. He played his first big international event with that team, the ECS Season 1 Finals, where he upset Astralis and made a 3rd-4th place run. Shortly afterward, Timothy "⁠autimatic⁠" Ta left for Cloud9 and the team struggled to replicate their ECS playoff run, being eventually dropped by the organisation amid protests regarding the creation of the exclusive PEA league in North America. The players moved to Misfits, although they only played one LAN, DreamHack Masters Las Vegas, before Twistzz got the call from the big leagues.

“Back then I feel like everyone gave 100% in FPL since it was new and it was rare to have new players playing with you. The majority of the time it was professionals, but I feel like the quality went down pretty fast and it became less appealing to me. When I played it wasn't useful to me anymore. At the beginning, for me, it was to learn how the pros played and to make something out of my own playstyle. Now I just deathmatch a lot, if I struggle with something and can't find a solution then I'll rely on demos, but that usually doesn't happen. If I can't find a solution that's effective or I can't help my team in any way, I'll bring it up with nitr0 or adreN.”

Twistzz joined Liquid in April 2017, at the age of 17, and was immediately thrown into the works of a top team traveling all over the world to play at Big Events. He helped his team to a semi-final run at the ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals and got his first grand final taste at ESG Tour Mykonos and ESL One New York. Despite his inexperience, Twistzz showed he had it in him to play at that level, ending 2017 with a 1.15 rating, although he did struggle with some role changes following the departure of Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz as the team bombed out of their last three events of the year: IEM Oakland, ESL Pro League Season 6 Finals and ECS Season 4 Finals.

“My confidence really evolved over the years, it was high back in 2017 because joining Liquid was ‘the big opportunity,’ so I had a lot of drive, but honestly, my life was pretty different back then. I'd roll out of bed and play CS 14 hours a day, go to bed, and then repeat. It was super unhealthy, so 2018 was when I started to change my health around for the better, which meant playing less CS and focusing more on outside stuff. I became better as a player when I did that, my whole training philosophy changed because I realized that playing all of the time wasn't the solution to becoming a better player. Focusing on mental health was important. I really barely played CS at some events and I still performed at my best because I was mentally healthy and happy to play. If you start thinking the game is a grind and overworking yourself, you're eventually going to drop off. The only way that you don't drop off is if you're winning everything."

Twistzz started to make waves that year in such a way that three players, Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen, Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski and Ricardo "⁠boltz⁠" Prass predicted him to make the top 20 player list of 2018, with the Dane stating that the Canadian "is a crazy good aimer and he has a really good understanding of the game and how to position himself in many situations," two of the defining characteristics that have become hallmarks of Twistzz's game.

Twistzz got an EVP mention in Liquid's cs_summit 2 victory, but it wasn’t until the end of 2018 that he started amassing accolades, starting with his team’s second-place finish at ELEAGUE Premier 2018, where he was named EVP. Following the FACEIT Major, where Liquid lost to Astralis in the quarter-finals, Twistzz hit a major milestone in his career, winning his first MVP medal at ESL One New York despite his team losing the final to MOUZ in an unexpected turn of events. He also got EVP mentions at ECS Season 6 Finals and ESL Pro League Season 8 Finals in his team’s two losses to Astralis, as well as one at Supernova Malta, where Liquid lifted the trophy.

"New York 2018 was the prime example of working on mental health, that event I didn't play any CS outside of the matches. I didn't touch my computer once outside of the match. I already felt really good in-game, so there wasn't a need to keep playing, I could just give myself more breathing room and enjoy things outside of the game, everything felt really smooth."

Despite all of the accolades, big wins eluded Liquid in 2018, who suffered 12 series defeats to Astralis as the Danes dominated the year and created their era. Despite having to play second fiddle to the most dominant team in history, Liquid showed they were a team to be feared and Twistzz blossomed into the star he was expected to, going on to make dupreeh, EliGE and boltz proud for picking him as he ranked 12th in our top 20 players of 2018 ranking.

"We were pretty confident for more than half of 2018 despite not winning much, although at the beginning of the year we won summit with steel and started to get some confidence. We still performed really well with TACO and we started to see more consistent results, and although when he joined his English was good, understanding some fast callouts during tense situations was hard for him, which was something we had to work through.

“We were pretty good as a team except for the times we faced Astralis. Every time we faced them there was a giant mental hurdle that was just kind of an aura around the team and it became really negative and it doesn't help when people expect the worst. At the FACEIT Major, when we played them in the semi-final, TACO was handing out holy water to all of us. I'm pretty sure we lost before the game even started at that point [laughs]. We obviously tried to make the best of it, we knew they were a very good team, so we didn't beat ourselves up despite losing to them over and over and we were still dominating every other team. Astralis completely changed the meta..."

Liquid started 2019 the best possible way after acquiring Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip and coach Eric "⁠adreN⁠" Hoag by winning their first grand final series of the year against none other than Astralis. The win came with an asterisk as it was not at a Big Event but rather at the pre-Major iBUYPOWER Masters, a ragged tournament that was a testing ground for teams to oil their machinery ahead of IEM Katowice. Twistzz doesn’t like when the match gets talked down, however, and has gone on record saying that they played their hearts out and it was still a match of Counter-Strike like any other. Not only did Liquid win their first event of the year, but Twistzz tallied his first EVP mention thanks to a 1.14 tournament rating and 75% KAST. He also showed some skills as a clutcher with three 1vsXs won across the eight maps played.

“Winning iBUYPOWER Masters against Astralis helped us psychologically, one hundred percent, especially having a new coach and a new player, it was a very needed win. If we would have gotten any other result than beating Astralis in the final I think we would have struggled to regain our footing early on in the year, but winning that event helped drive our confidence and our practice going into other events. Before that, we had only had like a week of practice with Stewie2K, so it was a huge win.

“I think [the reason we won] was a mix of things, Astralis probably came off the Christmas break feeling all right, but they probably underestimated us as a team. Losing to us was probably a wakeup call for them."

After floundering at the ELEAGUE Major 2018 and losing to Astralis in the FACEIT Major semi-finals, Liquid once again ran into a brick wall on the biggest stage in Counter-Strike, going out in 5-8th place at IEM Katowice when they got upset by an up-and-coming ENCE, who made a dream run to the finals. Twistzz was the highest-rated Liquid player in Poland at 1.13 and also had a 75.3% KAST and four 1vsX situations won, very similar statistics to those of iBUYPOWER Masters, where he had been the third highest-rated player on his side.

”Our loss to ENCE was overpreparation on our side. We had like four or five days between games and it's easy to overwork yourself in that situation. We looked at every little tendency they had and forgot our gameplan. It's like we knew their whole gameplan but not our own. We only focused on what they did and not what we were going to do to counter what they did.

”That loss was definitely helpful because it started to better our preparation. Now we look at teams and take general trends and make things around it. For example, if a team has a tendency to start with three B during the majority of the half on Inferno CT-side and we continue to try and take Banana over and over again, and we realize it but our gameplan was to take Banana and we keep doing it, that’s kind of bad. So we learned to adapt more early on because back then we were more stubborn. If we fucking wanted Banana control, we were going to get it by any means necessary [laughs], and sometimes it drove us to the ground because we wanted it so damn' bad."

Liquid didn’t quite find their footing after the Major, traveling to São Paulo and Miami to play two stops of BLAST Pro Series. They did manage to make the final at both events with a lot of resolve in the best-of-one matches but lost to Astralis and FaZe in the best-of-three series. The two tournaments were quiet for Twistzz, who had 1.09 and 1.05 tournament ratings and looked particularly unimpressive in the big matches with a 0.99 rating against Astralis and a 0.64 rating in the final against FaZe.

Astralis started to make dubious scheduling choices heading into the middle of the year, playing only three BLAST Pro Series tournaments and the ESL Pro League Season 9 group stage between the IEM Katowice Major, in March, and the ECS Season 7 Finals, in June. That time proved to be crucial for Liquid as it gave them the opportunity to get the upper hand in the international circuit. Their run started at IEM Sydney, where Twistzz won his second career MVP and first of 2019 thanks to a 1.25 rating and six 1vsX situations won, 78.6 ADR, and a year-high 1.30 impact rating. He was also the best player on the final map of an incredibly exciting five-map grand final against fnatic, with a 1.52 rating on that Inferno decider and a 1.09 rating in the final as a whole.

“We had a week or so to practice at home before Sydney and it must have been a pretty good week because I know our confidence was really high. We started demolishing in scrims and to me, it felt like we were far above all of the teams we were playing, whereas before that week it hadn't really felt like that leading up to the event. Individually it felt like something started to click. I felt really smooth in-game.

"I was in the right situation at the right time all of the time through that part of the year. I had every opportunity to frag out. I don't know why that was. It's easy to get unlucky in CS, you can throw a wall of smokes outside on Nuke trying to cross to lower and someone's probably going to die, you know? You can just get naded down to 20 health or get fragged through the smoke and that takes away your chance to do anything else in the round, but at that time it felt like I was never getting unlucky and was always in trade positions. CS is a funny game…”

Liquid then went home to Los Angeles to play at cs_summit 4, where Twistzz had a quiet 1.06 rating, although three Player of the Map performances earned him another EVP mention. Liquid were unable to win the tournament, losing the final to Vitality, whose star player, Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut, had a monstrous final. After their IEM Sydney victory, Liquid didn’t let this blunder get in their way as they went on to win their second Intel Grand Slam eligible event, DreamHack Masters Dallas. With above-average ratings on ten of the 11 maps played in Texas and a 1.24 rating in the final against ENCE, the Canadian left Texas with an incredible 1.22 tournament rating and another EVP in the bag.

The summer run continued at the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals in Montpellier, where Liquid won a best-of-three series against Astralis at the height of the conversation regarding them overtaking the Danes as the best team in the world. Twistzz was given his third EVP award in a row with the second-highest rating of the team, on top of his eight 1vsX situations won, a year-high for him. A historic feat for the team ensued when Liquid won ESL One Cologne, where they got to exact revenge on Vitality in the grand final. In doing so, they claimed a fourth Intel Grand Slam eligible tournament, winning the $1 million prize in a record 63 days. Twistzz was once again close to the MVP medal, but had to settle for an EVP mention as the second-highest rated player on Liquid at 1.17.

“We still considered Astralis to be the best in the world at the time, so as the underdogs there wasn't much pressure. Vertigo made it through in Montpellier and it was a bit of a random match. EliGE carried us through that series, my performance was pretty bad, but the atmosphere was super good, we never felt like we were going to lose.”

“I don't think we realized how close we were to the Grand Slam until we won ESL Pro League Season 9. That was the shift, like, ‘oh, shit, this is happening.’ Even when we played the Cologne final, there wasn't really any pressure, it didn't feel like there was that much on the line. We were all very calm, having fun, and I guess after we won it people finally clued into the moment."

Twistzz tallied two more EVP mentions before the summer break in the last two tournament victories of 2019 for Liquid, and although he didn’t end up with an MVP medal, they were the height of his individual performances with 1.27 and 1.29 ratings. The first one, BLAST Pro Series Los Angeles, saw Liquid take revenge on FaZe in the final, with the Canadian star ending the series final with a 1.45 rating. At IEM Chicago, where Twistzz had his highest tournament rating of the year, Liquid won one of the fastest best-of-five series when they dispatched ENCE 16-2 on Overpass, 16-3 on Nuke and 16-14 on Inferno.

"Winning Cologne was the big highlight of the year, but Chicago was nice individually because it was the first time my mom got to see us lift the trophy in person.

"Right before the break, I think all of us thought that we were that dominant team, especially after the Chicago final against ENCE, which felt like the fastest best-of-five ever. We felt like we were the dominant fnatic team of 2015, like nobody had a chance against us."

After an incredible performance during the first half of the year, Liquid came back from vacation covered in rust and, despite good individual form, the team had lost their chemistry. It showed at the first event after the break, the all-important StarLadder Major in Berlin. Liquid went to the event in Germany as the favorites, but after losses to NRG and AVANGAR in the New Legends Stage, they crossed Astralis in their first playoff match and didn't stand a chance. On a personal level, Twistzz had a 1.09 rating, with a below-average 0.97 in the loss to Astralis.

“I think the pressure got to us during the break because you don't really know what's on the other side of it. Either you come out really good or really rough, so there was a lot of uncertainty. Our teamplay felt really rough, but it also felt like everyone was really, really good. Everyone's individual performance had gone up, not just on our team but on every team. Everyone was playing at a higher level. It felt like we dropped off, too, but it felt like other people had got really good over the break. The skill balanced out at the highest level, it felt very weird because all of these teams we were used to destroying were able to beat us, and we lost the majority of scrims during our bootcamp. The first day went well, but every day after that was pretty rough. I'm sure that was the start of our confidence dropping.

“Looking back, maybe taking a two-week break wasn't the best idea and we could have noticed that since the Major, the biggest event or one of the biggest events of the year, was coming right after the break. We could have put more effort into doing things together or keeping up to date with each other, and I do feel like it affected us. Losing at the Major stopped our confidence pretty hard."

After Berlin came ESL One New York, where Twistzz had made the final in 2017 and 2018, winning the MVP medal in the latter year. This time around, the Canadian and his team were unable to make it all the way to title decider at the Barclays Center, losing out to Astralis in the semis. Twistzz managed to get his last EVP mention of the year, making it a total of eight, thanks to a 1.21 rating. Then came Liquid’s darkest moment, DreamHack Masters Malmö, where losses to OpTic and Grayhound meant the team was out in 9-12th place. Twistzz had one of only two below-average tournaments in 2019, ending the six-map run with a 0.97 rating.

“I think it was a relief of stress. We were very worked up over the Major during the bootcamp, so knowing the Major was over let us work towards other events and it showed us where we were at skillwise. New York was only an eight-team event and we lost to Astralis in the semi-finals, which wasn't that bad of a result because it went to three maps. We don't talk about Malmö. That was a really rough time. We felt so dead, everyone felt dead inside. The team felt dead. I don't even know how to explain it because I tried to forget about it really fast."

Twistzz had a great individual showing in Liquid’s five best-of-ones at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen, but they weren’t able to make it to the final, rendering his 1.23 rating and year-high 82.3 ADR null in the grand scheme of things. Following this event, Twistzz deflated, and although he managed a decent 1.09 rating at the ECS Season 8 Finals, it was pale compared to where he had been at in his peak. In Arlington, Liquid beat Evil Geniuses—with whom they built a decent rivalry over the year—and fnatic but were once again outplayed by Astralis in the final.

“I think Evil Geniuses started to get better when they started to practice against us consistently. Even when we were bootcamping in Europe, we really didn't have much of a chance to scrim Astralis because they would deny us—and it's smart. It's smart to deny us, especially in 2018 because they made sure we could never get used to their playstyle. I feel like we should have done the same thing with EG, to limit their scrim time against us.

“Our scrim time went down with them, but it's hard to find practice in North America, there are days we'll just scrim the same team five times because we can't find anyone else, but out of nowhere there are a lot of teams that seem good now. Complexity and the new Cloud9 roster, they played well in the IEM Katowice 2020 qualifier, so I feel like the competition in North America is coming back up and that's good for us because it helps us have variety in our practice.”

The year ended for Twistzz with two low ratings at the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals (1.01) and BLAST Global Finals (0.97). In Odense, Liquid had a mediocre 5-6th place finish, losing to Astralis and fnatic, the latter after a particularly bad series by Twistzz, who had a 0.75 rating. At the BLAST Global Finals Liquid once again ran into their kryptonite, Astralis, who were savoring the sweet taste of reclaiming the top spot in the world in both the rankings and the public’s eye. Liquid lost back-to-back two-map series to the Danes in Bahrain and finished in second place to close out the year.

"The game didn't feel that good to play anymore. I felt like I needed a break and I just had to wait until the end of the year. I really didn't know how to feel good again, in-game, it's like every position or opportunity I was in was an impossible task. I remember the mistakes I made, but it felt like my luck had run out. Not luck, entirely, but like I said that every opportunity possible was handed to me during the summer, in the latter half it was like I really had to search, nothing was there at all."

Why was Twistzz the 9th best player of 2019?

Twistzz's peaks in the May-July stretch, when Liquid won six of the seven events they attended, were among the best in the world. He collected one MVP medal at IEM Sydney and was also right in the thick of MVP races at DreamHack Masters Dallas, ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals, ESL One Cologne, BLAST Pro Series Los Angeles and IEM Chicago. He had another two EVP performances outside that period, bringing his total to one MVP and eight EVPs, which makes him the sixth most decorated player of 2019.

He stood out as a clutcher, accumulating the most 1vsX situations won in 2019, with 70, and as a consistent contributor on a round-to-round basis with the highest KAST of all players, 75.1%. Despite his clutching prowess, he had the third-lowest Impact rating and ADR in the top 20, and his contributions often came in other ways, as he was one of the hardest players to kill with just 0.59 deaths per round. Even when he did fall, it was usually in a good position as his deaths were traded at a very high percentage, 22.9%, the ninth most of 2019.

Just like in 2018, he was ranked first for headshots per round (0.47) and headshot percentage (65.8%), which of course is anecdotal and isn’t taken into account when it comes to his placing in the top 20. Ultimately, even though his peaks and number of awards point towards an even higher placing, what kept him at No.9 was mainly his unstable performances in big matches, as he put in below-average numbers in seven of the eight Big Event playoffs outside of Liquid’s summer run, resulting in an overall solid but slightly inconsistent 1.11 big match rating.

Bold prediction:

Following last year's bold prediction of Tsvetelin "⁠CeRq⁠" Dimitrov—who is No. 18 in this year's top 20—, Twistzz has now chosen another young import to North America in Ignacio "⁠meyern⁠" Meyer, the 17-year-old Argentinean who was picked up by MIBR late last year.

Ignacio "⁠meyern⁠" Meyer

”I think meyern has the best chance to enter the top 20 next year. If MIBR can get their performance up, maybe make one more roster change to get their footing and if they have some good runs next year, I think he’ll be able to put up high numbers once he gets the experience. Right now his numbers aren’t the greatest, but I believe he’ll be able to pick up his individual skill.”

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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