Top 20 players of 2020: s1mple (2)

Unmatched fragging output and incredible consistency at the most competitive tournaments of the year see Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev finish second in the Top 20 players of 2020 ranking, powered by GG.BET and Xtrfy, after one of the closest races in history.

Top 20 players of 2020: Introduction

s1mple first came into the public eye in 2014 with Courage, a team under Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy's leadership also featuring another familiar name, Georgi "⁠WorldEdit⁠" Yaskin. The at the time 16-year-old didn't remain with that lineup for long, but some impressive performances there earned him the call from one of the CIS region's best teams at the time, HellRaisers, with whom s1mple got to play his first big LANs, including the DreamHack Winter 2014 Major at the end of the year.

After leaving the Kirill "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow-led side at the beginning of 2015 because of a ban from ESL as well as due to a poor reputation, the Ukrainian reunited with B1ad3 and WorldEdit in FlipSid3 and got to hone his craft more under the veteran in-game leader. Although that was his longest stint to date at the time and he continued to showcase his undeniable aptitude for the game, personality issues continued to haunt s1mple, and a tough exit at ESWC that year saw him part ways with the team after he had vowed never to play with some of his teammates again.

Despite the attitude problems, s1mple's incredible talent was enough to put him in the crosshairs of Liquid, and he ended up moving overseas to take on the new challenge in early 2016. Though short-lived in the end, the North American move saw the Ukrainian reach new heights as he returned to the Major stage. Just two months after joining them, he helped the Eric "⁠adreN⁠" Hoag-led team reach semi-finals at MLG Columbus and improved on that result at the next Major with a grand final appearance at ESL One Cologne thanks to some amazing play, including the graffiti-worthy 1v2 clutch against fnatic on Cache. By then it was known that s1mple wouldn't remain in the United States, however, as a severe homesickness had made him return to the Old Continent in the middle of the year.

It didn't take long for him to find a new team, as he replaced Danylo "⁠Zeus⁠" Teslenko in the organization that would remain his home for years to come, Natus Vincere. Even though the beginnings were tough, with Valve's stance on coaching communication putting an end to the team's plans to use Sergey "⁠starix⁠" Ischuk as the external in-game leader, s1mple won his first big title and received his first-ever MVP at ESL One New York a couple of months later. That, along with his Major heroics, also helped him make his first appearance in the Top 20 ranking, in fourth place.

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Despite s1mple establishing himself as one of the world's elite-level players with eighth place in the ranking in 2017, it was a year in which NAVI didn't win any titles until Zeus returned to help with their in-game leadership woes, which also put s1mple in the primary AWP position after Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács left, and Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov bolstered their firepower. That turned out to be exactly what the team needed to get back on their feet, as they were back in contention for big titles in 2018, with s1mple finding a whole new level. Astralis were the dominant side that year while NAVI won four titles and made semi-final and grand final appearances at the year's two Majors, but the Ukrainian superstar's individual output was second to none, as he won six Most Valuable Player awards — including two in runner-up finishes at StarSeries i-League Season 4 and at DreamHack Masters Marseille — and was named the world's best player.

s1mple showcased more of the same brilliance in 2019, although this time he had to contend with the super rookie Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut, who snatched away the No. 1 spot from him while NAVI struggled to keep up with the best teams on a consistent basis with only two grand final appearances and one title. Changes saw the Ukrainian squad bring in Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov instead of Ioann "⁠Edward⁠" Sukhariev in the middle of the year, and after a playoffs appearance at the StarLadder Major, Zeus announced his retirement, which gave NAVI the chance to try something new. s1mple was put on the rifle as the team welcomed back GuardiaN, but although the 23-year-old looked as good as ever in the new-old role, the Slovakian veteran turned out to be the wrong choice.

The short and unsuccessful stint with GuardiaN saw the 29-year-old benched by January 2020, and Natus Vincere brought in Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy from Syman in a move that would also have s1mple pick up the main AWP once again. The new roster clicked almost immediately after it made its debut at ICE Challenge at the beginning of February, where NAVI finished second to MOUZ as anticipated, which was also the only time in 2020 that s1mple was outperformed by a teammate, as electroNic claimed his first MVP at the London tournament.

The team stayed in the British capital for another week and went on to win their group featuring Astralis, Vitality, and Complexity at BLAST Premier Spring Series despite an opening loss to the Frenchmen, with s1mple returning to the top of the charts as he put up a team-leading 1.36 rating over four series, including a highlight-worthy 1.47 rating in a hairy three-map encounter with Astralis.

"I think that the team clicked so fast thanks to good roles and our coach [B1ad3], who distributed them and set our team's gameplay. Regarding the AWP, I always felt most comfortable with it, and it was a good experience to be a rifler before the arrival of Ilya (Perfecto)."

The Ukrainian maintained the same scary form at IEM Katowice at the end of the month, where s1mple locked in the first of his two MVP awards in what would end up becoming the best individual showing of the year. Natus Vincere looked somewhat shaky in the group stage at the Polish staple event as they barely beat FaZe in two narrow series and lost to fnatic in the meantime, but then they displayed terrifying dominance in the playoffs, passing Liquid, Astralis, and G2 without losing a single map in the bracket stage.

"I think my favorite memory is our victory in Katowice, even though there was no audience. We showed our dominance over the other teams, and that was a fantastic feeling."

The pandemic was in full effect by mid-March and the competition moved online, which seemed to halt Natus Vincere's momentum. The team salvaged a poor start to the first ESL Pro League Season 11 group stage by winning four consecutive series, including two against at the time top-five teams Astralis and fnatic, but in the end were stopped by the Swedes as well as Complexity in the second stage, finishing the event in fourth place.

"I think [the pandemic] affected our team positively, as we always gained form during bootcamps and tournaments, but this year there were a lot of problems connected to this. Perhaps we stopped feeling the significance of the matches as there were too many of them and they were the same. Personally, my motivation remained at the same level and it didn't even cross my mind that it could disappear somewhere."

NAVI then withdrew from European competition for a few weeks to play against some of their biggest CIS rivals at the first Regional Major Ranking event of the year, ESL One: Road to Rio. The team struggled in the regional contest, with losses against Virtus.pro, Syman, and Hard Legion seeing them eliminated in groups despite s1mple putting in a 1.40 rating over the five series.

"We really hadn't played online matches in a while, especially against CIS teams. As far as I remember, our individual forms at these tournaments would dip, and it would be different for each person. Also, we were told that it is likely that these qualifiers could bear no significance if the Major doesn't take place."

The disappointing result didn't seem to affect them in the long run, though. Natus Vincere were back to making deep runs in Europe after a few weeks off with two more fourth-place finishes in DreamHack Masters Spring and in the BLAST Spring Finals, where they traded some of the key series with G2 and with the rising Vitality side. Meanwhile, s1mple continued to put up the same incredible numbers he had up to that point and clinched two more EVP mentions along the way, bringing his total award count to five already, and also recorded his highest-rated map of the year; a staggering 37-8 K-D (2.77 rating) on Mirage against MAD Lions in the playoffs of the former competition.

The first part of the season was drawing to a close then, and the last tournament Natus Vincere played in was the second RMR event for the CIS region, WePlay! Clutch Island. s1mple's side conceded the opening series to Gambit Youngsters but then quickly got back on their feet, rallying through the tournament undefeated from that point on to secure the win and redeem themselves after the blunder in ESL One: Road to Rio earlier in the year.

After enjoying a well-earned break in July and August, NAVI returned to competition in August at ESL One Cologne looking rusty as they suffered their second group stage elimination of the year. An opener against the struggling MOUZ was the only match they won, with Complexity and Ninjas in Pyjamas then dealing Natus Vincere two tough losses while s1mple was unable to perform up to his remarkable standards, albeit still recording a well-above-average 1.13 rating — by far the highest on the team.

The shaky first tournament of the new season was soon forgotten when Natus Vincere turned up at the next event, ESL Pro League Season 12, in great shape again. Boombl4 & co. won six out of seven series in the long group stage and went on to ramp up during the playoffs to reach the grand final undefeated from the upper bracket. The team faltered at the last hurdle, with Astralis pulling off a reverse sweep in the best-of-five title decider, in which NAVI were two rounds away from the trophy on two separate occasions while nearly coming back from a 2-13 deficit on Train. s1mple clinched his second MVP award of the year at the long event with by far the highest rating (1.35) and kills per round (0.92) of all players while also topping several other leaderboards.

"The most memorable match was during the ESL Pro League Season 12 final, where we lost against Astralis. We lost on Train, but the actual comeback before the overtimes was wonderful."

Another run to the grand final followed at IEM Beijing-Haidian a month later, after NAVI struggled to live up to their status in their region once again with fourth place at IEM New York and qualified for the BLAST Premier Fall Finals with a successful campaign in the Fall Series, where they won two series against Ninjas in Pyjamas and lost two to OG. s1mple was once again in MVP territory on the back of fantastic performances at the IEM stop, where Natus Vincere were once again the victims of a reverse sweep in the grand final, this time at the hands of Vitality. After putting up two maps rated above 2.00 in the best-of-five decider alone, the 23-year-old Ukrainian only narrowly lost the race to the individual award to his French rival ZywOo.

"The most unpleasant thing was losing our last finals and realising that we wouldn't be able to gather as a team at a bootcamp, because the time you can spend in the country where our bootcamp is based is capped at three months. Because of the coronavirus it was difficult for us to gather and train even better."

The calendar turned to December, and with it came the last two Elite events of 2020, BLAST Premier Fall Finals and the IEM Global Challenge. Natus Vincere decided to change things up ahead of the final showdowns of the year, bringing in their junior team's member Valeriy "⁠b1t⁠" Vakhovskiy to step in for Inferno instead of Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev in an attempt to fix their issues on the map, jumping on the six-man train after seeing how well it had been working for Vitality with Nabil "⁠Nivera⁠" Benrlitom.

"Andrey (B1ade) saw issues on one of our maps and came to this decision. Besides, the six-man system worked well for Vitality, where a player like Nivera could demonstrate a stable performance on maps he's comfortable on."

The experiment didn't yield the same level of success it had for their French adversaries, but NAVI continued to display great consistency at the last two tournaments of the year with two top-four finishes, in which Astralis were the thorn in the CIS giants' side as they were the ones standing in their way in the final stages of the two events. A few underwhelming maps from s1mple against the Danes in the elimination matches didn't stop him from claiming two more EVPs, as he ended the year with nine out of ten possible awards — more than anyone else on average.

"I would say that our team showed consistent results in 2020, but we lacked tournament victories. I wouldn't say that we achieved anything extraordinary, but we've clearly made progress as a team with new players."

Why was s1mple the second best player of 2020?

As you can imagine, the race to the No. 1 spot between s1mple and ZywOo was extremely close — one of the closest in the history of the top 20 ranking, in fact. The Ukrainian superstar certainly had plenty going in his favor and only the tiniest of margins separated him from the top placing as he fell behind the Frenchman for the second time in a row.

He continued to display his unmatched fragging power in 2020 as he scored the most kills per round for the fifth consecutive year, with his 0.86 KPR being the second-highest average in the ranking's history, only behind his own 0.87 output in 2018. The 23-year-old's 1.37 impact rating was the second highest by a slight margin, but he was by far the best at getting multi-kills (in 23.3% of his rounds) and the most successful at winning opening duels (65% win rate). On top of that, he shone in many other aspects by dealing the third-most damage per round (85.5), showcasing incredible consistency with the fifth-highest KAST (73.8%), ranking fifth in AWP kills per round (0.38), and with the seventh-fewest deaths on average (0.61). All of that resulted in the highest-rating of the year (1.30), a standard s1mple managed to maintain at the year's most competitive events, where he was also ranked No. 1 with the same average rating.

When it comes to individual awards, s1mple's MVP-worthy performance at IEM Katowice was the strongest anyone had all year considering the level of competition present at the prestigious event and how much the Ukrainian stood out from the pack. He clinched another strong MVP award at ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe despite losing the final, and his play at IEM Beijing-Haidian was perhaps even better as he and ZywOo essentially tied for the highest individual honor at the tournament. With a few more strong EVP mentions at the Elite-level events, most notably at the BLAST Premier Fall Finals and DreamHack Masters Spring, combined with the highest rating at them, a solid case could be made that s1mple was the best player at the eight most competitive tournaments alone — although not convincingly so.

However, when we consider the entire scope of 2020, the 23-year-old ended up slightly behind in terms of awards and overall level at all the Big events. Another aspect that influenced the ultimate decision was performance in big matches, where s1mple was superb most of the time but had a few less impressive series, which could have given him the edge if they had gone the other way. Instead, he finished the year with the second-highest Big-event playoffs rating of 1.28, which, combined with the difference in awards, eventually saw him fall ever so slightly behind in the race to the No. 1 spot.

"My goal is my team's goal: become even better and become the #1 team. I hope LAN events return and we'll finally meet each other at the world stage with an unbelievable amount of viewers. We'll once more feel that competitive spirit and enjoy the moment."

Bold prediction

After putting the spotlight on Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato and Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş in the past two years, s1mple opted for a much less known quantity this time in his compatriot Volodymyr "⁠Woro2k⁠" Veletniuk. Apart from a short stand-in stint with forZe at the end of 2020, the 19-year-old has yet to play for any notable teams and is currently honing his skills in FPL, where he often plays alongside s1mple.

Volodymyr "⁠Woro2k⁠" Veletniuk

"He might only be playing FPL, and he might not make it this year, but in a year's time he definitely will. His level of mastery allows him to play his own game, he finds the correct timings and offers interesting ideas."

With the revelation of the top-two players of 2020, the Top 20 players of the year list is now complete. You can find the other placings in the Introduction article, where you can also learn more about how the players were selected. This year's ranking is supported by:

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