Best five of BLAST.tv Major Paris 2023

Our all-star ensemble for the last CS:GO Major has been finalised.

For 2022's HLTV Award Show, we used a new method to categorise players for a 'Best Five' of 2022. Rather than statistics, this method relied on the positions players occupy in defaults. 'Anchor of the year' required a player in supportive CT positions, 'Opener' was for entry-pack players on T-Side, and 'Closer' for those on the extremities. The AWPer and IGL awards need less explanation, with those two rounding out the five.

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The HLTV Award Show panel's best five of 2022

We've been applying this system to big events this year, and this will be the iteration for BLAST.tv Paris Major, with a few debutants from an event riddled by upsets.

Anchor

Our first decision is for the Anchor and it is not an easy one. Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif was an impactful monster for Vitality as the highest rated T-side player at the event with a 1.37 rating (though he did drop to a 0.93 on CT). He was brute forcing his way up B stairs on Vertigo like it was a prefire map and several of his best T sides were the difference between Vitality staying flawless at the Major and them being pushed to a tricky decider.

Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic's consistency is ultimately too hard to look past, though, as he had 78% KAST, which shows an excellent knack for round-to-round consistency. His 87.7 ADR also reveals this, a scarily high average for a player that does not see too much early-round action from his CT-side Anchor spots and T-side passive lurking. He is not Liquid's star by role anymore, but you wouldn't have know it from watching this event — NAF is back.

AWPer

Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut's Major — and 2023, so far — is a sea of green. He averaged a 1.39 rating from the Legends stage onwards, with a multi-kill in 23.5% of rounds and 26.7 kills per 30 rounds. The two-time number one player of the year is barreling head-first towards a third award, but this time there are no asterisks, no online cups that critics can point to.

The Chosen One is dominating 2023, and this time on stages, too. He is also doing it without relying on the big green too much; he is our AWPer of the Major but only 32.1% of his kills came with the gun. If he rifles a bit more, he might not even be eligible next time round. For now, though, this is a spot in our Best Five that is going to take a lot of work to remove him from.

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Closer

Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi also makes his second consecutive appearance in our Best Five. His 1.24 rating includes highs of 1.76 on Overpass against GamerLegion, in which he single-handedly dismantled a Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek T-side that had put so many teams on the back foot, as well as a 1.58 in a 16-14 win over Apeks, and a 1.45 in the 16-13 opening victory against G2.

The Israeli was popping up with impact throughout the event and has truly come into his own as Vitality's closer. For a while in 2022 he struggled to hit the peak he showed under Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer in ENCE, but in 2023 Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire and Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen are finally reaping the rewards from the signing.

He now has the mentality of a star and the swagger of one too. He is the Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov to ZywOo's Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev, a formula that has helped Vitality to the Major they have yearned for.

IGL

The IGL category, like the Anchor one, gave us a tricky decision to make. apEX has silenced his doubters, merging Danish and French Counter-Strike cultures into a behemoth just in time for the home Major, and Vitality were the best T-sided team at the event with a 60% round win.

But siuhy's run to the final with GamerLegion also puts him in the conversation. His calling elevated a squad that — apart from Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan — does not have anywhere near the firepower of Vitality.

The four-time WePlay Academy League champion has been praised as possibly the next big IGL after showing his prowess in the youth circuit, but few expected a Major final to arrive in his CV so soon. That it did is credit to him; there were occasions in the semi-final when siuhy out-called Heroic to a T, and there are examples scattered across GamerLegion's miracle run.

Both IGLs are worthy of the award, but we eventually sided with siuhy due to just how much his side punched above their weight.

Opener

After a tricky decision in the IGL category, we're back to an easy one for opener. iM was the revelation of the Major, posting a whopping 95.2 ADR, 0.16 openers per round, and 0.88 KPR (just 0.01 less than ZywOo).

We can praise siuhy's calling all day long, but without iM elevating his level this high you can forget about GamerLegion making it so far. It was a rifling performance on par with Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač in Stockholm or Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard in Antwerp.

There will be regrets that he only hit this astronomical peak on one half in the final, a 23K-9D CT side on Nuke, but you cannot take much more away from the young man. iM has not quite come out of nowhere, but this is a violent explosion of potential onto the world stage the likes of which has not been seen in a long time.

Best Five

This leaves us with a pretty nasty five of ZywOo on the AWP, NAF and Spinx as our lurkers, and the GamerLegion map control pack of siuhy and iM. Some CT spots will cause arguments due to siuhy's tendency to choose rotator roles, but it is a roster with enough talent and versatility to sort it out.

So what do you think of our team of the event? Would you have squeezed Magisk or apEX in, or have we missed someone else entirely? Tell us your Best Five of the Paris Major in the comments.