Top 20 CS:GO Players of the Year According to Telecom Asia Sport (places 16-20)

Winter vacation is a traditional time to sum up the season's results for the CS:GO scene and compile the usual top 20 players of the year. This year Telecom Asia Sport is going to present our own version of the top 20, based on ACM ratings of players during the major LAN events.

The eternal question to the authors of all ratings is: what do you use as a guideline? Let's try to answer in detail.

The basic factor is ACMv1 rating (regardless of the role) and ACMv2 (depending on the role). They help distribute players into groups at an early stage of compiling the top, when the short-list of the final twenty consists of 30-35 candidates. The second version of ACM becomes very important after the elimination stage, when it's time to sort out the rest of the players. Given the main feature of ACMv2 as the form of role coefficient, the second rating allows one to highlight the "gems" in the list at unpopular positions, who should definitely get into our top.

The second factor is the MVP and EVP titles according to the HLTV portal. These awards are official and generally accepted, so it's worth considering them. If there are controversial points in certain groups of players, formed after sorting by ACM, they are easily solved by comparing the awards from HLTV.

The last but not least factor is team play. The ACMv2 ranking has been slightly adjusted for the annual version, so as not to take the opponents' ratings into account, but to assign this empty space to the influence of the team. All that this "advantage" gives in the case of good team performances is a few numbers in the ACM, which are unlikely to seriously change the picture.

A natural entry fragger Mareks opens our top 20 this year. The season he played is quite surreal: the Latvian player gained a lot of fame and recognition after transferring to Liquid in the summer, where he quickly settled in and became "one of the family". However, by the fall the community began to notice some signs of instability in the player that let the entire team down in important games. Thus, the statistics of YEKINDAR at the end of the year in major tournaments isn't as good as we would have expected in the summer, but he did manage to play well in some tournaments. For example, Mareks won two EVP medals in a row towards the end of the season, while improving his 2.0 rating against the world's top 5. This rebound is deceptive: many remembered his summer achievements, but we shouldn't forget about the fall stretch that compromised all aspects of his stats. YEKINDAR was the last in the ACMv2 ranking among the entry fraggers in the relevant section, he's right behind (spoiler) electroNic and NiKo.

As stated in the introduction, ACMv2 also encourages players with a passive playstyle. One of them is Perfecto, who you wouldn't see in any other top and who is the first support in our top 20. In the stream of events that swept Natus Vincere this year, it was s1mple and Perfecto that remained the rays of stability that reminded us of NaVi-2021. As for Ilya's numbers, it's worth mentioning his talent for finding the middle ground between CSA (passive efficiency) and ACM (dry results). For the entire year 2022, Perfecto is basically the best at balancing these indicators, something that the "dirty" supports like ropz or KSCERATO haven't managed to do at all. Moreover, he even managed to be in the top two of such in-depth indicators as KAST% (productive rounds) and DPR (deaths per round). His making it into our top is a sign that true efficiency may not even be rewarded with EVP ranks.

You can blame Jame all you want: for his rare participation in the top tournaments this year, for his unstable performance after the major, but you can't deny his contribution to the victory in Rio de Janeiro. It is interesting that two Russian snipers - sh1ro and Jame - showed almost the same level of concentration in Brazil. But the Outsiders captain's recognition as the tournament's MVP came only after the exit of his more popular rival: it just so happened that more fans watched Cloud9's comeback from the bottom. Nevertheless, that performance alone was enough to rank him among the world leaders in sniper kills per round, and also become the highest-ranked captain. Ali had every chance to drop his stats over the winter while the Outsiders were competing in the BLAST Premier World Finals. Thankfully, even a "terrible performance," as the player himself put it, wasn't enough to shatter his position in the individual rankings. However, the HLTV filters still "penalize" all the Outsiders players for the small number of top events played, so the Russian's achievements in the "Special Stats" can be considered unofficial.

The thing about yuurih is that he's been overshadowed by his teammates for quite a few seasons now, while still being the most consistent player on the roster. The fans and experts throughout the year have admired KSCERATO's growth as a top-tier player in Europe, arT's career breakthrough as captain-rifler, and yuurih's merits are a bit overlooked in this flow. It's all about the fact that Yuri Santos has never produced high numbers in his 3 years at FURIA to be in the public eye. Therefore, there is only one way to rate his game - by looking at the game in real time. That's the logic behind his receiving two EVP awards (one in the home majors), which we can't ignore when compiling the top.

The Dane is at the bottom of the first five players. He had all chances to improve his individual numbers manifold, but he quietly missed the last tournament of the year. Had Martin won another EVP award, we'd have seen him in the next article. Some of his particular accomplishments include his high damage per round, by which he beat even ZywOo, rain and EliGE in 2022. An even better reason for 16th place is certainly the EVP titles at both majors this past season and the BLAST Premier Fall Finals. We must also mention stavn's team: Heroic is currently experiencing a long-awaited growth, and we'll see it's result as soon as January 2023 at the new BLAST. Surprisingly (another spoiler) the best team in the world at the end of the season is represented by a single player in the top 20 according to both HLTV and Telecom Asia Sport.