CIS CS = BEST CS. Why will the CIS have three teams in the top 10 of the world ranking in 2023?

Natus Vincere set the pace

At the beginning of 2023, Natus Vincere, like all the years before, was looked at as the only CIS contender for high places in the Major. The team had a controversial season: they won the only major LAN tournament but failed mid-year. In January, NAVI was to be the first to enter the international arena and set the bar for the rest of the teams from the region. Composition Alexandra s1mple Kostyleva held the tournament at the highest level and took the deserved first place, and the captain earned the first MVP title of the season.

NAVI’s victory at BLAST Premier: Global Final 2023 is undoubtedly the main one of all three. The team met with the most serious rivals at the tournament, confidently outplayed each of them and earned $ 600,000 (the second largest prize in the history of CS: GO tournaments) for the first place. Natus Vincere secured the title of one of the favorites of the upcoming Major and set off to prepare for the group stage BLAST Premier: Spring Series 2023and the next week after their triumph, Virtus.pro and Team Spirit entered the battle.

Virtus.pro has found stability

Last year ended on a positive note for Virtus.pro: the team won Flashpoint Season 2 and DreamHack Open December 2023, earning $ 550 thousand. VP’s new season began with a victory at cs_summit 7, having issued a kind of hat-trick.

It is noteworthy that at the first tournament of the year the roster Jami Jame Ali did not lose a single map, unlike Flashpoint 2, where the team needed all three maps in absolutely all league matches. It seems that Virtus.pro has finally found the key to a stable game and is ready to show results on the tier-1 CS: GO scene. The team is already in the top 10 according to HLTV.org and will most likely continue to rise in the rankings. The next tournament for VP will be the Play-In IEM Katowice 2023 stage, where the team will compete for the right to play in the main part of the prestigious championship. We are sure that with such a game as at cs_summit 7, Virtus.pro has every chance of success in the upcoming matches.

Substitutions in Team Spirit paid off

Team Spirit started 2023 with lineup replacements. Artem left the roster iDISBALANCE Egorov, and in his place on lease from ESPADA came Abdul degster Hasanov and Robert Patsi Isyanov – the club followed the trend and expanded its roster to six people. If any of the fans had doubts about this decision, then now they should not. Spirit lost only one match in the tournament – to compatriots from Gambit Esports, and in the grand final closed the bo5 streak against FPX Esports for three cards.

At the end of the championship, Degster became the best in the average rating (1.29), having played for Team Spirit on 13 maps. Patsi made his debut worse – his rating was 0.82, but Isyanov played only five maps and, perhaps, did not have time to reveal himself. Instead, he gave his teammates some flexibility, which allowed all other players to end the tournament with a rating above one. Of course, it’s too early to talk about the success of Team Spirit in one average tournament, but the players have definitely proved that they cannot be discounted. The team, like Virtus.pro, is ahead of the Play-In IEM Katowice 2023 stage and much more formidable rivals.

Natural victories

The grand finals of all three tournaments ended with a zero in the list of lost cards for the winning teams. This suggests that the CIS squads have finally conquered an absolutely new and unknown height for themselves – stability at decisive moments. For all CS: GO fans, it has long become a habit to watch “valid” five-card finals if the server has a Russian-speaking team. Teams from the CIS had a tendency to lose concentration in decisive matches and lose the victory from their hands – which is worth only two lost NAVI finals with a score of 2: 0 in 2023.

However, in the new season Natus Vincere, Virtus.pro and Team Spirit found the reasons for their own mistakes and were able to fix them. All three final bouts involving these teams ended in a dominant manner. Of the seven maps won, the fight began only once (16:14 on Inferno in the Virtus.pro match – Fnatic), and on everyone else, our teams were aimlessly smashing the opponent. The next serious challenge for all three rosters is IEM Katowice 2023. NAVI will defend last year’s title, while VP and Spirit have yet to qualify for the main stage of the championship. With such a game as in January, fans can safely count on the presence of several teams from the CIS in the playoffs of the Polish tournament.

Kings of Individual Statistics

According to the results of all three championships, the players from the CIS were the strongest. S1mple became the best at BLAST Premier: Global Final 2023 with a 1.41 rating (tournament MVP) by a wide margin, Jame won the individual race at cs_summit 7 with 1.31 (tournament MVP), and degster made a great debut for Team Spirit at DreamHack Open January 2023 with a rating of 1.29 (the top three also included sh1ro from 1.28 and mir from 1.27).

In 2023, Kostylev remains the region’s unattainable superstar. This also applies to in-game statistics, and media success, and in general. But now one thing is clear: with such results of other teams of the region s1mple and electronic will not be the only representatives of the CIS in the ranking of the best players in 2023.

On February 1, HLTV.org will update the list of the best teams in the world. Virtus.pro will probably strengthen its position in the top ten, Team Spirit can also move up a couple of lines. Thus, four representatives of the CIS will confidently be in the top 20 teams in the world, which will be the best result for the region in history. Soon the squads will have to prove that they are in their place for a reason, but we, in turn, will closely monitor their success.