https://www.cybersport.ru/counter-strike-go/articles/lan-vse-dokazal-sng-silneishii-region-na-scene-cs-go

S1mple ahead of the rest

Natus Vincere turned out to be the best team from the CIS at the end of the group stage of IEM Cologne 2023. Having won all three starting matches with a score of 2: 1, the team Kirill Boombl4 Mikhailov secured a ticket to the semifinals of the championship. The roster is guaranteed to make it to the top 4 – quite an impressive result, isn’t it?

I think it will be easy to guess who became the best player in the NAVI lineup after matches against Renegades, Team Vitality and Astralis… Alexander s1mple Kostylev, as always, topped the individual rankings table, leaving his closest pursuers far behind. The Ukrainian sniper finally made it to the LAN, where he once again reminded fans and critics why his nickname was the first association with professional CS: GO. In three starting matches, Kostylev achieved an individual rating of 1.52, which is about 0.25 more than the s1mple average in major tournaments. The Ukrainian is always charged to win and claims to be the MVP in absolutely any tournament, but in Cologne the sniper seems to have decided to close the question “Who will be the best player in IEM Cologne 2023?” as quickly as possible. And this cannot but rejoice.

Speaking of Natus Vincere in the group stage, one cannot fail to note an impressive performance Valeria B1t Vakhovsky… For the 18-year-old Ukrainian, this LAN became one of the first in his career, and the opportunity to play offline against teams from the top twenty for a young cybersportsman is definitely the first time. Online, Vakhovsky alternated between successful matches with unsuccessful ones, and sometimes even failures, so before IEM Cologne 2023, special attention was riveted to him, with which B1t coped surprisingly easily. After the matches in the group, the Ukrainian cybersportsman has the third statistics in the team, behind only s1mple and electronic, but here, as they say, God himself ordered. Looking at B1t’s current performance, two things become apparent. First, the adaptation of Vakhovsky has been successfully completed and the guy is ready to demonstrate the level of play that his teammates and B1ad3 talked about so actively. Second – we are unlikely to see Egor flamie Vasilyeva in a Natus Vincere T-shirt.

Will Gambit Esports follow the path of IEM Katowice 2023?

The first half of 2023 was held under the banner of the Gambit Esports CS: GO roster. Roster Vladislava nafany Gorshkova destroyed rivals in tournament after tournament, the members of the roster competed with each other for the title of MVP at the championships, and for the last two months the team confidently led the world ranking of HLTV.org.

Perhaps Gambit Esports was the main topic of discussion ahead of the start of IEM Cologne 2023. Are Gambit players really as good as they were online? Will the lack of offline experience affect? These questions were asked to the roster of Dmitry sh1ro Sokolov before the start of the German championship, and, in my opinion, the team from the CIS answered them at the end of the group stage.

First, yes, the members of Gambit Esports are really as good as they were online. The level of the team’s individual play remained the same as it was during the last six months: the guys delighted the audience with bright highlights in literally every match, confirming the legitimacy of the MVP medals received in 2023. The sniper of the sh1ro team, for example, made it to the top 8 individual rating in the group stage with a score of 1.24. Secondly, yes, the team can really win on the LAN. Yes, in places with a creak and giving the opponents cards, but the main thing is the result. To summarize, the sh1ro roster did not lose face and quite successfully debuted on LAN (together with HObbit, the team played exclusively online). And this, too, cannot but rejoice.

The only minor note in the Gambit Esports symphony in the group stage was played against G2 Esports for a slot in the championship semifinals. In a tense struggle, the CIS team, unfortunately, lost the decisive map with a score of 14:16, in connection with which they will start the playoffs from the quarterfinals. “It’s a shame,” you say. “It’s okay,” I will answer you. In February at IEM Katowice 2023, which, however, was held online, Gambit Esports also could not immediately advance to the semifinals (due to the defeat of Evil Geniuses in the first round of the group stage), but this, as we remember, did not prevent her from winning the tournament … In the first round of the playoffs, the nafany roster will face FaZe Clan, which, frankly, does not look like a serious competitor. But in case of success in the match against olofmeister and Gambit Esports, they will face their main rival at this tournament – Natus Vincere. With all due respect to the remaining participants of the championship, but judging by the balance of power on the professional CS: GO scene in recent months, it is the NAVI vs Gambit Esports match that will determine the winner of IEM Cologne 2023. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, first we need to deal with FaZe Clan…

Virtus.pro surprises

Before the start of IEM Cologne 2023, a lot of attention was focused on Virtus.pro. The roster frankly failed at StarLadder CIS RMR 2023, the second tournament of the RMR series for the CIS, finishing in last place in the group, as a result of which it dropped out of the top 5 of the Regional Major Rankings. In the game of the composition Jami Jame Ali there was an obvious decline, and therefore they did not expect impressive results from the team in the German championship. However, the team surprised critics by becoming the third representative of the CIS with a slot in the decisive matches.

The group stage started for Virtus.pro approximately the way the team’s haters expected. The matchup against BIG did not look heavy for the CIS team, but at the same time it had to demonstrate VP’s real form. The 0-2 defeat bolstered fans’ fears and it looked like this tournament would end as quickly as possible for the Jame roster. However, finding itself one step away from failure, Virtus.pro seemed to be reborn and gnawed its way to the playoffs. And if the victory over Complexity Gaming in the first round of the lower bracket may not have convinced the critics of VP’s strength, then the defeat of Ninjas in Pajamas, who scored a good move, definitely made the fans look at the CIS team from a different angle. Well, in the match for a slot in the playoffs, Virtus.pro again met with BIG in order to demonstrate as clearly as possible the changes made right during IEM Cologne 2023. By the decisive match of the group stage, YEKINDAR finally woke up, having given the best performance in the tournament, and at On the second map of the match against the XANTARES roster, SANJI unexpectedly entered the game, having made more than 30 frags on Inferno. The result is a rematch with a score of 2: 0 and a ticket to the quarterfinals of the competition, where the Jame roster will meet with Astralis, which seems to have remembered the times of its domination.

Team Spirit ran out of experience

The only disappointment for the CIS fans at the German championship was Team Spirit… Having successfully overcome the Play-In stage, Leonid chopper Vishnyakov’s team lost both matches in the group stage and left the tournament, taking 13-16 places. Yes, the result is really unsatisfactory, but instead of analyzing the mistakes, I, on the contrary, propose to pay attention to the positive moments from the team’s trip to Germany.

Firstly, despite the defeats and early departure from the championship, Team Spirit showed teeth to the opponents. None of the matches, whether in Play-In or in the group stage, went without a fight. Absolutely all the team’s games at IEM Cologne 2023 lasted three maps, and the only bo1 series against MIBR ended in the second overtimes. At the German championship, the chopper team took the cards from Team Vitality, Heroic and FaZe Clan. And all this is on the LAN. Summing up the results of the tournament for Team Spirit, we can safely say that the roster simply did not have enough experience in offline tournaments, which is why the team could not cope with the pressure at the decisive moments of the matches. Who knows where Team Spirit would be now if she won overtime on the third map in the match against Heroic, but as they say, we have what we have. A couple more such trips to major tournaments, and you will see, Spirit will open up and will not only impose the fight on the tops, but also finish the matches in its favor.

Secondly, it’s safe to say that a real superstar has appeared in Team Spirit. What Abdul degster Hasanov did at the championship in Cologne cannot be called anything other than fantasy. The Russian, as promised, brought to Germany the charge and the motivation that he spoke so actively about in the first half of 2023. The sniper showed that he absolutely does not care who is on the other side of the server, sometimes single-handedly winning the most important rounds for the team against Team Vitality and FaZe Clan. Statistics are also on Hasanov’s side: a rating of 1.34 at the end of the group stage, thanks to which the Russian would probably have fought for the first line among all players, if not for the phenomenal performances of s1mple.

Team Spirit has demonstrated incredible potential, which remains to be matched by the experience on the LAN. With that courage and desire to win, coupled with the amazing degster game, the team may well gain a foothold in the top 10 of the world rankings and soon begin to fight for victories in major tournaments.