en
Do Team Vitality Deserve Their #1 Rank in CS:GO?
Team Vitality have some of the strongest players in CS:GO. Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut has already won the CS:GO player of the year award twice and will probably win it for the third time this season.
The Danish players, Emil “Magisk” Reif and Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen, are former Astralis members and winners of several Majors. And the remaining members of the squad are highly experienced and talented.
Vitality’s Recent Results
In the last few months, Vitality won an S-tier trophy at ESL Pro League Season 16, where they defeated opponents like Natus Vincere, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Fnatic, Team Spirit, Outsiders, G2 Esports, and Team Liquid. All of these teams are formidable and Vitality did not lose a single match.
However, at BLAST Premier Fall Showdown Europe, Vitality failed to qualify for the BLAST Premier Fall Final and were defeated by Astralis. This defeat, against a relatively weak Astralis roster who then lost in the Grand Final versus Heroic, suggests that Vitality may not be as strong as their rank indicates.
How Rank Is Calculated in CS:GO
In CS:GO, a team’s rank is calculated in a dynamic way. If a team won a Major six months ago, that result no longer counts. And if they won it three months ago, it counts but not as much as it did immediately after the tournament.
Different events offer a different number of rank points. The better a team’s result, the more points they will get. But those points decay over time and after a number of months, they become irrelevant.
The reason why Vitality became the number one team in the world has to do with the fact that both Natus Vincere and FaZe Clan didn’t do so well in ESL Pro League Season 16. And the biggest tournaments apart from that event were so long ago that the points they got for them are no longer 100% relevant.
Thanks to winning EPL S16, Vitality got a lot of points, and all of a sudden, they saw themselves climbing many positions almost overnight. But one tournament win doesn’t make you the number-one team in the world.
Other Competitors
Even though they had poor results at EPL S16, FaZe Clan and Natus Vincere then went on to win the RMRs for IEM Rio Major, dismantling every opponent with ease. This is clear proof that these two teams will probably be the biggest favorites at the Major.
Vitality may have a very strong team right now, but their #1 rank is deceptive. No doubt, they are a top-five team. But any one of the other four might defeat them in a direct match.
Header: ESL