Is s1mple losing his CS:GO prowess?

Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev is widely regarded as the best CS:GO player of all time. There’s only one other player who is on par with him, and that player is Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut.

The rivalry between them is similar to the one between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. But most will argue that s1mple is the better of the two.

S1mple’s Career in Professional CS:GO

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When he first started to make a name for himself, s1mple impressed audiences with his game sense, clutches, and ability to win maps on his own. His favorite weapon has come to be the AWP, but the truth is that he’s just as skilled with every other important gun in the CS:GO.

Among s1mple’s most memorable moments is the AWP throw from a 2016 tournament. Nobody had ever seen a player throwing his AWP over the wall to distract the opponent and then finish the job with a headshot from his pistol. People went insane over that clip.

From falling no-scopes to successful 1v3 and even 1v5 clutches, s1mple looked like he could do it all. And he could. Still, it took him many years to win his first Major because chose to stay with one team (Natus Vincere) over the years and the teammates he had for the first 4 years were not that good.

In 2021, s1mple won his first CS:GO Major, at PGL Major Stockholm. Without a doubt, 2021 was the best year in his career and also in Na’Vi’s history, at least for CS:GO.

He won six trophies in total that year and he would have continued to dominate the pro scene. But a scandal left Na’Vi without their captain, Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhaylov, and other teams, such as FaZe Clan, started to decypher their playstyle.

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S1mple’s Recent Performance in 2022 and at IEM Rio Major

For the first time since he started to play CS:GO professionally, s1mple looks a bit uneasy when he aims. His stats are considerably worse than before and at IEM Rio Major, they’ve been quite average in many cases.

In particular, the match against FURIA Esports, lost by Natus Vincere in the quarterfinals of the tournament, was a disaster for him. For the first time in many years, he was the weakest player on the server. His rating 2.0 for the match was 0.87 and his K-D was -9.

For any other player, this would have been considered a normal rating. But for a player who either won the best CS:GO player of the year award or placed 2nd in the last four years, it’s hard not to notice the difference between the s1mple of 2021 and the s1mple of 2022.

[twitter url="https://twitter.com/s1mpleO/status/1591249532901543937"]

It seems that being far from home for many months and having to deal with war-related concerns has had an impact on him. We don’t know yet when he will come back to his usual form, but at 25, s1mple seems, for the first time in his career, a little bit lost and unmotivated.

The final events of 2022 may disprove this hypothesis, but there’s a high chance that the s1mple of 2016-2021 will not be back for a while.

Header: ESL