I bet you’ve never considered the hard work it takes to establish the betting odds for any of the games you love to watch. It’s not just simple arithmetic, an algorithm you put in place, enter the name of the teams that are facing and voila, you have your result. It’s rather a fine-tuning process, taking into consideration lots of variables, team’s statistics, the line-ups and their player’s current form, as well as any other relevant subjective information that could turn out to be just the tiny detail that finally makes the greatest difference.
And this is available for any sport, even if we’re talking about the traditional ones or eSports. Furthermore, when CS:GO match betting sites are concerned, things are even harder to assess, seeing how we can’t talk about teams that are playing home or away, the pressure that fans inflict is basically inexistent. And so, knowing the players in a roster, knowing their HLTV 2.0 Rating, kill-death-ratio, or kill-per-round, becomes paramount. But also, the mood the players are in their current form, any rivalries or out of the game issues that could affect the player’s performance.
Let’s see the players that continued to surprise us during 2018 and perhaps take the pulse on the reasons behind their rise or fall this last season while trying to foresee their future evolution.
Potential Full, Still Waiting To Explode
Some of the CS:GO specialists were putting their money on Timothy “autimatic” Ta, at the beginning of 2018. After a fulminating previous year, with lots of wins for Cloud9, analysts had their eyes on autimatic, one of the team’s main fraggers. His main role within the team is of a lurker, although it seems that if the needs of his team change, so do his role. He also took upon him the in-game leadership in several tournaments.
But although still one of the most consistent players in his team, results in 2018 were awfully low for a team with such expectations. As a result, autimatic has been categorized as one of the unpleasant surprises of 2018, while still full of potential hope for future years to come.
CS:GO Match Betting Sites’ Favorite Player
What expectations would you have had from the best CS:GO player in the world for two years in a row in 2016 and 2017, based on HLTV? You would have thought it a good chance to repeat that performance for three years in a row, for sure. Betting sites though so too and therefore Marcelo “coldzera” David had great odds in his favor.
What no one expected was that the meta should change drastically towards tactical team plays, making the star-shining individuals far less important. And so, coldzera’s road in 2018 was far least shiny. But, being one of the most consistent players in the circuit and based on his ability to understand how a game goes, better than most, makes it an interesting year for “coldzera” to rehabilitate himself.
Don’t Get In His Crosshair
One of the most well-known riflers of CS:GO tournaments is also one of the year’s best players. Speaking of Nikola “Niko” Kovac, he has been the one to keep FaZe’s spirit together, through all the downs that the team has gone through this year.
It’s true that he sometimes does flashy plays and hard carries, but most of the times other players feel on their own skin his great ability to end any round in a couple of seconds with his pinpoint accuracy.
The “I” In Team
The team of Astralis is surely one of last year’s big winners, cutting through winning tournaments like a knife through butter. They understood the new meta and adapted really fast to the new gaming environment, with more than seven event medals last year. But even while strictly obeying the strategy that requires a clear focus on playing as a collective unit, they still had a somewhat of a lone wolf, in the person of Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz.
Dev1ce is a cerebral player, as well as a player that can hold his ground when push comes to shove, which it does most of the time during CS:GO games, this being the main purpose. And whenever there was a time to change the tide of a game, dev1ce came through over and over again.
One Is More Than A Number
But it is the number in Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev’s name, as well as the position he finished 2018’s top of best CS:GO players. The Natus Vincere’s team member finished with a HLTV Rating2.0 of 1.33, best in the world. That made it that Na’Vi has won lots of good placings throughout the year. But even when the team lost, s1mple managed to receive MVP’s awards and score higher than any other tournament player.
Being the best version of yourself even when the team falters, makes s1mple the best player of 2018 and a real menace for the seasons to come.
