Ukrainian cybersportsman Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev topped the ranking by HLTV.org of the top 20 players in the world in the CS:GO discipline at the end of 2018. This is reported by the site of Natus Vincere, a club that Aleksandr represents at competitions.
Nicholas “device” Ridtts from Astralis took the second place. The third, fourth and fifth places are taken by Nikola “NiKo” Kovach, Denis “electronic” Sharipov (also Natus Vincere player) and Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen from Astralis, respectively.
“In 2018, “s1mple” showed the highest rating (1.33), committed the most kills (3,866), the highest number of kills per round on average (0.87), and spent the most rounds with one or more kills (55.4%). In addition, Sasha was ranked the first in the number of first killings (637), ranked second in the number of clutches (80), KAST (75.9%) and with an average loss per round (87.4),” the club website reports.
The main achievements of the cybersportsman:
Aleksandr also set several new records over the year: he won the MVP (most valuable player status) in two championships in a row without his team winning and was the first to achieve a killing / death difference of + 1,000 in a year. In total, s1mple received MVP status six times: on StarSeries S4, DreamHack Masters Marseille, StarSeries S5, CS:GO Asia Championships 2018, ESL One Cologne 2018 and BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen 2018.
The co-owner of HLTV.org, Pytar Milovanovic, commented on the rivalry for first place like this: “There was no option for “s1mple” to take second place in the rating, but “device” placed a good bid on him by the end of the year… he would be the first in 2014-2017. But what a historic year for “s1mple” it was!”