Hi everyone, I am the author of the Top 20 players of the year series. And no, lurppis had nothing to do with (or anyone else), nor did Xtrfy - they simply bought the right to show their name during the ranking and link to their pages (do give them a like and follow!).Anyway, this was the fourth edition of the ranking after two in CS 1.6 (2010, 2011) and one in CS:GO (2013). I decided to skip 2012 because it was a transition year between 1.6 and CS:GO and I thought it would be weird to mix them up, while creating two lists would have been double the work, while CS:GO didn't really have a lot of data.

How the ranking is made

The ranking has always started on January 1 and lasted until January 20, so obviously I had to prepare and analyze everything long before. And since this year was the most competitive one in the history of CS in my opinion, with no clear best players and no easy picks, I had to start analyzing earlier than before, which was right after ESEA S17 Finals in early December.I also introduced a lot of new stats and ways to assess performance, such as looking at round wins, contribution in rounds other than just kills, as well as "big match" stats.The analysis lasted all the way until Jan 1 and included days and nights of combing through stats. And yes, like mentioned in the Introduction article, everything is based on stats. I did of course watch every single tournament as much as possible while also being at events, and I rewatched many as well. But I only used that memory to point out some of the biggest moments of the year, not use it as my impression of the player(s).What many also don't realize is that the articles aren't pre-prepared, I write them on the day of publishing, and that also takes a lot of time (at least for me as I'm not a natural or a professional writer in any way). So while it would be ideal to announce #1 and #2 at the same time, I just can't get that much done in one day and I don't want to have an empty day if I would wait for the 20th to post both.

The ranking itself

Despite what some think about the ranking, I am VERY confident in it and I really don't mind any of the hate. The same thing happens every year, but only now the community is bigger which means more voices (and naturally as always people disagreeing and trolling are more likely to comment than the ones who are neutral or agree). And also this year the places weren't as obvious as before, so there was no general consensus that would sway the people.The majority as always doesn't remember the entire year, it's simply human nature, and they give more value to what happened more recently over what happened in the more distant past because they remember the new things more clearly, so of course Happy, kennyS, JW are more favored by the average fan than pasha and GTR who dominated in the beginning (and much longer).But that is not what a ranking should be like, and what the player of the year choice should be based on. The entire year has to be considered equally, only weighed by the tournaments themselves.Another big thing that many miss is differentiating between online and LAN tournaments and between playing at a major and playing at a small event. You may remember someone played amazing when you watched him, but you often won't remember which tournament it was, and it's possible that it was online. But the best players will always be the ones who play the best when the most is on the line, in the big lans and against other big teams.So aside from those kinds of critics who haven't given this much thought, I am still waiting to read, just like for all of my previous editions, a good argument against any placing. Sure you can make an argument for why someone should be a few spots higher or lower, it depends on personal interpretation of what is important, but no one has even produced that (or at least I haven't seen it), let alone an argument about a completely off placing.Therefore I'd like to ask people to argue any of the placings if they wish so right here in the comments.A few things I'd like to get out of the way first though:Team achievements =/= good placingWhat seems to be spreading like a virus among our users is that team achievements are what matters most in the ranking, while it should be an individual ranking.It is an individual ranking, but contribution to success is something that many don't seem to understand.Contributing to success IS the hard part. It's an individual achievement. Like being an MVP of a tournament.It's far from the same thing if a player has great stats without results and if he has great (or slightly less great) stats while contributing to winning a title as a star, or one of the best players on the team.Why doesn't anyone consider NiKolinho the 5th best player in the world then (he is currently 5th on the overall player stats page)? By the same principle someone who doesn't play well in the biggest tournaments cannot be the best player. That needs to be proven, to prove the ability to win under pressure in order to be considered the best.Bottom line: team achievements themselves do not grant good placements (Fifflaren would have been in 2013 ranking otherwise), it's the contribution to success that matters. And winning is the point of the game, if your contribution doesn't lead to winning, you cannot be considered the best.kennyS certainly has the skill to be the best, and he is definitely going to be winning big events for years to come, but he won't be the best player until he does.Why the IGL role isn't consideredI explained this in a comment to pita's blog, along with some other things:Who barely didn't make itEdward (21) – This was one of the hardest decisions to make, chosing between him and device. But due to Edward playing in a number of smaller/less relevant tournaments and device always playing against big teams, I settled for device, although they could practically share the 20th spot as far as I'm concerned.Xizt (22) – Another very tough exclusion. He had a very solid year and he contributed a lot to NiP's success, but he just didn't stand out often enough. He even had better stats than friberg, but friberg was the MVP of their biggest win, so that by far trumps any difference in stats between them. On the other hand, he was one of the underperformers during their slump, along with friberg.Skadoodle (23) – The next best NA player after swag in 2014, he was one of the keys to iBP doing so well at the ESEA events and at FACEIT. But he was very bad at the majors, so that knocked him down a notch.SmithZz would be somewhere close as well, and he was actually a small reason why the LDLC players couldn't be higher. He had a few great tournaments and was even the MVP at SLTV XI which they won, so the others didn't stand out as much because of him sometimes. But he also had a lot of bad tournaments, especially in the first half with Titan, and he didn't really do so well when they won DHW, so he couldn't get into the top 20.So if anyone wants to ask me anything about the ranking, for some stat that I didn't mention, for an explanation of some placement, or to argue why a placement is wrong, feel free.P.S. I will not be sharing any of the files with stats, it is all too fragmented and unmarked, only the tweeted screenshot was prepared for others to see it.