EPICENTER 2019 was the last Big CSGO Event in 2019. The tournament gathered four teams from the Top 10 of HLTV World Rankings (mousesports, Team Vitality, Evil Geniuses, NAVI), the new lineup of Virtus.pro, the Russian squad of forZe, the ambitious Danes of Heroic, and the Chinese of EHOME. The championship was held in Crocus Expo Half on December 17-22 and handed out $500,000 of prize money.

For what things the participants of the Moscow event were remembered the most? In order to answer this question, uWatch put together a list of interesting statistical facts about each of the eight teams, starting with the eventual champions and ending with the rosters that ended up on the last 7-8th place.

Team Vitality

EPICENTER 2019 is the second Big LAN Event that Vitality won this year. Five months ago, they conquered the title of ECS S7 Finals in London. In total, for the entire 2019, the French squad took the first place at four offline championships, which also include Charleroi Esports and cs_summit 4.

Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut earned the highest number of MVP awards in 2019. His fifth HLTV medal was given to him at the EPICENTER. Before that, the Frenchman was named as the most valuable player of four events: DreamHack Masters Malmö, ESL One Cologne, ECS S7 Finals, and cs_summit 4.

The next one in the amount of the Most Valuable Player awards is Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz of Astralis (3). Alongside him in the leaderboard is Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski of Team Liquid (3).

In Moscow, ZywOo played the best Big Event in his entire career. His overall rating at EPICENTER 2019 is 1.53. Earlier, his best individual result was scored at ECS S7 Finals (1.41 KDR).

mousesports

Mousesports have almost won their fourth consecutive LAN. Before placing second at the EPICENTER, they won the following events: CSGO Asia Championships, ESL Pro League Season 10, and cs_summit 5. Due to a series of successful results, the European team climbed to the second spot of the HLTV Rankings.

Özgür "woxic" Eker is the best sniper of the Moscow tournament. After the event had been finished, he had 111 AWP kills on his record. On the second place is Cvetelin "CeRq" Dimitrov (109), and on the third one is ZywOo (108).

David "frozen" Čerňanský won the biggest amount of rounds in 1vX situations. The Slovakian player of mousesports prevailed over his opponents in 10 clutches. After him in the list of leaders is ZywOo (8), who is followed by his teammate, Richard "shox" Papillon (5).

It was the second EPICENTER final for the mouz captain, Finn "karrigan" Andersen. Last year, in the previous tournament of the series, he conquered the trophy with FaZe Clan. Back then, they defeated NAVI in the final match with a 2-0 score.

Heroic

For the first time since March 2017, Heroic have made it to the Top 4 of a Big LAN Event. Two and a half years ago, the Danes placed 3-4th at IEM Katowice 2017. Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer is the only remaining player from the lineup that attended the Polish tournament.

Martin "stavn" Lund managed to score the most number of opening kills. At EPICENTER 2019, he made 41 kills of such category. The Danish rifler outran such players as Denis "electronic" Sharipov (37) and Alex "ALEX" McMeekin (36).

Casper "cadiaN" Møller had the highest rating in pistol rounds at EPICENTER 2019. His KDR in the pistols was 2.18. The Danish player got ahead of Vincent "Brehze" Cayonte, who averaged a 2.12 KDR.

Evil Geniuses

Evil Geniuses have reached the Playoffs at their fourth LAN in a row. Prior to that, they made it to the last stages of CAC 2019, ECS S8 Finals, and ESL Pro League S10 Finals. After EPICENTER had come to an end, the Americans found themselves on the fifth place of the HLTV Rankings.

Brehze, who missed Day One of the event, averaged the best rating in terms of headshots per round (0.42). In the leaderboard, he is followed by Kelun "SLOWLY" Sun (also 0.42, but his squad took the last place) and Alexey "qikert" Golubev (0.40).

forZe

Excluding the StarLadder Major, EPICENTER 2019 was the first Big LAN Event for forZe. There, the Russian squad finished on the 5-6th place. They managed to defeat but also lost to EG in two separate matches, and then, they were defeated by Heroic in the quarterfinal series.

Bogdan "xsepower" Chernikov of forZe is amongst top-performing snipers of the tournament. In 10 maps, he scored 107 kills with the Big Green.

NAVI

In terms of KDR, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev finished his second-worst LAN in 2019. This is despite the fact that he averaged a high rating, 1.16. The worst performance of the Ukrainian player occurred at BLAST Pro Series: Copenhagen. There, his KDR stopped at a 1.06 mark.

For the fifth LAN in a row, Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács ended up as the worst performer of NAVI. At three of them, the Slovakian sniper had a negative HLTV KDR. Following his results at the EPICENTER, his rating is 0.85.

EHOME

EPICENTER 2019 was the first Big Event for the EHOME team. There, they took the last 7-8th place. Out of the six worst-performing players at this championship, five of them are the representatives of the Chinese lineup.

DeStRoYeR — 0.84 HLTV KDR;

SLOWLY — 0.78;

B1NGO — 0.74;

Maerk — 0.65;

FIOURN — 0.58.



Still, QingHui "FIOURN" Kong scored the highest headshot percentage. 72.1% of his kills were made by taking down his opponents with headshots. However, for the whole tournament, he managed to collect only 44 frags (4 maps = 11 frags per map).

EHOME won the least amount of pistol rounds at the EPICENTER (1W-7L). Also, they didn’t win a single force and an eco after losing the pistol.

Virtus.pro

The Kazakhstani team of Virtus.pro, which previously represented the AVANGAR tag, came in last (7-8th place) at their debut tournament under the banner of the Russian esports organization. They finished their performance with 2W-4L statistics in maps after losing to mousesports and forZe.

Despite an early exit, VP were remembered by pulling off an incredible comeback against forZe on Inferno. While being behind 0-11, they managed to play it back and won the game 16-13 as the Ts. According to HLTV.org, for the first time in the CSGO history, a team came back on Inferno from such a deficit that was got on the CT side.

The Kazakhstani lineup (Jame, Qikert, buster, AdreN и SANJI) took the last place at their second international LAN in a row. Before that, they came in last at ECS S8 Finals. And further back, the Kazakhstani squad found themselves on the second-to-last place at CSGO Asia Championships and StarSeries i-League S8.

EPICENTER is statistically the worst LAN for Dzhami "Jame" Ali in 2019. His rating at the Russian event is 0.96. Earlier, he scored a 0.99 KDR at the StarSeries in Turkey. Overall, throughout this year, the Virtus.pro captain has participated in 15 offline tournaments, and only at the aforementioned two, he averaged a negative rating.

On the other hand, Jame was the best performer in two different categories: AWP kills per round (0.46) and Success in opening duels (67.9%).

Additional statistics of the tournament

Six aces (five kills by one player in a round) in total were delivered at EPICENTER 2019. Each of them was made by different individuals.

ZywOo vs EHOME (Inferno);

ropz vs Virtus.pro (Dust2);

CeRq vs mousesports (Inferno);

electronic vs Heroic (Train);

stanislaw vs forZe (Inferno);

Brehze vs NAVI (Mirage).



Inferno was the most popular map of the tournament. There, 11 games had taken place. Spots in the Top 3 list were also taken by Nuke (9) and Mirage (6). On Overpass, however, only one match was held, and that was the semifinal between mousesports and Evil Geniuses.

The fastest maps of the EPICENTER were finished in 17 rounds. These are Nuke between EHOME and Vitality (1-16), Nuke between EHOME and Heroic (1-16), and Mirage between forZe and Evil Geniuses (16-1).

The longest map of the championship was Dust2, and it was played by mousesports and Virtus.pro. The game was completed with a 22-19 result in favor of the European squad (41 rounds).

Heroic dealt the most amount damage by the utility, averaging a 30.2 ADR. ForZe, in their turn, were the least effective team at the grenade usage (12.2 points of damage per round).

The highest rating amongst all teams in attendance was scored by Team Vitality, 1.16 (10 maps, +133 K-D difference). The lowest KDR was averaged by EHOME, 0.72 (4 maps, -117 K-D difference).

The Russian team of forZe won the most number of opening duels. They out-aimed their opponents in first gunfights of 53.6% of all their rounds. The least amount of wins in such situations were gained by EHOME (38.6%).

photo courtesy of Epic Esports Events