Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, also referred to as Sasha, has been in the Natus Vincere lineup for just over a year now. Considered by many as being one of the best Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players in the world, he has brought an immense boost in firepower to the Na’vi lineup.

With the departure of Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovács, Na’vi’s former AWPer, to the European Faze Clan roster, Oleksandr decided to become the new main AWPer for his team. s1mple’s first test of his new position was at the Dreamhack Malmö 2017 tournament hosted in Sweden last week. Na’vi didn’t win the tournament, but Sasha definitely showed a promising side of his new role. He has kept up with and even beat other, more experienced AWPers.

I decided to compare s1mple’s performance to another player that has a similar role, Jarosław “pashaBiceps“ Jarząbkowski from the legendary Polish team Virtus.pro (VP), who also attended Dreamhack Malmö. To do this, I’ve collected data from three matches, a best-of-one match between Virtus.pro and Renegades, a best-of-one between Na’vi and Renegades, and a best-of-three between VP and Na’vi. The results are interesting, but also unsurprising, as VP has been in a minor slump this year.

In the first game between Virtus.pro and Renegades on Cache, Pasha played unusually poor against the newer Australian team, only managing to get four AWP kills in the entire match while being killed fifteen times, with a kill-death ratio of 2:3. Renegades went on to upset VP and win the match 16 rounds to 7.

Na’vi fared much better against them on Train, winning 16 to 11. s1mple got a total of thirteen AWP kills in the match, with an average kill-death ratio of 1:1, nine more than Pasha. He single-handedly secured a few rounds for Na’vi during the match.

In the final game between VP and Na’vi, s1mple outperformed Pasha, getting a total of twelve AWP kills compared to five. After having a dominant performance in the first half of the match leading 11 to 4, s1mple again locked down the second pistol round for Na’vi, getting three crisp headshots on the Counter-Terrorist side. They continued their winning streak, closing out the match against VP 16 to 4. Sasha had the highest score in the match, with a respectable 21 kills and 9 deaths and 2.35:1 kill-death ratio.

Overall, he played very well. His aggressive style of AWPing can open the round for his team, placing the enemy team at an early disadvantage. Although Na’vi didn’t place in the top three of Dreamhack, he has the potential to become a star AWPer in the future.

Sources

“s1mple.” liquipedia, wiki.teamliquid.net/counterstrike/S1mple. Accessed 08 Sep. 2017.