Rookie clicker

We’re not saying ZywOo has blown all rookie year expectations out of the water, but m0NESY finishing a measly 7th in HLTV’s top 20 in his first year at top level Counter-Strike didn’t really impress us.

Alright, it did a bit.

Though G2 didn’t win loads of events, individually they have shined, and the baby s1mple has been a large part of it. The teenager came out of the academy league with some mind-melting numbers that surely couldn’t be replicated at the top level.

And those who doubted he could do the same against the best in the world were sort of right. He isn’t the best player in the world yet. But he is 7th, so they’re mostly wrong.

Another young AWPer came in one spot above him; the Latvian Skadoodle-but-good, broky. An indomitable force on the CT side and a monster late round sniper, broky’s first half of the year was unignorable.

ropz, KSCERATO and stavn made up the top 10 beneath m0NESY, while 5th place went to m0NESY’s teammate NiKo. Probably says a lot that even in a year where NiKo hasn’t really hit god level and G2 haven’t won a lot, he still finished 5th.

There’s just four spots left now, so we imagine it’s quite obvious from here; Ax1le, sh1ro, s1mple and then MSL.

But who’ll be the best player of 2023? Well, as it turns out, we might have the answer…