Top 20 season is fun for plenty of reasons, but we have a particular fondness for the bold predictions.

Sure, it’s a rolling ball game. Players are lazy, and will go to the last article to steal a pick. There’s even a stats-by-age leaderboard on HLTV nowadays, which is even better for your top-tier pro who has far better things to be doing than scouting talent.

But none of the picks were as boring as last year, when headtr1ck had been picked up by NIP and everyone and their nan decided to ignore the ‘bold’ part of the game.

This year, it’s been bolder than the most egregious font choices of your lecturers at college.

Swedish prodigy nilo took five predictions (guess what - he’s top of the 2023 under-20 rating leaderboard if you exclude donk and w0nderful) but even that is spicier than usual.

Following him was somewhat familiar names like BLEED’s lauNX-, B8’s r1nkle, Imperial’s noway, Preasy and ex-Astralis anchor Altekz, and OG newboy Nexius.

But after that, it was full chaos.

blameF picked xKacpersky, a random Polish kid he’s been playing FACEIT PUGs with. s1mple chose froz1k, a 15-year-old from NAVI Youth — but the crazy part is that Twistzz picked him last year.

sh1ro followed the script of new team Spirit by picking academy boy Magnojez. SunPayus picked KukuBambo, whose gamertag is up there with HeavyGod and MachineGun for unlikely ballers - a true winner in our books.

The only other player to earn a nod from two players was Finnish AWPer podi, an ENCE Academy product who posted a 1.18 rating in 2023.

Half, if not more, of these names will be resigned to history as failures, as strange quirks.

But, for the ones that break free from the jinx to become true greats – and the “I told you so” – must be as good a feeling as any trophy.