On February 11, Team Spirit won the finals of IEM Katowice 2024, beating Faze Clan with an impressive score of 3:0. At the same time, the team’s advantage was very impressive on all three maps, and on the last one (Overpass) Spirit left no chance for her opponents at all, losing to them only three rounds. The victory brought the team an impressive prize money of $400 thousand and guaranteed slots at IEM Cologne and BLAST Premier World Final. This is the first victory for Spirit at a tournament of this level.
At the same time, the best player of the team, Daniil “donk” Kryshkovets didn’t just become the MVP of the tournament. He received this title with the highest personal rating (1.70) in the history of the championships in Katowice. As for his share of the prize money, in one of his interviews donk mentioned that he was going to give all the money to his parents.
The eSports career of Daniil, who is now seventeen years old, began in Tomsk. He says the ping problems that plagued his location affected his style of play, requiring him to stay on the move to succeed and win despite the 100 millisecond latency. However, he demonstrated his first successes not on online platforms, but even earlier, at local tournaments in his hometown.
Daniil played his first competitive match, which was included in the HLTV statistics, in 2021, that is, at the age of fourteen. Then he played for the youth team Team Spirit and showed a good result, considering that this was his first performance at a high level.
Since the summer of 2023, Daniil was transferred to the main team of Team Spirit. However, he attracted everyone's attention not only with his aggressive playing style, but also with his behavior. Often he reacts too emotionally (and this is putting it mildly) to the actions of his opponents and his own failures. Perhaps the fact is that due to his young age, he has not yet fully learned to control his behavior at official tournaments. In Katowice, Daniil was already given a warning for shouting too loudly after successful rounds.
However, chopper (captain of Team Spirit) responded that if something happened, the team would pay the fine, the main thing is that the guy expresses emotions without insults. Maybe with experience the player will learn to behave more restrained, although many believe that a cheeky demeanor only makes the game even brighter.
Donk himself says that he deliberately chooses an aggressive playing style. He enjoys winning duels when he manages to outwit his opponent alone. The reference point for him is Nikola “niko” Kovacs from G2. Daniil mentioned that he watches his games and analyzes what techniques he can include in his own arsenal.
