Every year HLTV ranks the best players based on their statistics and achievements over the past twelve months. The final part of the list came out at the end of this week, so we can finally see who the analysts considered the most successful players of the year.
Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev
Although Natus Vincere performed worse at the end of 2022 than in the first half of the year, the ranking was topped by Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, who became the first player ever to finish first for the third time. Several players have reached the top spot twice (among them Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, Marcelo “coldzera” David and Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund), but nobody had delivered results this consistently before. In total, s1mple has stayed in the world top 20 for seven years, and for the last five of them he has been either first or second.
In 2022 s1mple was named MVP at major tournaments twice and earned EVP honors five more times. Even at his weakest event (BLAST World Final) his rating was 1.10. Across the year’s combined statistics s1mple led in many categories, and one of his standout results was a 1.42 rating at BLAST Premier Spring, the tournament where Natus Vincere got past FaZe and won their only big trophy of the year.
Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut
Second place in the top 20 went to Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut of Vitality. The young player has been with his current team since 2018 and has already shown his talent in full. Interestingly, he made a name for himself on the local scene back in 2017 but postponed his move to the pro level by a year to finish his studies first. ZywOo went on to become the one player able to challenge s1mple for the top spot: he pushed the Ukrainian off the top of the list in both 2019 and 2020. One of his most impressive achievements of 2022 was ESL Pro League Season 16, where he was named MVP with a 1.42 rating across two dozen maps. At every 2022 event except two, he was the top performer on his team.
Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov
Third place went to Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov of Cloud9. This is his second year in a row in the top 20, and this time he climbed a little higher (he was fourth in 2021). Sh1ro excelled in online tournaments and kept up his results after most events returned to LAN. Although his team did not finish in the top places at the biggest events, his individual performance earned him third place. His best showing came at IEM Rio, where he narrowly missed the MVP award. He won MVP only once during the year (at FunSpark ULTI), but was named EVP six times, including at the key events of the year.
