The top 5 CIS players in CS:GO in our May 2022 ranking: 1) s1mple, 2) electronic, 3) sh1ro, 4) Hobbit, 5) B1T. There is no separate official ranking of CIS players, so we compiled it manually from the world player ranking and stats. Ages, teams and achievements below are as of the time the list was made, in the CS:GO era.
These players are the elite of the scene: strong individually and able to take over at the right moment and win a match that seemed lost. The picture changed with CS2; for who leads now, see our article on the world ranking of CS2 players. Below we cover the five CIS players and explain which metrics the rating is based on.
Number 5
The fifth position in the ranking of the best CIS players in CS:GO is occupied by gamer B1T (real name — Valery Vakhovsky) from the Ukrainian city of Dnepr, who is a member of the NAVI team.
Despite his young age (19 at the time) and short career as an eSports player (since 2018), experts consider B1T one of the most promising gamers. Judge for yourself:
B1T played among professionals for only 1 year and after that received an invitation to join the ranks of NAVI.
At the end of 2021, together with the team, he triumphantly won the Stockholm Major. It's surprising that Valery has not yet received the nickname "king of headshots," because he managed not only to finish the Major with a record absolute number of headshots in the history of these tournaments, but also demonstrate the highest average number of headshots in one round.
Even then he was seen as one of NAVI's top talents.
Number 4
The next line in the ranking of the best CIS players in CS:GO is the Kazakh gamer Hobbit (Abai Khasenov), who was playing for C9 at the time. In Kazakhstan, he is the undisputed number one in Counter-Strike.
Hobbit belongs to the category of people whose biography Hollywood producers love to make biopics of. And this is not surprising: Abai had a stunning start to his career; victory at the Krakow Major in 2017 as part of the Gambit team, a "dark horse" that few people believed in at the time; dizziness from success, leaving Gambit and a severe decline for 3 years; a powerful return to Gambit in 2021 and achieving maximum personal performance.
According to Hobbit, a big help in his sports revival was the presence of past victorious experience, which helped him believe in himself and not give up despite numerous failures.
Number 3
Let's move on to the bronze medalist in the ranking of the best CIS players in CS:GO. His name is Dmitry Sokolov; at the time of the ranking he was 20 and played as sh1ro for C9. We cover the skins he uses now in our article on sh1ro's CS2 skins.
First of all, sh1ro is known in the professional community as a player with excellent individual skills. Even then he was among the best AWPers in the world. His performance is so good that analysts predicted an exciting rivalry between sh1ro and s1mple that, in their view, could end in a win for the young genius of sniper esports.
From the moment he turned professional in 2018 until 2021, Dmitry did not achieve serious success in team competitions. His talent was finally recognized only after Gambit won at IEM Katowice, which took place in 2021, where Dmitry was recognized as MVP.
Number 2
Silver in the ranking of the best CIS players in CS:GO goes to another representative of Russia, originally from Kazan, under the nickname electronic (Denis Sharipov), who is a member of the NAVI team. Denis is a rare person in the world of esports who can be responsible, focused only on victories and churning out lots of them, gets along well with team members and teaches them new tricks, and at the same time is an exemplary husband, combining family and playing at a professional level.
The main quality of electronic is the stability of his performances and an amazing ability to maintain a balance between personal and team. During his entire seven-year career, he did not allow a single decline. On the contrary, Denis's rating grew, albeit slowly, but constantly.
As for achievements, over the 4 years of playing with NAVI, Denis's collection was replenished with 5 champion titles. In addition, he has been in the world top ten in Counter Strike without interruption since 2018.
Number 1
Finally, we come to the king of the hill, an eSports legend, the only gamer from the CIS who twice topped the world rankings, and also a dollar millionaire. His name is known even to some people who are far from eSports battles.
Yes, it is s1mple (Oleksandr Kostyliev) from Ukraine who heads the ranking of the best CIS players in CS:GO. Thousands of players still copy his crosshair and skin loadout.
He is called incredible; even experts often cannot explain his successes. Although the answer is very simple: s1mple is not just a CS:GO fanatic, he is absolutely obsessed with the game.
Another secret of s1mple's success, thanks to which he — first in the ranking of the best CIS CS:GO players, is that he is not afraid of risk. In one of his performances in 2016, s1mple, in a 1v1 fight with an opponent, decided to do a trick by throwing his main weapon into his field of vision. The enemy bought into the trick and lost precious moments, and s1mple got another kill.
The charisma of s1mple is so catchy that he repeatedly received the MVP of the competition, even when NAVI did not win them. It is amazing that with such stunning personal achievements, s1mple won his first major only in the eighth year of his professional career, i.e. in 2021
How the rating is calculated
To compile a rating of the best CIS players in CS:GO and other ratings, you need to compare gamers with each other and evaluate the strength of their games. The required result is achieved by calculating five main indicators. The first of these, KPR, shows how many kills a player averages in 1 round. DPR shows how many of your own deaths on average a player allows in 1 round. The third important indicator, ADR, records the average health damage a gamer inflicts on his opponent in 1 round. Impact is a comprehensive metric that evaluates victories achieved in clutch situations (fighting multiple opponents alone at the end of a round); opening frags, i.e. number of first kills in a round; multikills, meaning rounds with two or more kills. The last indicator, KAST, is the share of rounds in which a player got a kill or an assist, survived, or was traded.
It is quite natural that the gamers included in the ranking of the best CIS CS:GO players have these indicators at a very high level. For other players, these metrics are useful benchmarks that show what to improve in their own game.
CIS Players in the CS2 Era
After the switch to Counter-Strike 2 in September 2023, a new generation of CIS stars emerged. The most visible example is Danil "donk" Kryshkovets of Team Spirit, who finished second in HLTV's ranking of the best players of 2025. HLTV publishes its top players list every year and updates the team ranking weekly, so check HLTV for current positions.
