The HLTV Top 20 list has been an annual sensation over the last decade within the world of Counter Strike. The introduction of the awards in 2010 (back when the pros and the public alike were playing with low-res textures on CS 1.6) has since seen only the best of the best make into the year’s 20; let alone win the #1 spot. It’s a tough nut to crack for a professional player, but it can be even tougher to correctly predict the top 20 ranking. HLTV’s top masterminds are always hoping to be the ones to get the list spot on each and every year and this year has been no different. We’ve seen arguably a few surprise features this year, and with the remaining players making the list almost certified there’s certainly a buzz to guess who joins the elite and who becomes the next individual to take the number one spot.
Along with their in-depth review of the year, each player good enough to make the list has a final interview and makes a “bold prediction” for a player who will be the breakout star of the next year. An upcoming player with the potential to join them within the Top 20 inner circle perhaps. The picks range from well-known players making their big name debuts, to much less-known players pugging it out within the FPL. We’re not quite finished with the HLTV Top 20 so far — in fact we’re only really halfway through — but we’ve already seen a few “bold prediction” picks that you might not know. Now that’s certainly not a crime. After all, these predictions are supposed to be “bold;” it wouldn’t be very bold of the pros to all pick players we know through and through. We’re going to look at a handful of the bold picks you might not have heard of today, see who recommended them and learn their story so far within the world of Counter Strike.
Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen
The Nordic region has been notorious for breeding some of Counter Strike’s greatest ever players, churning out pre-Global Offensive legends like “SpawN,” world-class major winners deep into their careers like “olofmeister” and “GeT_RiGhT” and all the way up to players who have flourished and dominated in recent years like “dev1ce” and “gla1ve.” The factory of Counter Strike’s elite doesn’t seem to be stopping it’s production line anytime soon, as our first featured player is the Danish youngster Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen. Playing alongside players both young and old, he currently stars in “HUNDEN’s” Danish side and current world #19: “MAD Lions.” He might have garnered the attention of his secret Top 20 admirer from some of his immense performances at such a young age; particularly when he won the MVP award at the V4 Future Sports Festival 2019 (also winning the event itself).
He may not be quite as young as our two other entries on this list, but in contrast our 21 year old has picked up a wealth of professional experience; poking in and out of the Danish scene since late 2015. His HLTV debut came in September 2015, where his qualifying mix team “eaZyQuaL” were battered by Turkish tanks Space Soldiers 3–16 on Cobblestone. Reason Gaming.dk then picked him up as a stand in for two games: a 6–16 loss against FlipSid3 and a 5–16 loss against YP, with Bubzkji notably top fragging with a 1.09 rating in the latter game. Bouncing around teams within Denmark for the next few years, he landed a big break going on trial with Fragsters and was eventually picked up by the Danes to replace “carlsen.” Andersen spent 10 months there but then moved onto Tricked Esports. He then migrated as Tricked sold their roster to MAD Lions, and he remains there today with the same roster.
As of recent, Andersen has certainly shown some very promising signs. MAD Lions have lost just one series so far in 2020*, beating the likes of North, Illuminar and Heroic at the time of writing. They’ll be meeting some of the world’s best at the hugely prestigious IEM Katowice 2020 event in late February, with all 10 of top teams in the world being invited. They qualify after finishing third at Katowice’s European Open Qualifier, beating ENCE in the loser’s bracket to secure their spot with Bubzkji scoring a 1.17 Rating 2.0 to book their flights to Poland.
He’s maintained this consistent form across the entirety of the last 3 months. With a solid round contribution rate at 71%, he currently holds the second highest Rating 2.0 score in the team with 1.17; so it wouldn’t be too much of an over-statement to proclaim that a good Bubzkji performance is typical of the MAD Lions side. His best performance of the year so far has come against Defusekids. The Lions picked up a 2–0 victory over their Dutch opposition, and Andersen picked up a stellar 1.44 Rating 2.0 across the two maps. Bubzkji’s “stellar 1.44 rating” not only secured the win but also secured his team a spot at Dreamhack Open Leipzig 2020. They’ll play North, Heroic and Sprout in the group stage later this month and will surely hope to advance to play at the majority share of the $100,000 prize pool on offer.
It surely must be a massive compliment to be recommended by such a prestigious player in Astralis’ “dupreeh,” who finished #16 in the world’s ranking for 2019. The back-to-back-to-back major winner and fellow Dane put forward Andersen, his fourth submission for a “bold prediction” after reaching the Top 20 list for the fourth time this year. It’s also significant “dupreeh” noted that he doesn’t know Bubzkji personally. His prediction comes “solely from spectating or playing against his team,” so Bubzkji must be doing something right to catch the attention of one of the world’s best just through word of mouth or by proving it against him within the server. It’s high praise from “dupreeh,” and Bubzkji will definitely be looking to show his talent during the year ahead of us; especially if he gets to face the man singing his praises at IEM Katowice later this year.
Georgi “SHiPZ” Grigorov
I’ll excuse you for not knowing Bubzkji, but I would be a lot more surprised if you hadn’t ever heard of our next featured star. The next one’s been present in the eastern Balkan scene for a few years now, and has made a big impact and taken his chances in his recent call-up to a well known, Croatian-owned team after their 9th place finish at the Berlin Major. They’ve made a couple of changes since then, but our future prospect has done well in filling in the gaps he was brought in to cover; and he’s done so at a very young age too. We’re talking about the Bulgarian rifler slash lurker: Georgi “SHiPZ” Grigorov.
SHiPZ kicked off his already-respectable career in 2016, where he made his HLTV debut with fellow Bulgarians “BPro Gaming” in a 1–1 draw against “LDLC.” He bounced between “aimclub” and BPro for August and September of that year, before officially joining up with BPro at the start of 2017. Grigorov stayed with this side until late July when he went on trial with the leading Bulgarian side of the time: Outlaws. His trial was successful but Outlaws lost their roster a few weeks later, meaning that SHiPZ remained with the roster but under the “ex-Outlaws” name for the next couple of months. The next big movement came when “Rock1ng” and “nk4y” left ex-Outlaws for Prophecy, being replaced by “bubble” and “pNshr.” These boys then signed with “Windigo Gaming” in October, where SHiPZ continued to play for a couple of years until September 2nd 2019 — the day when Grigorov was benched. He was sent to freedom just a month later when “CR4ZY” signed him to replace “nexa” and “huNter” after their controversial transfer to “G2.” He has stayed here ever since, playing the rifler role as the now-international side have enjoyed decent finishes at recent international Dreamhack LAN events.
The Bulgarian must be doing something right so far. Out of all three of our entries in this article, he definitely plays in the most reputable team of the lot. While CR4ZY haven’t been up to much this year (they’ve only played one series and lost it to Defusekids), they most recently played in Dreamhack Open Winter 2019 and Dreamhack Open Sevilla 2019; coming up short at the semi final and grand final respectively. Their most notable results lately have been victories over GODSENT, North, Heroic and INTZ. There doesn’t seem to be too much coming up soon for the world #20 side, but they look promising after images of bootcamps emerged on Twitter courtesy of their Irish coach “NeiL_M.”
Across the past 3 months, SHiPZ has put in some decent performances and currently sits on a Rating 2.0 of 1.08 and a round contribution rate of 68.5%. He too has been awarded a HLTV MVP award for his efforts, earning one for his victory at the WESG World Finals with Windigo in 2018. We look back to the previous decade to find Grigorov’s top recent performance due to CR4ZY’s slow start to the 20s. The rifler’s performance against Movistar Riders stands out as his international side beat them 16–8 in mid-December; with SHiPZ putting in a very respectable 21 kills to 16 deaths and in turn a Rating 2.0 of 1.41, topping his team. His next big challenge — and what will certainly be his biggest challenge yet — comes in May at the ESL One Rio 2020 major as the returning challengers CR4ZY look to qualify for the New Legends Stage.
Grigorov was recommended by the world’s #18th best in fellow Bulgarian star “CeRq;” being one of two players to be put forward alongside Complexity’s “poizon.” SHiPZ seems to be the main feature of the two though, the 19 year old was said to be “very underrated” by “CeRq” and since the two have played together before within Outlaws it should be clear that “CeRq” is certainly familiar with the Bulgarian youngster. While SHiPZ’s future may be uncertain due to rumours of his organisation CR4ZY selling off their roster, he’ll be looking to impress both his former teammate and the world as he looks to live up to the praise in 2020.
Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov
We’ve had some insane underdog victories in sports throughout history: Leicester City winning the Premier League, the Pirates beating the Yankees, Gambit Esports winning that major… Perhaps that last one isn’t the most famous of the bunch. It seems like forever ago when Gambit beat Immortals to win PGL Krakow 2017 — and in complete truth they haven’t really achieved too much since — but they might have something else to rave about now. That’s because our next featured future star currently plays as the AWPer for the recently successful Gambit Youngsters team, Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov. Hailing from Russia, the 19 year old signed with the academy side in April 2019 and has been on fire with the big green gun ever since.
The lad’s certainly young, but sh1ro already has his fair share of experience. He made his HLTV debut in May 2018 with Russian side “team7,” beating the Belarus side “Evolution” 2–0. Sokolov played well in this match and throughout the rest of May, picking up the attention of Russian organisation “FLuffy Gangsters” who signed his team on the 18th. They didn’t stay long though; the team moved on just a month later and remained together under the name “aimg0d.” His next adventure came in September 2018 when he joined “Vyalie Pitoni.” This team bounced around qualifiers and didn’t play too badly at all, but sh1ro fell off the radar in November 2018 until May 2019 when he signed with his current team, “Gambit Youngsters.”
It’s a strange one when the “Youngsters” team is more active than the main team, but that’s the situation with Gambit right now. The academy side have played a few games this year so far to mixed success; winning three series and losing three sides as of the time of writing. Gambit Youngsters managed to beat Copenhagen Flames, Winstrike and “kioshima’s” Heretics in the Dreamhack Open Leipzig European Qualifier, but they just fell short against Heroic at the final hurdle and didn’t manage to qualify for the international LAN. The “Great Universe Cup” awaits them next later on this month; an online tournament where the academy side will play other Russian teams for a prize pool of $10,000.
Despite what his team have been doing, sh1ro has managed to keep his individual performances consistent. Sokolov leads his team in terms of Rating 2.0, coming in at 1.20 over the past 3 months with a round contribution rate of 73.3%. Not bad numbers at all for such a young player. It’s hard to pin down his best performance of the year so far as he’s led the scoreboard in almost every victory for the Youngsters, such as a 1.65 Rating 2.0 vs “sAw” and a +25 K/D score vs Heretics. But if I had to choose just one, it would have to be his outstanding performance against Winstrike in Gambit’s 2–0 victory. Our future star dropped a Rating 2.0 of 1.65 and an ADR of 100 across the two map series, sending home ex-Gambit star “Hobbit” while he was at it.
“ez for sh1ro tbh”
A comment left by HLTV user “oskarsports” as Gambit Youngsters beat Winstrike 2–0.
We typically see a lot of domestic “bold predictions” from the pros and we’ve seen two of those so far on this list; “dupreeh” and “cerq” both put forward players from their home nation as their break-out stars. That’s why Sokolov’s recommendation from ENCE’s “sergej” is rather special. The Finnish star complimented sh1ro’s “really good aim” in his HLTV interview, saying that the player performed well in practice matches between ENCE and Gambit’s academy side. It’s a huge compliment stretching across nations from the world’s #13th best, and “sh1ro” will certainly look to continue to live up to the praise both within training and within official competitive match-ups.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see if any of these future stars can unlock their full potential this year. You can be certain that you’ll hear it from me if any of them do, and you can be certain that you’ll hear more from me at my Twitter page linked here. You can also follow my Medium page if you fancy it. Have a nice day.
*All stats and results correct and verified at the time of writing (14/1/2020), and sourced via HLTV or Liquipedia. Credit to HLTV and Dreamhack for any pictures used; all rights owned by their respective owners.
