Mad Catz: Top players - Part 2

Here is our second part of the Mad Catz Invitational Top players series, presenting you places 11-15 which include some big names and lots of interesting stats to go along.

In case you missed what this is about, we started a series of articles about the Top players of Mad Catz Invitational ranked according to our indepth analysis. In the first part we showed you places 16-21, and before that we explained everything about the series in the Introduction article here.

Now it's time for the second part in which we talk about places 11-15 where we have some amazing players who despite their personal performances weren't able to push their teams all the way. We will also take a first look at the notable AWPers of the tournament and we will show you a couple of interesting graphs about which players had the most influence in their teams.

HLTV.org's Top players of Mad Catz Invitational (#11-#15)

15 Player Team KPR DPR Rating Dimitrios 'stavros' Smoilis TCM-Gaming 0.86 0.75 1.14   1st by rating in the team (+23%), 0 x Top rated

Best performance: 26:21 vs. Anexis (1.18 rating, +32%) - Quarter-final Additional notable stats: #1 in consistency (88% of maps above team avg and above 1.00) #2 in rating above team team average (23%) #2 in rounds with at least 1 kill (57%) #3 in kills per round (0.86) #3 in headshot rating (0.49 hspr with 57%) #5 in playoff rating (1.16) #5 in entry kills per round (0.16) #5 in clutch rounds won (5) #4 in rifle kills per round (0.66)

Former mousesports player Dimitrios "stavros" Smoilis gave an early indication at ESWC 2012 and NorthCon 2012 that he might be one of the rising talents in CS:GO. At one of the most competitive events so far, Mad Catz Invitational, he proved that to be the case, ending up as the 3rd best fragger among playoff participants (0.86 KPR) while helping TCM-Gaming to a 5th-8th place finish.

However, his performance wasn't one of a typical star player. He didn't have any amazing matches and he didn't end up top rated in any of his 8 maps, not even in the three victories. In fact, if we compare his peak performance (1.37 rating against logiX) to peaks of the other 29 players that we considered for this list, it ranks 28th.

But instead of match winning performances, Smoilis showed incredible consistency by having a rating above 1.00 and above team average in 7 maps, making him the best of all players in that regard.

His best performance came in his last map of the tournament when he fought back against Anexis as much as he could, recording a 26:21 score and 3 clutches in the second half (2x 1vs2 and a 1vs3) but in the end having to settle for a 12-16 loss.

He was the team's main entry killer and one of the most successful in that task at the event (0.16 entry kills per round). But an even more interesting stat regarding Smoilis is the fact that his team lost 24 of 28 rounds when he died first, which goes to show just how important for them it was that he gets that first kill.

 

For each of the 16 teams this graph shows the player whose first death most often led to his team's round loss. Size of the circle indicates how often the player was involved in first duels in a round.

Lastly, he was also one of the best riflers with 0.66 kills per round and one of the best aimers, getting 57% of his kills with headshots, which coupled with his excellent KPR makes him one of the best pure fraggers at the event. But due to not having any match winning performances and having such a low peak, he is placed at the 15th spot, the lowest of all star players from the playoff teams.

14 Player Team KPR DPR Rating Mihail 'Dosia' Stolyarov Nostalgie 0.81 0.68 1.12   1st by rating in the team (+25%), 1 x Top rated

Best performance: 28:13 vs. TeamCRG (1.53 rating, +32%) - Group stage #2 Additional notable stats: #1 rating above team average (25%) #3 in rounds with at least on kill (56%) #7 in kills per round (0.81) #2 in clutch rounds won (6) #4 in consistency (81% of maps above team avg and above 1.00)

Mihail "Dosia" Stolyarov is one of the most obvious proofs that talent transfers directly from the old Counter Strike versions to CS:GO, as for years he has been Russia's best fragger and he continues holding on to that title in the new game as well.

At Mad Catz Invitational he starred for the Russian-Ukrainian mix team Nostalgie with 0.81 kills per round, helping them reach the quarter-final before getting knocked out by NiP.

Out of the players who participated in the playoffs, Stolyarov was the one who carried his team the most with a rating 25% above team's average. Not only that, but he was actually one of his team's top two players in each of their 8 maps, and 3 of those were against NiP (here is one of his highlights against the Swedes). This table shows just how much he stood out in his team:

Column on the right shows rating compared to team, f.e. Dosia had a rating above team average in 8 out of 8 maps (100%), with his overall tournament rating 25% higher than his team's.

He put in a Man of the Match performance against TeamCRG, having one 1-on-1 and two 1-on-2 clutches against the British team to finish with a 28:13 score as Nostalgie clinched the playoff spot. With three other clutch rounds won, Stolyarov was ranked second overall in clutch points (11).

Although he had a slightly lower rating than Smoilis while similarly starring for a 5th-8th placed team, Stolyarov is placed above the Greek due to playing somewhat harder matches (three times against NiP and once against VeryGames) and at the same time standing out slightly more in his team with one clear MotM performance.

13 Player Team KPR DPR Rating Kenny 'kennyS' Schrub VeryGames 0.70 0.57 1.10   3rd by rating in the team (+5%), 2 x Top rated

Best performance: 25:7 vs. Nostalgie (2.07 rating, +42%) - Group stage #2 Additional notable stats: #4 in AWP kills per round (0.22) #3 in total AWP kills (88) #5 in K-D difference (+55) #5 in deaths per round (0.57) #3 in rounds with 3+ kills (21)

The second best team in the world, French-Belgian side VeryGames, already lost a few maps unexpectedly at the beginning of this year and Mad Catz Invitational just proved that the other teams are catching up to them. After a first group stage loss to Anexis and a draw with ALTERNATE, they had to fight through the second group stage before once again succumbing to Anexis in the semi-final. In the end, they didn't go home empty handed as they beat ESC Gaming in the 3rd place decider for 1,000€, but the losses to Danes surely left a scar.

They were the team that played the most maps in Vienna (15), so their players had a lot of opportunities to stand out. One of their stars once again turned out to be 17-year-old Kenny "kennyS" Schrub, same as at the previous major LANs, ESWC and DreamHack, where his rating was also 1.10 or higher.

Schrub's main task was of course handling the AWP with which he managed to get 88 total kills, 3rd most of all players.

These five players were responsible for 53% of the AWP action at Mad Catz

But if we look at his average with the AWP (0.22 awpKPR), it is his lowest yet at major events, although it still ranks 4th among the playoff participants in Vienna (6th overall). This could mean that the team's strategy required less AWPing from him or that he was less consistent with the big green. Regardless, he did have the highest amount of AWP kills in one map (29 vs. Natus Vincere in a 34-30 win) and the highest average in a single map (0.89, 17 kills vs. Nostalgie in a 16-3 win), so he still showed that he is one of the most talented AWPers in the world.

Thanks to his low death rate (0.57 per round) he managed to get the 5th best kill-death difference of the event with +55, but his fragging wasn't up to par as he was only ranked 4th in his team and 26th overall. And while he was rated above team average in 7 of the 9 wins VG had, he also underperformed in their semi-final loss to Anexis, so in the end he was only the 3rd best in the team and is thus 13th in our list.

12 Player Team KPR DPR Rating Wiktor 'TaZ' Wojtas ESC Gaming 0.74 0.65 1.07   1st by rating in the team (+6%), 1 x Top rated

Best performance: 26:10 vs. logiX (1.67 rating, +32%) - Group stage #2 Additional notable stats: #4 in total headshots (145) #5 in total kills (258) #5 in rifle kills per round (0.65)

As we previously mentioned ESC was one of the two teams with the most even distributions of kills, so their best player Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas's rating of 1.07 was only the 21st best of the event. Of course that also came as a result of the semi-final and 3rd place decider losses to NiP and VeryGames, in which Wojtas still played above team's average in 4 of 5 maps, but despite that his stats dropped significantly.

He ended up as the team's best mainly due to being their most consistent performer, not only on a per match basis, but also as the only one who had more rounds with kills than without them. But despite being the team's best fragger overall, he was Man of the Match only on one occasion, against logiX in the second group stage with a 26:10 score (1.67 rating, +32%).

The main characteristic of Wojtas' performance was getting the job done with the four rifles (AK47, M4A4, Galil and Famas) which he used for 88% of his kills, more than all but one player who made the playoffs. With the average of 0.65 rifle kills per round he was the 5th most successful overall.

Best rifler from each of the top 8 teams at Mad Catz Invitational (rifle kills per round)

In the end, he did help ESC reach the semi-final and he was their best in the overall disappointing playoff campaign, but the 12th place was the highest Wojtas could reach on the back of mediocre, yet not bad performances and without truly standing out in his team.

11 Player Team KPR DPR Rating Ladislav 'GuardiaN' Kovács 3DMAX 1.05 0.61 1.57   1st by rating in the team (+54%), 3 x Top rated

Best performance: 35:19 vs. ESC Gaming (1.85 rating, +103%) - Group stage #2 Additional notable stats: #4 in K-D difference (+59) #4 in total AWP kills (43) #5 in rounds with 3+ kills (19) #2 in entry kill-death difference (+19) kills per round (1.05) AWP kills per round (0.33) rating above team average (54%) domination meter (0.45) rounds with at least one kill (60%) consistency (100% of maps above team avg and above 1.00) entry rating (1.82) CT side rating (1.97)

If we were to disregard team success and hand out the Most Valuable Player award to anyone in the tournament, it would without a doubt be Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács. He had by far the best rating of all players (1.57), and he excelled so much that he literally has no below average numbers in any statistical category.

He had a rating above 1.20 in each map and was naturally the Man of the Match in 3DMAX's only victory, 16-2 over Lemondogs in the first group stage (22:6, 1.95 rating). But he played even more impressively in the team's 12-16 loss to ESC Gaming when he put up 35 frags for a 1.85 rating, including six 3-kill rounds and one 4-kill round. Although his team was unable to get any other wins, Kovács did all he could by having 3 of the best 6 performances in losses at the event:

GuardiaN had 3 of the 6 highest ratings in maps lost

In the match against ESC he also had 19 AWP kills, which was one of the best performances in that regard as well. In total he had the 4th most AWP kills at the event (43) with a great 0.33 per round average.

He became the first player to cross the magical 1.00 KPR line in CS:GO at a major event, and needless to say he was the closest thing we'll see to a one-man army. Although his 30% share of the team's kills wasn't the highest at the event, it becomes more impressive when we realize that each of his teammates contributed with less than the average 20%.

The manner in which he stood out the most was the sheer impact he had on rounds. 19 times he had 3 or more kills which ranks him 5th overall (remember that he played only 5 maps), and when we put that into perspective with a per round average he was by far the most dominant player (0.45 domination meter). Seeing as his team lost the majority of its matches, it was worth taking a closer look whether those kills actually mattered, and it turns out that 3DMAX won 15 of those 19 rounds. What even better demonstrates his importance for the team is the graph below, which shows that no team relied on its star player more than 3DMAX, as Kovács contributed to 79% (52 of 66) of their round wins with one or more kills. Or better yet, 3DMAX was able to win only 14 rounds when he didn't get a kill, not even enough for one victory in five maps.

The bar shows the player's influence on each round won by his team with 1-4 kills. The percentage on the right shows how often the team won without him getting at least one kill.

But what this graph also shows, with Kovacs as the prime example, is that depending on one player so much rarely leads to team success, as none of the top four teams are represented. And for that reason only, seeing as 3DMAX won just one out of their five maps in Vienna and didn't make it to playoffs, he is placed no higher than the 11th spot.

That concludes the second part of our series, leaving the top 10 players of the event to be announced in the next few days. You can find the other articles on this topic here:

Mad Catz: Top players - Introduction
Mad Catz: Top players - Part 1
Mad Catz: Top players - Part 3

We hope you once again enjoyed our thorough analysis and stay tuned to HLTV.org for the next part.