Top 20 players of 2019: NAF (7)

Impressive consistency, both on a round-to-round and tournament-to-tournament basis, earns Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic the seventh place on the list of the top 20 players of 2019, powered by Xtrfy and LOOT.BET.

Top 20 players of 2019: Introduction

Those who have been following NAF’s career closely are not surprised by his recent exploits with Liquid, but there were times when it looked like the Canadian would not live up to the buzz surrounding him. After coming through the CS:Source scene, he started to make waves in 2014 with LunatiK alongside other players who, just like him, were taking their first steps in the competitive world. Later that year, he attended his first international LAN, the ESEA Invite Season 17 Global Finals, where his team, who by then had been recruited by Denial, managed to finish in fourth place, ahead of Cloud9 and Titan. The presence of some of the game’s most accomplished players, including the former VeryGames members he used to worship in Source, did not get to NAF, who showed no jitters and ended the tournament with the second-highest rating, 1.18.

At the start of 2015, NAF and the rest of the team joined the prestigious Liquid organisation, which was expanding into CS:GO, but motivation issues saw the Canadian leave after just two months. The rest of the year as a dud for NAF, who continued to post sub-par numbers on LAN, but at least he managed to find some stability on Conquest, with whom he attended three events, including the ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 Finals.

For NAF, 2016 began in the exact same manner as 2015 had as he once again joined a top-tier organisation looking to make a splash in Counter-Strike, this time OpTic Gaming. The team took some time to hit their stride, only truly making a dent on the international game in the final quarter of the year, when they picked up title wins at ELEAGUE Season 2 - beating Astralis with a team-leading 1.50 rating from NAF in the tournament decider - and Northern Arena Montreal, and placed second at the ECS Season 2 Finals.

Read more: Hush or howl: NAF's road to stardom

But OpTic’s success would not last: the team were left in turmoil as in-game leader Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz signed for Liquid after the ELEAGUE Major, and things were never quite the same again. Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin, Jason "⁠jasonR⁠" Ruchelski and James "⁠hazed⁠" Cobb all filled in for the team at different points until the summer, when NAF, Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik and William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba opted to seek a future elsewhere, with the Canadian signing for Renegades.

Initially a support player, which was reflected in his quiet debut at ELEAGUE Premier, NAF began to shine after requesting to be used in a central role. "I told the boys that I wanted to be more of a 'star' player, I got all the spots I wanted and we did everything I said," he told HLTV.org in 2019. The Canadian averaged a 1.32 rating in the last three months of the year, powering the Australian team to victories at the Asia Minor and at the SL i-League Invitational Shanghai, and to a second place at iBUYPOWER Masters. It was at the Chinese event where NAF claimed his first MVP medal after putting up a tournament-high 1.29 rating, 90.3 ADR and 0.82 KPR.

After making an appearance for Renegades in the New Challengers Stage of ELEAGUE Major Boston, NAF found himself back in Liquid, replacing Josh "⁠jdm64⁠" Marzano. Once a player whose bursts of good form were few and far between, the Canadian was a rock in the Liquid squad, getting two more MVP medals to his collection, from cs_summit 2 and SuperNova CS:GO Malta, the only two events that the North Americans won as time and time again they found themselves on the losing end of the clashes with the dominant team of the year, Astralis. But even if big titles continued to elude Liquid, 2018 was still a remarkable year for NAF, who earned his first entry into the HLTV top 20 at No.6.

2019 began for Liquid with a roster change as Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip was brought in to replace the departing Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo, with Eric "⁠adreN⁠" Hoag appointed as the new coach in place of Wilton "⁠zews⁠" Prado. Expectations were high for the North American team after the firepower upgrade, and they managed to stamp down their authority by kicking off the new tournament season with a win at iBUYPOWER Masters, where they cruised through the group stage before taking down fnatic and Astralis in three-map series.

Liquid's players were all smiles as they stepped onto the stage to lift the trophy, and for good reason. They had finally overcome their bogey team, with NAF also claiming the MVP medal after averaging a 1.30 rating and leading the team in the decisive clash against the Danes (1.23 rating, +14 KDD).

"It felt amazing to get that win versus Astralis, even though the tournament conditions were a bit rough, I remember being down 7-1 on Overpass and coming back to win it. Bringing in Stewie definitely gave us some fresh air, so we had no pressure, we were in the 'honeymoon phase', so we just gave it our all and came out on top, which also gave us a lot of momentum to start our year."

The North Americans were on cloud nine after that impressive victory on home soil, but they were brought crashing back to earth in their next outing as they bowed out of the IEM Katowice Major in the quarter-finals after losing to ENCE. This was the lowest point of the year for NAF, who left the Polish city with a 1.00 rating, the worst in Liquid, after collapsing in the two series that the team played.

"I don’t know what happened, I didn’t feel comfortable and at my best in Katowice, and that is no one’s fault but my own, maybe I should’ve talked to our sports psychologist and could have come in with a better mindset, but I just don’t work like that, I don’t believe in that kind of stuff, but at the end of the day the problem was something within me and I was the only one that could fix it.

"I can be hard on myself sometimes, when I play poorly, I always tell myself to never play like that again, It’s upsetting to let my teammates down, when I play badly I take it seriously."

It would take Liquid some time to get back to winning ways, but they did acquit themselves better at their next two events, the BLAST Pro Series stops in São Paulo and Miami. NAF was once again far from his best in Brazil, where he was ranked fourth in the team (1.10) as they finished runners-up to Astralis, before getting back to fragging duties in Florida, where he was in close contention for the MVP award with a 1.24 rating, 18% higher than the team's average.

After playing an important role in Astralis' early elimination thanks to a 30-bomb from NAF, Liquid seemed to have a clear route to the title, but they were outplayed by FaZe in the final - a defeat that came as a devastating blow to the players.

"I remember that we just had a hard time understanding why things would shift when we would reach the finals of these events, like everything would change, we were so close, maybe we felt the pressure as we got close to the trophy, especially at the last leg of the race. After our loss in Miami against FaZe, that was when we literally asked ourselves, 'Why do we fucking suck in finals?'. It opened our eyes and made us acknowledge the issue that this was real and that we had to fix it."

With Astralis nowhere to be seen as IEM Sydney kicked off, the race for the title seemed to be wide open, and Liquid took advantage of that. The North Americans rampaged through every opponent that stood in their way until the final, in which they edged out fnatic in a five-map thriller to finally break their Big Event curse after losing ten finals in a row. Although he did not reach the same heights in the playoffs as tournament MVP Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken, excelling mostly in the group stage, NAF was still one of Liquid’s top performers with a 1.23 rating, eight clutches won and five 1.30+ rated maps.

"After we won against fnatic it felt more like a relief, to be honest, I was happy and excited for our team but I knew that, if we wanted to continue to win and raise trophies, we would need to play a lot better.

"I have to give a shoutout to nitr0 for all those insane clutches on Overpass, he had like three 1vs3s or something like that. If he had not pulled those off, we probably would have lost the final."

Liquid were unable to build on the IEM Sydney triumph as they once again had to settle for second place at cs_summit 4, where they lost to Vitality in the final - a defeat that the players quickly brushed off as their focus was on the summer season ahead. For NAF, it was still a valuable tournament for him to keep up his form - he put in a team-high 1.22 rating and played a crucial role in Liquid's run with a 1.51 rating in map wins leading to victories, finishing second to Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut in the race for the MVP medal.

The North Americans did not let the cs_summit 4 setback distract them and won the next three Big Events that they attended - DreamHack Masters Dallas, the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals and ESL One Cologne -, despite NAF playing a peripheral role. He ended that sequence of tournaments in style as he topped the scoreboard in the Cologne final against Vitality with 1.33 rating, but, for the most part, he found himself in the shadows of Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski and Twistzz, and sat among the bottom EVPs at all three events.

"In 2018 I felt like the main priority, I spoke a lot more about what I wanted to do and what to do as my role in the team, especially when we had TACO. I played a lot of sites with him on the CT side and for the most part I’d lead what setup and play I would like us to make. He and I were a solid duo, to be honest, and I learned a lot from him, whereas now, when I play sites with Stewie, he is the one calling the shots, but it’s not like a dictatorship or anything, Stewie is really smart and I trust his calling, I remember in Cologne I was talking to Stewie and zews and I told them, 'You and TACO are the only two people who have opened my eyes and showed me a different way of playing the game and taught me new ways to think and play, so I'm thankful for that’.

"EliGE and Twistzz are both unique talents and were crucial to our wins in 2019, they were the main reason I joined Liquid. I believed they could be better than every other player in North America and had the potential to be the best in the world. To me, they’re like s1mple and electronic, they’re both so unique in their play and have such godlike aim, they’re so insane. It would be stupid of us as a team not to make them the most comfortable. If I need to live in the shadows for them so they can farm and get us trophies, then so be it, I’m always down for that [laughs]".

Liquid's memorable run in Cologne, which also included victories over Natus Vincere and NRG, had the added bonus of the team securing the $1 million Intel Grand Slam Season 2 cheque following a perfect four-event streak that lasted 63 days, forcing ESL to increase the difficulty of the challenge for Season 3.

"Winning Cologne in front of 15,000 people and, on top of that the Intel Grand Slam, was one of the best feelings I’ve had in my life. Claiming the IGS after like 63 days was pretty crazy, it felt so fast that we never even got it at all, but I think beating Astralis in Montpellier was probably the best part about it, even though that was the only time we faced them, they were our biggest nemesis, our kryptonite. In the end, we conquered and went on to claim the IGS and that sweet million.

"Cologne was for sure my best memory of the year. Our match versus Vitality felt comfortable but still had a lot of tense and stressful moments, especially when playing against ZywOo. On the other hand, we were playing in front of 15,000 people or something like that and there was the Intel Grand Slam, so yeah... a lot of emotions after that.

"I’m not really surprised [that ESL changed the rules]. I guess if they see that a team can do it that quickly, I’d understand the fear of dishing out millions every few months potentially [laughs]."

As the dust settled on Liquid's ESL One Cologne victory, several teams turned their attention to the StarLadder Major, but there was still more to come from the North Americans before the player break. They won BLAST Pro Series Los Angeles and IEM Chicago without dropping a single map - prompting Alex "⁠ALEX⁠" McMeekin to admit that the gap between the North Americans and the remaining teams was "ridiculous" - with their performance against ENCE in the best-of-five final of the ESL tournament inspiring awe in spectators and opponents alike.

It was at BLAST Pro Series LA where NAF turned in some of his best numbers of the year (1.40 rating, 97 ADR and 1.42 Impact), earning him the fifth MVP medal of his career. He also produced one of the top 10 highlights of the year as he aced FaZe in the grand final, getting three USP kills through a smoke as his opponents tried to enter the B site. At IEM Chicago, the Canadian was third in line for the MVP honour but still had some impressive numbers, including a 1.36 playoff rating, 85.4 ADR and just 0.55 DPR, his lowest of the year.

"I was feeling it for sure, everything was natural and instant when making plays and hitting my shots. I was very confident, and in CS confidence is almost everything you need to be dominant, even the dumbest plays can win you everything if you’re confident enough.

"I remember that if I didn't get any kills that round and died we would be doomed. Since I saw the smoke fly over, I made sure to adjust myself properly and put my crosshair in the middle of the lane where the Ts usually wide swing. Even when I was initially in the smoke, I felt my positioning was wrong, so I made a slight adjustment to get the three kills; if I hadn't, I probably would not have got any. Some of it may have been luck, but it was more the hours and understanding of CS after all these years for me.

"Our aim and game sense were just too good, especially at IEM Chicago against Vitality and ENCE. It was like we had five ScreaMs/Twistzzs of the world and knew the answer to every play they would make. Absolute peak form."

Much to everyone's surprise, ALEX got his wish for a slump in form from Liquid in the summer break. The team looked deflated as they returned to action at the StarLadder Major and found themselves on the cusp of elimination after dropping games to NRG and AVANGAR. A 3-2 record resulted in a quarter-final match-up against Astralis, who would once again prove to be too much for the North Americans to handle.

Just like in Katowice, NAF left the Major empty-handed and with one of his worst performances of the year. He turned in a 1.09 rating, the third-best in Liquid, in part thanks to his 0.43 rating against NRG, his lowest-rated map of 2019.

"As a team that relies more on our individual skills to get us out of tough situations, it felt like we were nowhere near the level we had been on when raising trophies, and I feel we needed a lot more time and preparation, so maybe bootcamping earlier could have helped. I felt we got better when we got to the best-of-three stages, we didn’t have the pressure of having to worry about losing one map. I remember thinking that if we could take down Astralis, it would give us a lot of momentum to go on and win the event. Unfortunately, we fell flat and they shocked us with the pick of Vertigo, so well played from them."

Astralis were once again a thorn in Liquid's side at ESL One New York, where NAF earned his eighth EVP award of the year as he posted a 1.26 rating, 10% higher than the team's average, raising eyebrows with his 2.27 rating against eUnited, which stands as one of the highest map ratings at Big Events of his career.

Talk of crisis intensified in the weeks that followed as Liquid failed to get out of the groups at their next two events, DreamHack Masters Malmö and BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen. NAF put in some year-low numbers in Sweden (0.61 KPR and 0.88 Impact) as the team finished 9th-12th after losing to OpTic and Grayhound, and while he acquitted himself much better in the Danish capital, his 1.15 rating was still not enough for him to make the EVP list.

Just like Twistzz, who admitted in his top 20 article that the team felt "dead inside" in Malmö, NAF had a hard time to put a finger on what went wrong in Sweden and eventually contributed to a report suggesting that the team were considering replacing him.

"DreamHack Malmö was my worst memory of the year. Honestly, that event was such a waste of time, I think we showed up on media day, ended up being entirely jet-lagged and played seven maps in a dark corner of the event. We were jet-lagged and stressed, it was a difficult time for all of us, for sure. I think we definitely doubted ourselves as we were slipping from the top.

"Our first match didn't go well versus OpTic, they ended up having a solid game plan against us on Overpass and overall played well, which left us to start the tournament in the lower bracket. Going into the North game, we felt confident due to our track record against them. It was still a tight game, but in the end we came out on top. I honestly don’t know what to say about our loss against Grayhound, I honestly didn’t really care that much due to understanding that we were nowhere near our peak level and just played like shit. Shit happens.

"My individual play and vibe were just bad, and after our loss versus Grayhound I felt a lot of the blame and wasn’t feeling right mentally. Later that night, it was about 3:00 am when I read the headline, and after all that I had just dealt with I felt like I could believe it. But since the report was written by a news outlet I had not heard of made me not think too much of it. It was just speculation."

NAF returned to his best form for the last stretch of the season with an average 1.16 rating, the highest in the team, in the final three events of the year, the ECS Season 8 Finals, the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals and the BLAST Global Final. He added two more EVPs to his collection from the events in Arlington (1.28 rating, 16% higher than the team’s average, and 88.9 ADR) and Riffa (1.15 rating, 15% higher than the squad’s average), with Liquid once again feeling helpless in the matches the Danes even with some tricks in the bag.

"Us versus Astralis is like us against Na’Vi, literally feels like a wall of kryptonite in terms of playstyles against each other. It makes me think, 'Do we need to come up with a different way of playing the game or something?'. I just don’t know, it’s so hard.

"I remember that we felt confident in our Vertigo pick [at the ECS Finals] after Valve had changed the ramp on A, so Astralis could no longer do that fast three-man push on CT, which was very hard to stop. I remember we felt confident in hitting our shots, so we’d win most of our rounds just taking fights on the A ramp. Coming into Nuke, we had a gameplan, but Astralis are just too good for us on that map, with disrupting rotations as T and rock-solid positioning on CT. Dust2 was a big blank for me, if Astralis took cat on T we would just be fucked and had no answer really."

Why was NAF the 7th best player of 2019?

NAF was part of the elite group of players of 2019, boasting the eighth-highest rating (1.18) and the second-most individual awards (two MVPs and ten EVPs). His high rating came mostly from his incredible damage output (82.8 ADR, the sixth-highest), his clutching ability (62 1vsX situations won, the fifth-best), and his round-to-round consistency (74.3% KAST, the seventh-highest).

His peaks were not as relevant as those from other players as his MVP awards came from less prestigious events (iBUYPOWER Masters and BLAST Pro Series LA), but he made up for that with his incredible consistency as he was a standout player at 12 of the 18 events that he attended, including every tournament during Liquid's dream run between May and July. Moreover, he never left a tournament with a below-average rating and only three players in the world had a higher percentage of maps with 1.00+ ratings than him (79%).

His consistency saw him cement his status as an elite player for the second year in a row, but he was unable to break into the top five or even match 2018's sixth place in the ranking due to two reasons: four of his lowest tournament ratings came from events that were among the most stacked of the year (the two Majors, DreamHack Masters Malmö and the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals), and he averaged just a 1.10 rating in the playoffs of Big Events, which is the lowest of any player in the top 10 and is pale when compared to his 1.21 rating from the group stages of these competitions.

"Even though I kind of felt like I took more of a back seat this year in terms of performance, EliGE and Twistzz literally went off on all of our trophy runs and really sealed the deal on those events for us, so I believe we’re all happy with what achieved, especially bringing it all home for NA.

"[Personal goals for 2020?] Trophies. After winning multiple trophies back-to-back, coming up short at most of these events was rough mentally a bit, but I know we can come back in 2020."

Bold prediction:

NAF became the second player to predict a bright future for Ricky "⁠floppy⁠" Kemery, following in the footsteps of Vincent "⁠Brehze⁠" Cayonte. The 20-year-old, who signed for Cloud9 at the start of the month along with the rest of his ATK squad, ended 2019 with a 1.15 LAN rating and recently helped his team to qualify for DreamHack Open Leipzig and IEM Katowice.

Ricky "⁠floppy⁠" Kemery

"He has massive potential to become one of the best players in North America. If he plays his cards right he has a bright future ahead of him."

Stay tuned to our Top 20 players of 2019 ranking and take a look at the Introduction article to learn more about how the players were selected. This year's ranking is supported by:

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