Top 20 players of 2021: sh1ro (4)

Being near-unkillable, one of the most prolific AWPers, and the best clutcher of the year earns Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov the fourth spot in his debut on our top 20 players list.

Top 20 players of 2021: Introduction

sh1ro made his first appearances on HLTV way back in May 2018, playing a string of qualifiers with Russian mixes going by names such as team7, FLuffy Gangsters, and aimg0d. It was clear, even at this early stage, that the young AWPer possessed talent; he racked up solid numbers across these qualifiers, even in defeat, one shining example being a 1.37 rating he achieved in a loss to FORZE in the MSI MGA 2018 CIS closed qualifier.

These brief forays into the upper echelons of Counter-Strike were short lived and with an array of different teammates, however by September of 2018 sh1ro, alongside future Gambit teammate Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov, had formed a stable roster going by the name of Vyalie Pitoni, and with this team the Russian began to build some real experience. They took an impressive resume of wins in a range of qualifiers, including a win against Winstrike at the WESG 2018 Russia closed qualifier, and wins against Vega Squadron and Valiance at the DreamHack Open Atalanta 2018 qualifier. They were stopped in this final qualifier by Vitality, with sh1ro posting an impressive 1.23 rating even in defeat. These promising performances earned sh1ro a call from Ivan "⁠F_1N⁠" Kochugov, and a shot to trial for Gambit's academy project.

"It was always fun to play in Vyalie Pitoni. We practiced a lot, played various qualifications, and on one of them we defeated everyone except Team Vitality. At that moment it was my and nafany’s first team experience."

"F_1N called me for a test for Gambit Youngsters. He also chose the other members of the team. After the first training, I was immediately accepted into the team, which already included supra."

After joining Gambit Youngsters he made his debut for the squad in April 2019, at the Copenhagen Games BYOC qualifier, where the lineup immediately showed their potential with a win against GODSENT to make it to the main event. Throughout the rest of 2019 the roster built up valuable experience, and they continued to produce some promising results — they twice beat Winstrike, once at the MSI MGA last chance qualifier, once during LOOT.BET Season 3, and they beat Vega Squadron and most impressively AVANGAR at the CIS Esports Pro Championships.

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The team managed to win the latter event, with sh1ro posting a 1.48 across 11 maps. The AWPer had already emerged as the clear star for this team, posting insane ratings no matter what the result was. Such was his rapid development that the final event of 2019 for the squad, DreamHack Open Sevilla, was his final event in the red on HLTV to this day.

2020 began in much the same vein, with Gambit Youngsters showing promise and doing well in qualifiers and lower tier competition, but it seemed they had stagnated. The development had faltered, as during this period they hovered around the top 30 in the world, but seemed able to go no further. Towards the middle of the year form began to pick up, and they went on a run of picking up several tier-two event victories – the streak ended up stretching to six wins out of 11 events. sh1ro was vital in all of these, at one point posting four back-to-back event victories where his rating was 1.37 or higher in all.

In the midst of this run, just after the WePlay! Clutch Island event, they picked up Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov, a move that would prove to be vital to the team moving forward. Not long after the HObbit move they also became the main Gambit roster, and it became clear that the experience and stable presence of the Kazakh rifler was key in helping them develop; they won a well-attended LOOT.BET Season 8 tournament, beating Virtus.pro in the final. They cruised through their group at IEM New York CIS but fell to Natus Vincere 0-2 in the quarters in a reasonably good showing as they reached double digits on both maps. It was just after this that they hit another streak of good form, ending the year with four event wins out of six, one being a DreamHack Open where they beat Spirit in the final.

"I remember WePlay! Clutch Island well, we really wanted to get out of the group and therefore we prepared a lot. However, we were really disappointed when we didn't manage to do it. In addition, we lost the match against Espada for 5th place. After that, I had a feeling that soon there will be changes in the roster. In the future, this is exactly what happened: the management replaced supra with Hobbit."

"Hobbit has a lot of experience in tier-one tournaments. He passed this experience to us with each subsequent tournament and training session. Abay changed my vision of the game - thanks to him it became much easier for me to play against the best teams in the world. Sometimes in matches we got into critical situations and started to get lost, but Hobbit was always calm and thus helped us get out of this difficult situation."

2021 opened auspiciously for the Gambit boys, as they placed top four at DreamHack Open January, took second at Snow Sweet Snow 1, and successfully navigated the Katowice Play-in, beating MOUZ 2-1 on the way. Despite this early success, no one could have predicted what came in the main event at Katowice, especially considering Gambit, the lowest ranked team at the event, struggled in their opening series against Evil Geniuses — they were beaten 0-2 and forced down to the lower bracket.

Here they went on a tear, beating top-15 opposition in the form of world #14 MOUZ, #10 G2 and #6 HEROIC to make playoffs. sh1ro is the beast behind it all, topping the server in every single series, the highlight being a 1.50 rated performance across two maps to eliminate Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač's G2 and make playoffs. The team and sh1ro's form did not cool off in the bracket stage, where they clinched a statement victory in the quarter-finals; despite a tough draw they brushed aside Natus Vincere 2-0, with sh1ro producing the performance of his career so far, a 1.45 rating whilst on the same server as Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev, going 6:2 in duels with the AWP versus the Ukrainian legend. Despite cooling off somewhat in the remaining games individually, his team marched imperiously towards the title, beating Spirit and Virtus.pro to seal an unforgettable tournament run; they beat four top-10 teams, including the world #1, to do it as the lowest rated team in attendance, at their first ever elite event. sh1ro took the MVP home, his 1.27 rating, +111 KD-diff, and staggering 19 1vsX wins across 17 maps putting him amongst the best players in the world.

"A long time ago, our team had a period, when we were still in the academy and we could not win anything, so when we played the next practice, we had nicknames that reflected our state, which in general were rather sad. During one of the practices against FaZe Clan, coldzera drew attention to this and wrote to us in the chat to 'never give up.' The first thing that came to my mind after winning IEM Katowice were those very words. I was very happy that day. I remember that I thought 'Is it really possible? Is it possible that all this training has finally paid off?'"

Katowice marked the beginning of a period of utter domination for the Russian squad, as after suffering a small hangover in a 5-8th placing at Snow Sweet Snow 2 immediately after, they went on a run of eight tournaments where they placed at worst second in all of them. A Pinnacle Cup victory began the run, before they attended ESL Pro League 13. They made a statement in the groups here, taking five series wins and no losses, including another victory over Natus Vincere. A comfortable 2-0 win over Astralis netted them a semi-final berth, where they confidently defeated Ninjas in Pyjamas; sh1ro was key in this series, posting a 1.33 rating and topping the server alongside nafany. sh1ro was again the highest rated player in the final, but this time it is in defeat, as the match was decided by a legendary Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller clutch on Mirage. Nevertheless it was another stellar performance from Gambit as they bagged top-two at only their second ever truly stacked LAN event. The Russian AWPer picked up his first EVP of the year, a monstrous +150 KD-diff over 23 maps a large contributor to this, but he also secured another 11 1vsX wins as his pedigree as a clutch player was becoming clearer and clearer.

Gambit breezed through BLAST Spring Showdown, their first event as the number one team in the world after a meteoric rise to start the year, sh1ro topping the event with a 1.36 rating; at this event they earned sweet revenge over HEROIC, the perfect warmup to the next big event of the year, DreamHack Masters Spring. It was another top-two for Gambit, but they were comfortably beaten in a best-of-five grand-final by Natus Vincere in this tournament; Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and s1mple were in superlative form, and despite the fact Gambit had beaten them in the upper group final, they couldn't get the job done there. Another EVP award was secured by sh1ro, who as per usual sported a healthy KD-diff (+50) and racked up more clutches (9).

It was now that Gambit hit their best patch of form for the year, winning three stacked events back-to-back. First up was the EPIC League CIS, a notoriously problematic RMR event that nonetheless saw Gambit take home the trophy; a wobble in the group stage had them lose to both Spirit and perennial 2021 rivals Natus Vincere, however they romped home to victory in the playoffs with a 9-3 map record; sh1ro narrowly missed out on his second MVP of the year to teammate HObbit, but he still made it into the top-five players at the event on KD-diff (2nd), rating (4th), damage diff per round (4th), clutches won (3rd), total AWP kills (3rd) and success in opening duels (5th). This event highlighted sh1ro's strengths, in that he excels in almost every relevant category for an individual; he finds opening frags, he clutches well, and he outputs sheer numbers at a very high level.

Victory at IEM Summer 2021 followed, where Gambit again cemented themselves as the undoubted number one team by beating the world #4 and #5 along the way; they also bounced back from a loss to a Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut-inspired Vitality. Again sh1ro was just pipped to the MVP medal by a teammate, this time Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov, but excelled with a 1.28 rating and nine 1vsX wins over 15 maps.

BLAST Spring Final brought the run of tournament victories to a close; Gambit rolled through the event, dropping a single map in the semi-finals to world #2 Natus Vincere. As if to thoroughly stamp their authority on the number one spot in the rankings they beat Natus Vincere twice during this event, the finals being a relatively comfortable 2-0. sh1ro was yet again bested by a teammate in the MVP race, this time HObbit, but still he posted the second highest rating at the tournament, a 1.23, which saw him take home another EVP. Natus Vincere immediately got their revenge at the StarLadder CIS RMR, where despite being beaten by Gambit twice earlier in the event, the CIS squad narrowly triumphed in an epic 3-2 best-of-five grand-final. sh1ro had a quieter event by his incredibly high standards, still posting a second-in-team rating of 1.15 over 19 maps, but he was noticeably quiet in a couple of games, a 1.00 rating in the upper final win over Natus Vincere being one of them.

Gambit then reached the final tournament before the player break, and it was one of the most important of the year; the return to LAN, IEM Cologne. The period that Gambit had dominated so far in 2021 was the latter part of what had been dubbed the 'online era', and now we got to see them further tested. The event almost began with immediate disaster, as they dropped their first map to a MOUZ squad who had only just recently conquered Flashpoint 3; fortunately they immediately recovered, comfortably winning the next two to get the event kicked off the right way.

They once again dropped the first map of their next match, this time to Ninjas in Pyjamas, but again recovered to dominate the rest of the series, in no small part due to a 1.40 rated performance from sh1ro. An intense battle ensued in the upper final against a resurgent G2, who had been on a run of podium finishes since ESL Pro League 13, and they lost out 1-2, with the final map of Inferno going the full 30 rounds. This meant Gambit had to play a quarter-final matchup, and they got the misfortune of coming up against a FaZe who were having a hot tournament, having already knocked out world #9 Vitality and #4 HEROIC on their way to facing Gambit. They lost 1-2, with sh1ro having a quiet game for him, posting only a 1.07 in defeat; his event overall was still excellent, a 1.19 rating earning him his 7th EVP of the year, before we had even reached the player break. It was, however, clear that Gambit needed some time to adjust to LAN Counter-Strike, and this would prove to be the focus of the rest of their year.

"Of course, the online era gave us some advantages, but I don’t think that we have achieved all these results only thanks to it. We worked a lot and very hard, came up with something new and took apart the old. We always prepared for our opponents and tried to outplay them."

"Of course we were upset after IEM Cologne, because we played very well for a whole year, and here we did not even reach the final. On the other hand, we realized that we would need to adjust to LAN tournaments."

The return from the player break saw a temporary return to online play, with ESL Pro League Season 14. Gambit qualified for the playoffs in convincing fashion, doing so with four straight series wins before dropping a meaningless series to Ninjas in Pyjamas in their last game of the group. Topping their group earned them a quarter-finals berth, but they fell 0-2 to eventual second-place finishers Vitality; sh1ro tried his best in defeat, posting a 1.33 rating, but it was not enough as they lost a tight battle. The Russian AWPer played well throughout the tournament, securing himself another EVP.

"To be honest, the training before this tournament was terrible - we could not find a path to the game, we changed coaches, but then we realized that this was not the best decision and changed everything back."

Gambit seemed to rediscover some of their best form at the next event, IEM Fall CIS, an all-important final RMR event. Whilst the Russian squad were in prime position to qualify due to their performances at the EPIC League and StarLadder RMR events, there was still seeding to play for. Gambit ensured they secured themselves the best seeding possible by romping through this event in style, dropping a single map, an overtime to Virtus.pro in the group stage, on their way to the title.

sh1ro posted his best event rating for the year during this run, an impressive 1.45, and was particularly dominant in the playoffs; he sported a 1.95 and 1.55 rating in the semis and finals respectively, went 85-36, and averaged over 100 ADR over the four maps played. Of course, this secured him his second MVP award of the year, as he comfortably outshone the rest of the field (the next highest rating in the event was 1.32). The only slight damper on what was otherwise a fantastic event for the Gambit squad was the fact that the final against Natus Vincere, which should have been a statement victory, was marred by the fact that the match itself meant nothing in terms of Major qualification or seeding, so much so that the teams persuaded ESLt o make the final best-of-three instead of the originally intended best-of-five.

Gambit thus came into the biggest event of the past two years, the PGL Major Stockholm, in good form and high on confidence. They kicked their event off in style, comfortable brushing aside the ascendant ENCE in their opener with every member of the team posting a 1.21 rating or higher. An immediate setback came in the form of a loss to Entropiq, despite sh1ro's 1.26 rated efforts, and worryingly it was on a map that had previously been imperious for Gambit, Vertigo. If any questions had been raised about Gambit's performance moving forwards, they managed to put them to bed, but it was with another somewhat unconvincing performance on Vertigo, squeaking over the line 16-14 against Virtus.pro; they needed a monstrous 39 kill, 119 ADR, 1.67 rated performance from HObbit to get the job done. They rediscovered some form in their qualification bout, a quick 2-0 defeat of Ninjas in Pyjamas, and it was the ever-reliable sh1ro who again led the way with a 1.66 rating.

The playoff draw was kind to the Russian side, as they were given a quarter-final matchup against far and away the lowest-ranked team still left in the pot, FURIA. The Gambit squad managed to steal away the Brazilian's map pick of Inferno in a thrilling 19-17 overtime, before comfortably swatting them aside on Overpass. Whilst it hadn't been a vintage tournament performance from Gambit, they had repeatedly gotten the job done against the opposition that was put in front of them, and thus had earned a semi-final matchup with pre-tournament favourites and perennial CIS nemesis; Natus Vincere. Unfortunately, we will never know just how good Gambit actually were at the Major, because Natus Vincere were simply unstoppable; they crushed their young counterparts in two maps, with Gambit mustering a mere 11 rounds across the series. Regardless of the result of this game, the Russian squad could be proud of their performance in what was the first ever Major for many of their players; they made top-four, with precious little LAN experience, beating the number two team in the world at the time on their way to doing so. sh1ro impressed in his Major debut, his 1.21 rating winning him another EVP award.

"Before the game with NAVI, we felt great, especially when we played against FURIA. The whole hall was cheering for us, however, as soon as we sat down to play against NAVI, we started to worry a lot, because the whole crowd that was there created a lot of pressure and we were unable to cope with it. At that moment, I realized how difficult it is to play in such conditions, however, I think that valuable experience was gained and next time we will definitely perform better."

"NAVI is the main rival for us, since this year we played a lot of matches with them. Sometimes we ran out of ideas and had to come up with something new on the fly to beat them."

From this point on, the year was beginning to wind down; some rosters underwent changes and many that didn't were rumoured to be planning adjustments in the near future. In search of more LAN experience Gambit attended the V4 Future Sports Festival next, an event that featured a solid field of top-20 teams including the likes of Entropiq and BIG, as well as some up-and-coming names such as Enterprise.

Gambit suffered a worrying loss to Fiend on Dust2 to open the event, and in their lower bracket game they started at a 4-11 deficit on Mirage against world #62 eSuba; they managed to recover and squeak over the line in overtime of that map, before sealing the series comfortably on Overpass, but it was not the best start to the event for the Russians. The shaky form continued as they dropped the opener of Dust2 against Enterprise in their quarter-final, before they closed out the next two maps in style, allowing Enterprise only 9 rounds total. Throughout this whole event thus far sh1ro was on fire, posting monstrous ratings and clutching rounds like it was a habit (which by this point, it really was), and he carried that form on into the semi-final against BIG, sporting a 1.85 rating as his team cruised past the Germans 2-0. The AWPer's form dropped off in the final, a best-of-five against Entropiq, but they were still the dominant team despite a deceptively close 3-2 scoreline; in reality Entropiq only really looked good on three halves of that final, barely squeaking over the line on Overpass after starting 0-2 in the series. sh1ro's superlative form up until the final bagged him what would be his last MVP of the year.

IEM Winter was the penultimate event of the year for Gambit, and it was another slight dip in form for the Russian squad. They made it to playoffs but not before suffering a close 0-2 defeat to Virtus.pro in the group stages. In the playoffs they fell at the first hurdle, losing 1-2 to Vitality. They were crushed on Dust2 5-16 in the latter series, and the most storied map in the pool had become something of a problem for the Russian squad by the end of the year, as they had lost four of the last six Dust2 maps they had played. sh1ro has his lowest rated event of the year thus far, a 1.14, but it was still a solid showing that grabbed him another EVP, his 1.39 rating in the group decider the most impressive performance.

BLAST Premier World Final closed the year, an elite event with all the top six sides in the world in attendance, and Gambit set about making a statement at this tournament. They brushed aside HEROIC in the opening series 2-0 and defeated Liquid 2-1 in the upper semi-finals. Awaiting them in the upper final were Vitality, the French side having proved to be something of a bogey-team for Gambit throughout 2021; they played the boys in black and yellow three times prior to this, losing all three series. Gambit put the hoodoo to bed with a 2-0 victory, HObbit taking much of the credit for getting them over the line. This set up what felt like a fated matchup with Natus Vincere, ending 2021 with the two best teams of the year going head to head. Unfortunately for Gambit, despite winning the first map of Mirage, they were unable to grab a marquee victory to end their season, instead being reverse swept on Ancient and Inferno; s1mple was in irresistible form, posting a 1.62 rating to carry his team to the title. Nonetheless this tournament performance was enough to secure Gambit a well-deserved year-ending number two spot in the world rankings, and a 1.14 rating secured sh1ro his final EVP berth of the year.

Why was sh1ro the fourth best player of 2021?

As we enter the tier of world-class performers of this year's Top 20, sh1ro makes his debut in the ranking, earning his place thanks to being 2021's best clutcher, hardest player to kill, one of the best AWPers and the player who collected the most awards. When it comes to his survival skills, he ended up with mere 0.52 deaths per round, a mark not only the best in 2021, but the best in the history of the Top 20, as he surpassed Yegor "⁠markeloff⁠" Markelov's 0.53 DPR that occured in this ranking's first edition in 2010 (CS 1.6), and far beyond anyone's numbers since CS:GO came to be. He didn't just benefit his team's economy with those numbers, he was also one of the best fraggers (0.76 kills per round, #5) while winning the most 1vsX situations out of all players, both in total (112) and on average (2.1% of his rounds), making him the best clutcher of the year.

The young Russian managed to score the 3rd most AWP kills per round (0.44), and he used the big green to great success in round opening situations, in which he was the most successful (69.6% opening duels won) — however, he was one of the least aggressive players in that aspect, attempting the opener only 16% of the time. He displayed immaculate consistency during the year, with his lowest rating at an event being a very good 1.14 (higher than some of the Top 20 members' average); this helped him pick up 11 EVPs and 3 MVP selections from his 14 tournaments, the most awards out of all players, albeit while also playing the most events. His consistency also shone through on a map-to-map basis (84% of the time above a 1.00 rating, #2) and round-to-round (76.4% KAST, #1). sh1ro ended up averaging a 1.24 rating, the 3rd highest of all players, and while he did excel in some of the less competitive events, his numbers didn't notably drop when filtering only for Big events — a 1.22 rating, also the 3rd highest.

All those numbers put him well above everyone else on the list so far, but there were a few reasons why he didn't make it higher. Firstly, although he had arguably the second highest floor out of all players, his peaks weren't as impressive in comparison to the other candidates for top 3, with two of his MVPs coming at medium-sized events and even his IEM Katowice MVP being slightly less impressive than other candidates' best events. That was in large part due to the second reason, which was a drop-off in his performance when it came to Big matches and top opposition. While he was still one of the world's best in the Big matches, ranking 4th with a 1.18 rating, it was a noticeable drop from his 1.27 rating in all the other matches, as was the drop to a 1.15 rating against top 5 opposition, which was still joint-4th highest, but not enough compared to the very best. Lastly, while he did affect the game in a plethora of ways, he didn't put up as much direct impact that led to won rounds in comparison to the other candidates (for example, ranking 3rd in his own team when it comes to average kills in round wins).

Bold prediction by GG.BET

sh1ro chose fellow Russian AWPer Denis "⁠deko⁠" Zhukov as his bold prediction, a 20-year-old prospect who is currently plying his trade for 1win.

deko grew in stature over 2021, posting an impressive 1.25 rating over the last 12 months as his team picked up a Malta Vibes Knockout Series trophy and several ESEA Cash Cup victories.

His team will be competing in the ESL Challenger League Season 40 in 2022, alongside names such as Entropiq and Copenhagen Flames, giving the young deko a chance to prove his credentials against a higher tier of opposition.

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Stay tuned to our Top 20 players of 2021 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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