Best Five: Gamers8 2023

The cutthroat format did not prevent the usual names from taking up spots in our role-based team of the event.

Vitality are clicking again. The Major champions have won three of the last five trophies on offer, finishing second at BLAST Spring Final and top four at IEM Cologne.

Their decision to twist after wins at Rio and Paris has already paid off, with Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan starting to look more comfortable in his new positions. At this event, though, it was the old guard who took them home: Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut earned a 16th career MVP, and Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif was a stalwart from his Anchor positions.

Read on to find out who joins them in the Best Five of Gamers8 2023.

---

Magisk has been a pillar of consistency for Vitality this year, a true 'moments player' who can come up clutch in key rounds.

One of the first 'star' anchors, taking up those spots to allow Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander to roam in prime Astralis, Magisk has in many ways defined the modern role taken up by the likes of Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato and Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov on CT side.

At this event, though he was quiet in the first two maps of the final, that was the case too. He was Vitality's highest-rated player (1.24) after the first three games, with a 1.32 on CT side in his difficult solo positions.

Stiff competition came in this category from René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen, who was HEROIC's brightest spark as their Gamers8 campaign often threatened to stall, delivering two huge maps against GamerLegion in particular.

But, those two performances did inflate his stats somewhat; TeSeS did not have anywhere near the high floor of Magisk this event. Magisk's performance against G2 (a high-impact 1.18 rating) in semi-finals is also noteworthy, in a way that TeSeS' against ENCE perhaps wasn't.

---

ZywOo earned his 16th MVP in Riyadh, coming alive in the final two maps of the event to beat out competition from Álvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" García for the MVP, the trophy, and now the AWPer of the event.

This was not ZywOo's best tournament by any stretch of the imagination, but that he came away with the MVP regardless is a testament to the level of play ZywOo has hit this term.

Read more

ZywOo named MVP of Gamers8 2023

Vitality's talisman is still eligible for the AWPer category, though our radar shows just how little ZywOo uses the weapon compared to other snipers.

This lets him take action on himself more often, and that paid off this event with figures like 4.6 openers per 30 rounds (5th) and 76% of his kills coming in victorious rounds. Doing that with a survival rate of 45% only drums home his excellence.

---

Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz was the frontrunner for the MVP before the final, helping ENCE demolish Liquid, Cloud9, and HEROIC to reach their fourth LAN grand final in a row.

He was the Closer, or lurker, with the most kills per 30 rounds (23.8) and the fewest deaths per 30 rounds (17.6). He was also ENCE's most valuable player on four of the six maps before the final, and was averaging a 1.36 rating at the time.

NertZ's struggles in the final (0.95 rating) prevented him from staying in the MVP race, but his work early in the event still put him beyond the other well-performing Closers of the event.

---

Note: The IGL category is about team success rather than individual, and thus is more subjective than the other four roles. Individual play is rewarded by them being entered into the other four categories as players.

Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer makes it two ENCE players in our Best Five, his third appearance in his last three events as the IGL of our dream team.

He fought off Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire for the prize, with HLTV.org consulting the desk analysts of the event and all three plucking for Snappi as the strongest captain of the event.

ENCE's T sides are a convincing factor to that: a 61% win rate was the highest by 8% and Snappi managed to call his sides to victory in 83.3% of 5v4s and a whopping 39.3% of 4v5s.

That 61% win rate is inflated somewhat by ENCE's 73.3% win rate on the nominally T-sided Anubis, but Vitality and apEX averaged just 48.1% on the same battlefield over three maps, an identical sample to ENCE.

"I love the way Snappi calls a game," said Jason "⁠moses⁠" O'Toole. "He's really strong with pace changes, one of the best at building momentum of successes, and using those successes to mind game opposing IGLs."

Vitality's strong play also had the caveat of a 70% win rate in pistols, a luxury Snappi could not afford with a 44% win rate in round one and 16. This was a decisive factor in the final, where Vitality had a large leg up with all four pistols in the final two maps.

This is why, despite another second-placed finish, the gun-round form of Snappi was enough to retain his place in the side.

---

G2 could not match their IEM Cologne efforts at Gamers8, but no fingers can be pointed at Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač: He topped his MVP-winning Cologne form in terms of ADR (90.3 vs 88.5) and KP30 (25.2 vs 24.6) and was once again peerless in the Opener category.

His losing effort against Vitality will sting the most, where he dominated the now-world #1 team on Anubis (1.64 rating) and had to accept defeat in a deciding map where both he and Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač posted 33 frags in a 15-19 loss.

---

There we have it, our Best Five of Gamers8. apEX, TeSeS, and SunPayus are unlucky to miss out but that is the nature of the beast.

In game, NiKo and NertZ might have a few clashes, both acting as aggressive riflers despite one doing so mostly from the pack and the other from the extremities. But overall the lineup still fits; Magisk and Snappi would anchor on CT, and a fragging trio of ZywOo, NiKo and NertZ could run riot on nearly every team in the game.

Read more

Best Five: IEM Cologne 2023