Top 20 players of 2023: sh1ro (8)

Remarkable performances against the best teams and an exceptional floor lands sh1ro his third consecutive appearance on our Top 20 Players of the Year list, powered by 1xBet.

Top 20 players of 2023: Introduction

Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov places among the top ten in our HLTV Top 20 Players of the Year ranking after another phenomenal year where he remained a pillar of consistency for Cloud9 despite the team struggling to fight for titles.

He and Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov had been at the tip of the spear of Gambit's rise during the online era, powering them to a handful of tournament wins. sh1ro was near-unkillable and stood out as the best clutcher that year, earning himself a debut spot at No. 4 on the Top 20 players list in 2021, but the team struggled to replicate that same dominance upon the return to LAN play.

He elevated further in 2022 upon moving to Cloud9 and averaged the highest rating across the year, demonstrated an exceptional floor, and showed up time after time at Elite events and in Big matches, but, even with him and Ax1Le firing on all cylinders, Cloud9 garnered just one big LAN trophy at IEM Dallas.

The team simply couldn't close out tournaments, even when considered favorites for the title, and a squandered favorable bracket draw in the playoffs of the IEM Rio Major brought the curtains down on a disappointing finish to a year where sh1ro was named the third-best player.

You can read a more in-depth look at sh1ro's career in his previous appearances on the top 20 list:

- Top 20 players of 2021: sh1ro (4)
- Top 20 players of 2022: sh1ro (3)

Failure in the playoffs of the IEM Rio Major provoked changes within Cloud9's ranks as their 2022 season came to an end. A lineup that endured for over two years, the longest holdout among top teams, was finally shifting to address shortcomings after a year where it failed to win more than one LAN title and dropped out of the top five despite housing the third and fourth-best players of 2022.

They embarked on a month-long search for a new member, reportedly testing Igor "⁠Forester⁠" Bezotecheskiy and Sanjar "⁠SANJI⁠" Kuliev, but ultimately settled on former Virtus.pro member Timur "⁠buster⁠" Tulepov to take the place of Cloud9's ever-present pillar of support, Timofey "⁠interz⁠" Yakushin.

Questions arose during the search from fans and pundits about whether the team had identified the correct issues by making this change given their proclivity to crumble deep into events, and particular criticism remained levied at Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov about whether his leadership and style was the right fit for the lineup.

Thus, the Russian in-game leader had pressure mounting upon him at the start of the season to prove that it was not his captaincy that left Cloud9 with a wasted 2022, and that this change was what would finally turn the team's tides and fulfill the potential seen in them during the online era.

No BLAST partner spot meant Cloud9 had enough time in the early season to practice with their new roster and analyze their opposition before their first challenge of the year, the super-elite IEM Katowice, kicked off in February. sh1ro and Ax1Le looked as good as ever upon their return to the server, driving their team past IHC and ENCE in the Play-In stage, but those wins did little to salve the wounds that followed.

sh1ro had mustered a 1.30 rating in the Play-In stage and went on to post a 1.20 in groups, with Ax1Le not far behind, yet their performances were squandered again by a team that couldn't rise to the occasion around them.

Back-to-back losses to Natus Vincere and IHC in the top-16 stage sent Cloud9 careening out of the tournament, and they had, as nafany stated after the match, simply no excuses for the loss.

sh1ro and Ax1Le's excellent form continued in ESL Pro League Season 17, and for a brief moment, it looked like Cloud9 had dug themselves out of the hole and they could gun for a title.

The Russian sniper stood tall in the group stage in wins over Evil Geniuses (1.70 rating), G2 (1.83), and Outsiders (1.19), while Ax1Le was back to his best upon returning for the playoffs as he led the charge toward a grand final bout versus FaZe.

The rifler had proved a thorn in the side of Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's men in 2022, single-handedly troucing them in the grand final of IEM Dallas and the playoffs of EPL S16, but this time around he couldn't break the European combine the same way. sh1ro, too, struggled, recording what would be his second lowest-rated map of the year (0.44) in the title decider as FaZe swept up the trophy, and Intel Grand Slam in the process, with a 3-1 victory.

Cloud9's comfort when playing online was shown off in full force again shortly after the end of Pro League. They won BetBoom Playlist Urbanistic and qualified for IEM Dallas and the BLAST Spring Final, and though they didn't face the best teams in those runs, their mentality under less pressure and with the difference in environment showed.

The pressure dial spiked again mere days later, though. The BLAST.tv Paris Major Europe RMR was next up, and the new Cloud9 faced their biggest test yet in a hyper-competitive group. They finished the Swiss stage with a 2-3 record, which in any other scenario would have ensured their elimination from the qualifier, but one coveted spot at the Parisian tournament was still on offer to the victor of the Last Chance bracket.

sh1ro's best efforts were still not enough to clinch that spot, however, and wins over B8 and BIG proved meaningless in the end after FaZe dispatched of the Russian team in an all-important match for the second time in a month.

Hope for some salvation at IEM Rio followed, and it was there that sh1ro was key in clinching his team a playoff spot with a 1.35-rated series (0.40 higher than his closest teammate) in two 16-14 wins over OG.

He continued to be a pillar of consistency for Cloud9 with an exceptional 0.85 KPR, 86.6 ADR, 1.24 impact rating, and 1.29 average rating across the tournament, making him a strong contender for the MVP medal. In the end, though, he had to settle for being the best EVP after his team were pipped by eventual champions Vitality in the semis, a haunting loss in which the Russian side crumbled despite leading 1-0 in the series and 12-1 on map two in spite of sh1ro's best efforts.

Date	Matches
IEM Rio 2023
22/04/2023	Cloud9 Finished 1:2 Vitality	Match

With no Major to attend and only the shameful defeat to reflect on, sh1ro and his men spent much of May on the sidelines. Brazy Party, an event most top teams either skipped or used as more of a testing ground for strategies ahead of the Major than anything else, helped fill the time and, rather fittingly, awarded Cloud9 another online tournament trophy while their corporeal shelf remained rather barren.

Over a month after their loss to Vitality in Rio, sh1ro and Cloud9 finally returned to offline play at IEM Dallas. The Russian side were under a different type of strain here, a burden they had never carried before: For once, they were the defending champions of a big LAN trophy.

There is never a good time to have a bad tournament, but it was here that sh1ro's usually dependable floor tremored for once and left Cloud9 without the rock they relied upon. His peaks remained high, posting a 1.25 rating or higher in five of the nine maps he played, but he ended the other four uncharacteristically in the red.

FaZe were the culprits behind two of those as they got the better of sh1ro in the lower bracket final of Group B, and karrigan's men claimed some sweet revenge by stopping the very team who beat them in the grand finals of Dallas the previous year from making it to the playoffs.

The writing was on the wall at this point: Cloud9 were in desperate need of a larger change, and their joint last-place finish at BLAST Premier Spring Final to end the season made that an unquestionable fact. 1.24 and 1.19 ratings from Ax1Le and sh1ro, respectively, weren't enough to power their side past G2 and Vitality, and Cloud9's image wasn't helped by the fact that they disastrously exited the event by failing to convert map point on Anubis against Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's side with two team-kills.

Conversations around Cloud9's lack of trophies despite their star duo's imperious form were at a fever pitch for the second time. nafany admitted he was uncertain of whether management would make changes during the off-season in a post-elimination interview with James "⁠BanKs⁠" Banks, and the Russian captain also took the moment to speak on his own leadership.

"As a leader, I must push my opinions forward and that is it. That is in my opinion the reason we struggled in some situations," nafany admitted. "It is pretty fine when you have five smart players and you are letting them do whatever they want. But some decisions need to be pushed by one man, and with my role, it must be me because I am the IGL obviously. And I didn't do it, I gave a lot of players a lot of freedom and that cost us a lot."

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Cloud9 confirm electroNic and Perfecto signings

Cloud9 made two moves during the tournament break, with one of those swaps ending nafany's over four-year-long stint playing alongside sh1ro.

Four-time top-ten player in the world, Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov, and Anchor of the Year in 2022, Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy, transferred over in blockbuster signings from Natus Vincere, the former taking over the captaincy while the latter replaced buster.

Immediately, the lineup was dubbed the Russian super-team by fans, praised as "the number one" change of the off-season by Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer, had Chad "⁠SPUNJ⁠" Burchill exclaiming, "it's almost stupid how perfect it could be," and pundits crooned at how the roles matched up and the sheer firepower the new team presented.

Questions were still asked of whether Ax1Le could find his form in arena matches with this team, and whether he and sh1ro could adapt after playing within the same system for so long, one that wasn't solely the brainchild of nafany, but one of coach Konstantin "⁠groove⁠" Pikiner and sh1ro, too.

Nevertheless, fervor surrounded the lineup leading into the second part of the season. Anticipation soared to finally see sh1ro and Ax1Le under new leadership and surrounded by a better supporting cast.

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Stat check: How Cloud9's marquee signings fit like a glove

It came as a bit of disappointment, then, when Ax1Le had to miss the group stage of IEM Cologne "due to technical issues at the visa processing center." His only hope of returning, and of us seeing this new Cloud9 at full force in Germany, was for the team to make it to the playoffs while using buster as a stand-in.

A narrow loss to fnatic in Cloud9's opening match put a damper on those dreams, but the Russian team recovered spectacularly in the lower bracket in large part thanks to phenomenal performances from sh1ro against Monte (1.45 rating, 0.96 KPR) and GamerLegion (1.42 rating, 0.87 KPR) to earn a coveted spot at the LANXESS Arena.

It seemed we had been gifted with the chance to see the new Cloud9 at full force as Ax1Le returned in time for the playoffs, but his late arrival ended up being not just to the event, but also to the server against Vitality (0.99 rating).

Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and company were the Russian team's perennial rivals once again and dispatched of them in the opening round of the bracket stage, and sh1ro was left to walk away with another EVP mention while another trophy slipped away despite his best efforts to keep Cloud9 in the running at every point in the event (including a total of 12 1vX situations won).

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electroNic: "I've never seen a guy who works as much as sh1ro"

Still, the last-minute return of Ax1Le offered the team an asterisk when looking at the result, and their solid showing in the event meant Cloud9's dreams of making an era for themselves with this new lineup weren't immediately laughed out the door.

Some initial questions began to creep in about the team's cohesion and Ax1Le's performance after Cloud9 got brutalized by ENCE in the quarter-finals of Gamers8, but it wasn't until ESL Pro League Season 18 that worry truly took hold.

Cloud9 opened their group with a win over Eternal Fire, but followed that with three straight losses to Complexity, Liquid, and in a rematch against the Turks to get cast out in the group stage. The early defeat was again through no fault of sh1ro, who earned a VP mention for his efforts (1.18 rating, 1.30 impact), while the rest of the team remained relatively quiet and 2022's fourth-best player, Ax1Le, mustered a pedestrian 1.05 rating over nine maps.

The team were scrambling for a solution to their issues, with groove pointing to having "a lot of stars and a lot of voices" as a core problem during EPL, and the short-term solution was for electroNic to relinquish leadership duties to Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov.

The change paid off as Cloud9 charged to victory in another online event by fighting past Movistar Riders, G2, and BIG to qualify for the BLAST Fall Final, but their participation in that very tournament left them little time to practice Counter-Strike 2 before the first event in the new game, IEM Sydney.

To stack on top of Cloud9's problems, the efficacy of the AWP in CS2 was in question heading into the tournament in Australia, and sh1ro did no favors to change that conversation as he recorded his lowest-rated event (0.96) since DreamHack Open Sevilla 2019 almost four years prior.

His dependable floor had deserted him, and electroNic's best efforts to pick up the slack served only to award Cloud9 with a single series win over Lynn Vision before the Russian side were eliminated by Complexity in 9-12th place.

In a wholly unexpected move that came as a whopping blow to Cloud9, sh1ro announced that he was stepping down from the team's active roster barely a week later. "I decided to leave this team, and it was one of the most difficult decisions in my career," the sniper said in a statement. "Right now I don't want to go into details: what, how and why. I thought a lot, weighed all pros and cons, and I can't say for sure how correct this decision will be in the future."

The 22-year-old was made available for transfer, and he spent the remainder of the season on the sidelines. He missed out on the remaining big events of 2023, leaving us with little data on his true level in CS2, and further details regarding the reason for his decision to leave never surfaced.

As the year drew to a close, sh1ro completed a transfer to Spirit to replace Artem "⁠ArtFr0st⁠" Kharitonov, a move made not as a slight against the latter player or his performance, but simply the sheer firepower that a signing of sh1ro's caliber brings.

sh1ro named Spirit's superstar Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets as his bold prediction in 2022, acknowledging at the time that "he won’t be able to make the top 20 this year due to his age, but is likely to achieve this goal in the future."

The Belgrade-based organization had closed the year with a LAN victory at BetBoom Dacha before the change, where donk earned his first HLTV MVP award courtesy of his utter dominance, and sh1ro now heads into 2024 showing his words weren't just empty platitudes: He truly has put his faith in donk to excel in the coming year, and will be right by his side as they pair take aim at the biggest titles.

Why was sh1ro the 8th best player of 2023?

sh1ro was Cloud9's key driving force behind their tournament efforts this year, being the shining beacon of light in moments where Ax1Le and the rest of the team often fell behind. The sniper particularly stood out by being the most Exceptionally Valuable Player at IEM Rio, and added two additional EVP mentions courtesy of his performances at ESL Pro League Season 17 and IEM Cologne.

He was the best of all of the candidates when it came to trade kills per round (0.18) and exceptional overall in finding frags for his team, mustering 0.78 kills per round (#2), 1.04 kills per round win (#5), and getting three or more kills in 5.90% of rounds (#2).

Like in previous years, he did this while consistently keeping himself alive either by surviving (0.57 deaths per round, #4) or excelling in late rounds, winning 48 1vsX situations (#9). His floor remained exceptional, too, mustering a 0.85 rating or better in 90.2% of the maps he played (#4) and performing admirably against top 5 teams (1.19 rating, #3) and in Elite events (1.16 rating, #6).

On the flip side, the fact that sh1ro missed the BLAST.tv Paris Major and also skipped out on the final few events of the year after stepping down from Cloud9 meant that his sample was the worst out of the top 10 players, and was part of what prevented him from matching the peaks and awards of the players above him.

Bold prediction by 1xBet

sh1ro becomes the first player to select 19-year-old Spirit Academy member Kirill "⁠Magnojez⁠" Rodnov as his bold prediction, following up on his clairvoyant pick of donk at the end of 2022.

Much like donk when sh1ro had named him, Magnojez has had little experience against top competition. He spent much of 2023 plying his trade for K23 before leaping over to Spirit Academy in October, with whom he has averaged a 1.36 rating over 28 maps.

donk, too, praised Magnojez in an interview with Russian media outlets at BetBoom Dacha. "Magnojez has a strong ability to seize opportunities, outstanding skills, and quick reactions. He's an excellent player," Spirit's 16-year-old prodigy had said regarding who he believes will prove themselves on a professional team out of the organization's current academy pool.

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Stay tuned to our Top 20 Players of 2023 ranking and take a look at the Introduction article to learn more about how the players were selected.