Top 20 players of 2023: NiKo (2)

NiKo's exceptional numbers at the biggest events and against the best teams see him tie his best placement on our Top 20 Players of the Year ranking, powered by 1xBet.

Top 20 players of 2023: Introduction

Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač has been one of CS:GO's most dominant riflers ever since he burst onto the international stage in 2015 with MOUZ, with whom he placed in the Top 20 for the first time in 2016. He has remained a staple member of the ranking ever since then, and now he makes his eighth appearance while equaling his best-ever placement from 2017.

The Bosnian rifler has enjoyed tremendous success in his career, winning a deluge of trophies during his time on FaZe and rising to acclaim as the world's best rifler in multiple years. Despite his phenomenal individual abilities, however, titles eluded NiKo after he moved G2 in October 2020, but that winless streak was finally brought to an end in 2022.

The addition of 17-year-old Russian prodigy Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov allowed G2 to break their title duck at BLAST World Final in December, and NiKo finally had a proper supporting cast around him that looked ready to contend for more titles as the calendar turned to 2023.

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

Top 20 players of 2016: NiKo (11)
Top 20 players of 2017: NiKo (2)
Top 20 players of 2018: NiKo (3)
Top 20 players of 2019: NiKo (11)
Top 20 players of 2020: NiKo (4)
Top 20 players of 2021: NiKo (3)
Top 20 players of 2022: NiKo (5)

G2 had the winds in their sails coming into 2023, and NiKo was at the helm of the ship at the year's first event, BLAST Premier Spring Groups.

The Bosnian superstar obliterated BIG and Natus Vincere (twice) to earn his team a swift berth to the Spring Final, showcasing world-class form with a 1.70 impact rating, 97.5 ADR, 0.20 entry kills per round, 1.29 kills per round win, and 1.48 rating in what was the ultimate confident-builder heading into the first Super-elite event of the year, IEM Katowice.

"Obviously winning World Final in 2022 played a big part in our very successful start of 2023, but even before that event we started to feel really good as a team," NiKo said about the team's mentality coming into the year after their tournament win.

"Coming into 2023, we kicked it off with a very productive bootcamp, then we played some good matches at BLAST Spring Groups that helped us build confidence and feel more prepared for IEM Katowice. When it comes to my personal confidence, I felt pretty good, I think having a really good performance at BLAST Spring Groups helped me to kick off the year."

G2 simply looked indomitable upon arriving in Poland, but it wasn't due solely to NiKo's heroics. The entirety of the European squad were simply a cut above every single one of their opponents and scored clean victories over BIG, FaZe, and Natus Vincere en route to the playoffs, where they had little difficulty moving past Liquid before securing a 3-1 grand final win over HEROIC to lift one of the most prestigious trophies in Counter-Strike.

A dip in NiKo's level in the title decider and a masterclass event from Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač, the MVP, meant NiKo ended the tournament as his team's third-best player. He was by no means a pushover, though, and his performances were still worthy of an EVP nod courtesy of a 1.17 rating, 0.71 KPR, 1.22 impact, and six 1vX situations won.

For NiKo, this was a title victory made all the more special due to the fact he had previously lost three grand finals in Katowice. Finally overcoming those demons to lift the trophy in 2023 made this particular moment not just NiKo's best memory of the year, but the best of his career.

NiKo's previous grand final defeats at IEM Katowice:

G2 0-3 (15-19 Inferno, 27-31 Mirage, 14-16 Dust2) FaZe
FaZe 2-3 (16-5 Cache, 20-22 Inferno, 7-16 OVP., 16-11 Mirage, 17-19 Train) fnatic
FaZe 1-3 (16-9 Cache, 12-16 OVP., 12-16 Nuke, 13-16 Inferno) Astralis

There were only two directions to go from such a high, and in Malta for ESL Pro League Season 17, G2 plunged back down to Earth. The team had mustered the seventh-longest LAN winstreak in CS:GO off the back of their showing at Spring Groups and IEM Katowice, winning 12 matches in a row, and added a 13th over Eternal Fire to kick off their group, but it wasn't to last.

A transcendent performance from Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov brought a sudden end to G2's ethereal period of form, and in that loss, NiKo recorded his lowest-rated map since he joined G2 (0.32) and his lowest of the year. It was a blow that G2 didn't quickly recover from, and though NiKo and m0NESY showed an uptick in form to push their team through the group stage, their run was cut short early into the playoffs by ENCE. NiKo's 1.06 rating over 13 maps, his lowest-rated event of the year, was good enough for only a VP mention.

"We had different expectations at the time after winning so many games in a row, so it was a bit harder to swallow the loss," NiKo said of Cloud9 ending the win streak. "I just think we were not experienced enough as a team at the time to continue our streak or to keep winning events. We didn’t really know how to build on what we had. It’s much harder to stay at the top and we didn’t have the right approach to maintain it."

The BLAST.tv Paris Major Europe RMR was next up, and G2 rose to the challenge. The recently-crowned Katowice champions started off on shaky footing with a loss to 9INE, but won their next three matches in a row to qualify for the Major, where they started in the Challengers Stage after falling to Vitality in a fifth-place decider match at the RMR.

Pressure may have been on G2 coming into Paris, but NiKo carried a burden worthy of Atlas upon his shoulders. One of the best and most-storied players in CS:GO to never have won a Major title was on his last chance. He'd come close twice before, at PGL Major Stockholm and ELEAGUE Boston, but there would never be another opportunity to claim that crown in CS:GO again.

Thus, it came as a sigh of relief when G2 had a perfect start to the tournament, going undefeated through the Challengers Stage with wins over The MongolZ, Complexity and Apeks. NiKo put up a 1.16 rating and 1.33 impact in those wins, but disaster and heartbreak lurked around the corner.

G2 stumbled on the first day of the Legends Stage, dropping their best-of-ones 13-16 to Vitality and Bad News Eagles. NiKo was in the red against the former but performed admirably against the Kosovar team with a 1.59 rating, and he showed up again against FURIA with a 1.39 rating to put G2's overall record at 1-2.

However, the team's consistency issues reared their head again against fnatic, and NiKo was no outlier: He ended the series with a 1.07 rating and found his dreams of winning a Major in CS:GO crushed as G2 were sent out of the tournament before the playoffs.

"It was tough. I think we failed as a team, we had a wrong approach to the games, we wanted to win the games too badly, we didn’t have fun playing. If we had won our first game versus Vitality, I think that we would have seen a different G2 in Paris. So yeah, overall, pressure definitely got to us even before we started playing the games and we failed to control it."

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NiKo: "I did not deserve to win a Major in CS:GO"

Dejection from failure at the Major carried into G2's final events before the summer tournament break, IEM Dallas and BLAST Spring Final. The mood in the team was morose, the hunger to win wasn't there, and the atmosphere, as huNter- simply put it, was "really, really bad."

NiKo still remained a bright spot for G2 even in this down period, though, shining in a best-of-three against OG (1.75 rating) to make the playoffs in Dallas and ending the tournament with a 1.18 rating to earn another VP mention.

His excellence carried into the Spring Final, where he dominated Imperial (1.47) and was the best player on the server in G2's semi-final loss to Vitality (1.27). He earned his second EVP mention of the year thanks to his stellar impact (1.38), 0.82 KPR, 0.17 entry kills per round, and 1.28 rating, but his efforts still weren't enough to grab G2 another title before the break.

"Failing at the Major definitely had an impact on the rest of the season, but we didn’t do a good job in recovering from it either. We had a chance of beating Vitality at BLAST Spring Final and then we could have had a good shot of beating Heroic in the final, but overall it was a pretty disappointing end of the season."

G2's return to competition in July was marred by struggles at BLAST Fall Groups, where the team narrowly missed out on securing a spot at the Fall Final following back-to-back 14-16 losses to the new Natus Vincere. It was, yet again, not from lack of trying from NiKo, who posted seven 1.27+ rated maps and single-handedly carried his team past Evil Geniuses in a knockout game before their eventual elimination.

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2023
22/07/2023	Evil Geniuses Finished 1:2 G2	Match

Missing out on a direct berth to the Fall Final was, however, just a minor setback in the grand scheme of things: The Fall Groups had primarily served, much like Spring Groups had for Katowice at the start of the year, as more of a warm-up than anything for the final Super-elite event of 2023, IEM Cologne.

And if his performance in Denmark didn't make it clear… NiKo was more than warmed up.

The Bosnian rifler was resplendent in his form upon arriving in Germany, and G2 danced past Astralis, FaZe, and Vitality to advance directly to the semi-finals. The almost unbeatable aura G2 had carried in Katowice at the start of the year glowed around them once more, and it persisted on stage at the LANXESS Arena as G2 tallied another win over Astralis before felling ENCE 3-1 in the grand final to lift the IEM Cologne trophy.

"We did fail at BLAST Fall Groups, but that doesn’t matter once you go to an event like Cologne, Katowice or the Major. You've got to forget everything that happened before, you go there and you give your best, no matter what.

"We obviously didn’t come to Cologne thinking we are going to win the whole thing, but we started playing some really good CS from the very beginning, the atmosphere was very cool, everyone was on point individually, the comms were great, so we started building confidence from day one. After we beat Vitality in that third game, that’s when we realized that we had a good shot at winning the whole thing. I was really proud of everyone on the team and staff during that event, we all stepped up."

NiKo and m0NESY were both in terrific form throughout the event, but the Bosnian rifler pipped his teammate to the MVP award due to his consistency (ending all 14 of his maps with a 1.11 rating or higher) and better performances in the playoffs.

NiKo ended IEM Cologne with an absurd 1.35 rating (1.46 in the arena alone), 0.82 KPR, 88.5 ADR, 1.40 impact rating, 0.15 entry kills per round, and, perhaps most incredibly for an opener, just 0.56 DPR.

Such was the joy and elation from winning both IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne in the same year, that NiKo said in his MVP interview after the win that he "didn't care if we go to Riyadh and lose in groups the next event, or even Pro League."

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NiKo: "I feel like the most complete player in my career in this moment"

An early loss wasn't to be, however, and G2 gave another strong account of themselves at Gamers8 in Riyadh, fighting past 9INE and Virtus.pro in the brutal single-elimination, best-of-three bracket to set up a semi-final meeting with Vitality. The teams traded wins on each other's map picks, but just when it looked like G2 were in touching distance of the win, they squandered three series points on the Mirage decider and Vitality came back to win the map in overtime.

NiKo maintained his stellar level at the event, averaging a 1.27 rating and 1.22 impact, a performance that clocked him in as the highest EVP despite a semi-final elimination.

"I think that if we had defeated Vitality in Riyadh, our season would have played out completely differently. If we had won the game, we would have gone up against ENCE in the final again, so I think we had a good shot of winning it. I don’t remember saying that I wouldn’t care if we failed at either of these events, but it wasn’t our highest priority. But still, looking back, the loss to Vitality had a huge impact in the end, in my opinion."

The ripple effects of that loss lasted until the end of the season, and it showed early: The Bosnian rifler's consistency dropped off at the last CS:GO event, ESL Pro League Season 18, and he only had one particularly strong series against Complexity to help his team go through the group stage undefeated before they were eliminated by MOUZ.

G2 then missed out on qualifying for BLAST Fall Final through the Showdown, which was still played in CS:GO and left the team with precious little time to practice in Counter-Strike 2 before the first Big Event in the new title, IEM Sydney.

m0NESY, however, had been pouring hours into the new title, and thanks to him, G2 went undefeated through the group stage. NiKo recorded two particularly strong maps in that run, a 2.01 rating on Vertigo against ENCE and a 1.45 rating against Complexity on Ancient, but struggled immensely when rematched against the American team on stage as they blew G2 out of the server.

That would be G2's final event with Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage as the team made an unexpected swap, bringing Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković back into the fold to replace the Australian rifler. NiKo and m0NESY nearly departed the team before that change amidst heavy interest from Falcons, but in an eleventh-hour decision, the Bosnian rifler chose to stay, with m0NESY following suit.

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NiKo to stay with G2 in shock U-turn

The new G2 roster made its LAN debut at the BLAST World Final to close out the year, but it was clear the lineup still needed time to find their chemistry. They survived a test against MOUZ, who were using Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin as a stand-in, but suffered narrow defeats to FaZe and Natus Vincere to bring their year to an end with a whimper.

"I feel really happy with getting 2nd place again, especially after six years. It is a long time," NiKo said of returning to the list and matching his best placement. "I’m not satisfied with how I played in the last three/four months of the year, so that’s something that I’m definitely going to try and do better this year."

Why was NiKo the 2nd best player of 2023?

NiKo comes in only below Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut after a superb year in which he was dominant on the biggest stages and against the best teams. He stood out as the best damage dealer out of all players considered for the top 20 (84.1 damage per round) and was second only to ZywOo in rating (1.21), T rating (1.20), impact rating (1.28), rating vs. top 10 teams (1.21), and rounds with a multi-kill (19.8%).

He was the tip of G2's spear with 0.14 opening kills per round (#7) and crucial in their round conversions, mustering 105.0 damage per round win (#4) and getting three or more kills in 5.7% of rounds (#3). NiKo also played a pivotal part in getting G2 off on solid footing in each half, garnering a 1.29 pistol round rating (#3).

He backed those statistics up with an MVP performance at IEM Cologne, EVPs at IEM Katowice, BLAST Spring Final, and Gamers8, and VP mentions at every other eligible event he attended in 2023. He had consistently high peaks with 39.7% of maps with a 1.30+ rating (#4), and kept his level up at Elite events (1.21 rating, #3) and in Big matches (1.17, #4).

NiKo surpassed Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool on the list due to the above, but also because he was better than the Estonian rifler at Super-elite (1.25) and Elite events (1.21), and against top 5 (1.19) and top 10 teams (1.21).

NiKo, in his eighth consecutive appearance on the list, didn't change his statement when asked about goals for the upcoming year. "I feel like I give the same answer every year (laughs). I will just keep working really hard and see where it gets me."

Bold prediction

NiKo joins Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz in picking 19-year-old ENCE Academy AWPer Paavo "⁠podi⁠" Heiskanen as his bold prediction for 2024.

"I have played a couple of FACEIT games against him and he played really well. I think he has potential and he has a chance to prove himself as well," NiKo explained of his pick.

podi averaged a 1.18 rating, superb 2.02 opening kill ratio (637 kills/316 deaths), 0.76 KPR and 0.59 DPR over 231 maps in 2023. He was ENCE Academy's best player by far and maintained those sort of numbers in CCT competitions against tier 2-3 teams.

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Take a look at the Introduction article to learn more about how the players were selected.