The EVPs and Best Five of IEM Rio 2024

NAVI's fragging quartet receive credit as ZywOo takes advantage of donk's absence and m0NESY's elimination.

The story of IEM Rio was of Natus Vincere's perseverance, dealing with fatigue , jetlag, and a lack of practice but ultimately coming out on top.

Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan won the MVP, his first-ever, but the grind to the trophy was a true team effort with all four NAVI fraggers playing a huge part.

With three wins and six back-to-back finals since the player break, the word 'era' is beginning to creep into our lexicon. With two events to go until the winter holidays, Natus Vincere will have to hold off that exhaustion just a while longer.

iM's MVP may have been in a close race, with fairly low raw numbers, but he could only beat what was in front of him.

"I was going to the player lounge, and BanKs told me and I had instant goosebumps," iM relayed to HLTV after getting the medal. "I didn't expect it at all. It's pretty amazing I will say."

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iM on career-first MVP: "I had instant goosebumps"

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See a full list of career EVPs here

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X-factor, arena player, and NAVI's clutch master Justinas "⁠jL⁠" Lekavicius comes in with the top EVP and was his team's highest-rated player at the event.

There were some lows, like in tight wins against Liquid, HEROIC, and MOUZ in map one of the final, but he more than made up for it with several high peaks (1.82 vs Liquid map two, 1.79 vs HEROIC on the decider, 1.86 vs MOUZ in map two).

There were shades of his PGL Copenhagen MVP performance in terms of passing the eye test with game-turning clutches, including two 1on2s and a 1on1 against Virtus.pro on Ancient in a 13-11 win, as jL strengthened his top 20 case further.

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Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut was designed in a lab to break our radar charts; the phenom's customary charge in the second half of the year relentlessly continues.

Considering how split NAVI and MOUZ were, an even stronger award was within his grasp had he not gone quiet on map three in that elimination series. But then again, had he conjured more than 15 frags, perhaps ZywOo would have gone further.

Still, we should not focus too much on that. Vitality's superstar ended the event with 100 Firepower, 1.26 KPRW, and 7 clutches (2 1on1, 4 1on2, 1 1on3).

His 69-frag series against The MongolZ was absolutely crucial in carrying a misfiring Vitality to playoffs itself, and leaves him with a crucial EVP at an event where Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov and Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets miss out.

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Valeriy "⁠b1t⁠" Vakhovskiy tied jL and bettered iM for event rating but lacked the high game-winning peaks to take the MVP or climb higher up this list.

He was consistent in NAVI's map wins, and contributed well in all aside from Ancient versus VP, with a 1.21 rating in the arena and 100.8 damage in round wins.

The anchor-lurker started the year in patchy, inconsistent, fashion but has now claimed an MVP and three EVPs in the last five events.

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Jimi "⁠Jimpphat⁠" Salo slides in just behind b1t, his main rival for the Anchor of the Year title, for his fifth EVP of the year.

Partly because of his positions, Jimi ended the event with quite low KPRW (0.89) and Impact (0.93) but, as ever, was great in the clutch (7, 0.93 clutch points per 24 rounds) and led MOUZ throughout (1.22 rating in map wins and the four grand final maps).

At half-time on map four of Ancient in the final, with Jimpphat 18-8 and MOUZ 10-2 up, the Finn seemed to be back in the race for the MVP but a familiar collapse saw him drop down the rankings.

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Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato's first Big Event EVP of the year (his last came at YaLLa Compass) was one entirely down to his group stage impact against ridiculously tough opposition.

He hit a 1.53 rating and 0.92 KPR in groups against FaZe, MOUZ, and Natus Vincere as FURIA beat both finalists with their star man leading the way on four of the five map wins.

KSCERATO snuck into 2023's top 20 at 19th, with great raw stats but few awards, and it is not too late for him to do the same in 2024.

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Ihor "⁠w0nderful⁠" Zhdanov has endured some tough finals even as Natus Vincere's string of good results continued, but was fantastic in Rio with a team-best 1.30 rating in NAVI's playoff map wins.

It was the 19-year-old sniper who led the way as Natus Vincere overcame the 10-2 deficit against MOUZ on Ancient with 24 kills in the eventual 13-11 win.

He was also good versus HEROIC (29-15 on Dust2, in a 16-14 win, and 15-8 in the 13-6 stomp) and it is this strong playoffs that confirmed his EVP.

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Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz, the 14th best player of 2023, has had a tough 2024 as HEROIC struggled but his hard work is starting to pay off with a 1.21 rating in the last two events and, now, his first EVP of the year.

René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen sometimes peaked higher but NertZ was the consistent pillar for HEROIC (88% of maps above 1.00 rating, 1.12 kills per round win) in their top-four finish.

Bear in mind that NertZ played 6 of his 8 maps against top 3 opposition (G2, Vitality, and NAVI) and that only becomes more impressive.

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Best Five

Jimpphat and KSCERATO came close to breaking up the all-yellow Best Five of four NAVI riflers with ZywOo, but come away with no cigar.

Natus Vincere have had cleaner events, but the spoils of their victory were shared fairly equally and that puts their players over the edge in their role battles.

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Honorable mentions

Ádám "⁠torzsi⁠" Torzsás had a wild semi-final (40-10 K-D, 2.08 rating) against FURIA but was too patchy elsewhere to confirm his EVP.

Dorian "⁠xertioN⁠" Berman was similar but slightly worse, good against Vitality and too many troughs to get too close to an EVP. Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin actually led MOUZ in KPRW but never stood out within the team enough map-to-map.

TeSeS started the event with a 29-16 walloping of G2, and added a 21-9 K-D, 1.93 rating, Anubis showing against Vitality but struggled as HEROIC were eliminated by NAVI.

Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool have come under fire this season but are slowly inching their way back, and were their team's best players in Rio de Janeiro.

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MVPs and multiple EVP winners

KSCERATO joins the ever-growing list with two Big Events left to play in 2024.

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The EVPs and Best Fives of 2024