The EVPs and Best Five of BLAST Bounty S1

Only a few players stand out enough to earn nods in the first event of the year.

BLAST Bounty opened the year the same way 2024 ended: Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets and Spirit on top.

donk had a few bad maps, notably Anubis in the final, but still did enough to earn his traditional mushroom radar (being in the top five percent of players in all categories except clutches and survival).

The event, a single elimination bracket with the first two matches online, is a tricky one to deal with when it comes to awards and ultimately we decided the bar should be high to earn an Exceptionally Valuable Player mention.

That means a very short list of EVPs but also ensures that the awards, which count as a Big Event EVP thanks to four top five teams making the LAN, are only given in cases where players shone enough offline that their performances will impact the top 20.

As a result, we had as many as seven players come close to an EVP and only two actually receive one.

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Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov's wait for an MVP in Spirit goes on but he came very near to one here, only coming closer at BLAST Spring Final 2024.

He was arguably better than donk in the grand final with a staggering 78-39 K-D, and had a great quarter-final against HEROIC (albeit with a stand-in) to earn lots of credit for Spirit's run to the trophy.

He did, however, fall way short of his superstar teammate in round wins on LAN (1.02 to 1.18). And, even at a very low weight, donk's staggering 1.88-rated performances online helped turn a tight race his way.

But make no mistake — this is a very strong EVP for sh1ro, and will not be too different in importance to donk's MVP come the end of the year.

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Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş and Eternal Fire could not have had a much tougher run to the final than they did.

Even online, they had to play a top ten team in the form of Falcons, and then XANTARES was impactful in wins over top five opposition like Vitality and G2 on LAN.

Even with a buff on that basis, XANTARES came close to missing out on an EVP with one big peak against Vitality and the other maps largely ending with solid if unspectacular ratings.

What got him over the high bar was his output in round wins (1.10 KPRW, 115 ADRW) and strong impact beyond his end-of-map rating in comeback wins over G2 and Spirit.

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Honorable Mentions

Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker was the highest-rated player for Eternal Fire in three of their LAN map wins, but the peaks were a bit too low for his 1.07 event rating to earn an EVP.

Valeriy "⁠b1t⁠" Vakhovskiy maybe came closest to an EVP after dominating Astralis and putting up a great fight against Spirit on Ancient. The Ukrainian, however, dropped off on LAN to be NAVI's second highest-rated player (to Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan) and only third-best in round wins.

Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut had mind-boggling raw numbers online but struggled on LAN with a 1.07 series rating against EF — and even that flatters the Frenchman after his slow start on Mirage.

Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov and G2 were a difficult case to sort, facing fairly weak opposition including the double stand-in gang of BetBoom. With all four players on high ratings, the credit for their run was shared in a way that left m0NESY just short of an EVP.

João "⁠snow⁠" Vinicius and Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov fired paiN and BetBoom's runs online and held up on LAN despite their losses, but didn't quite do enough for an EVP.

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Best Five

The small number of EVPs mean we have to dip into our honourable mentions to fill the lineup, with sh1ro and donk denying woxic and XANTARES a berth.

In a tight race between them and the likes of Ax1Le and Ali "⁠Wicadia⁠" Haydar Yalçın, we've plumped for snow and b1t as our two lurkers.

Finally, Engin "⁠MAJ3R⁠" Küpeli's calls and T side comebacks were a defining part of the tournament and that's why he creeps in over Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov, despite the latter impressing without Sergey "⁠hally⁠" Shavaev behind him.

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The EVPs of 2025

Bounty S1