PGL Bucharest 2025The EVPs and Best Five of PGL Bucharest
Falcons' flight from 0-2 to trophy winners sees them grab a clutch of awards.
On day two of PGL Bucharest Falcons looked down and out; Complexity and GamerLegion had just bodied them, to the delight of the two organization's social media teams. They even lost map one of their 0-2 elimination match against paiN.
Fast forward a week and they held the trophy aloft, winning as a dead team in the knowledge that Abdul "degster" Gasanov was to be replaced by Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov.
Even more surprisingly, it was degster — who couldn't have been faulted if his head had dropped — who fired them to victory with a 1.39 rating vs top 10 teams and a 1.27 rating from the last game of groups versus The MongolZ onwards.
The Russian AWPer, with his benching confirmed, made sure he went out with a bang — as shop windows look, a career-first MVP isn't a bad showpiece.
What's Round Swing?
A new metric has been added to our EVP charts for 2025 as part of the development process for rating 3.0.
Round Swing, or RS, looks at each kill and sees how much it changes a team's chance of winning the round. That includes each team's economic situation, whether the bomb is planted, how many players are alive on each team, and which map the player is on for targeted CT-T percentages.
We are then given a percentage average of how much a player increased their team's win probability; the average is around 0, with most players sitting between -3 and +3.
While it is still a very early version of the build (and exact figures may change when it is eventually deployed), we are confident enough in the new data that it will now impact EVP decisions — meaning it makes sense to include it on the radars.
For transparency, the committee also had access to economy-adjusted stats for kills, damage, deaths, and KAST, where we looked at individual equipment value in each gunfight to adjust the value of each action.
In combination with the usual important metrics, these new metrics will help make the top 20 and EVP lists even more accurate to what actually affects a round, event, or year.
Nikola "NiKo" Kovač earns his 50th career Exceptionally Valuable Player award and first of 2025 with a 1.17 rating in Romania.
The Bosnian rifler was Falcons' best in map wins (1.37 rating) and damage per round win (102.1) but lacked playoff peaks until map three of the final, forcing him to settle for the top EVP rather than the MVP.
His CT side play was a joy to behold as always, sporting a 1.21 rating and a 63% opening kill success rate.
René "TeSeS" Madsen ended the event on just a 1.08 rating, but was Falcons' highest-rated in playoff map wins (1.31 rating) and kept up with NiKo and degster in round wins (1.00, 0.99, and 0.99 kills per round win respectively).
That form in wins (both map and round) made Falcons' trophy one founded on the form of their trio, not just the star rifler and AWPer duo that most teams rely on.
TeSeS' inconsistency is still an issue, with some dreadful lows even this event (0.54 vs paiN, 0.37 vs GamerLegion) but he had some high highs in Bucharest too, with two Player of the Map performances in playoffs and two more where he was just behind the POTM.
m0NESY led the event in raw rating (1.27) but fell short of a fifth career MVP largely because of a poor final and the relative weakness of G2's opposition.
His 1.27 rating turns to a 1.05 against top 10 teams (Virtus.pro and Falcons), numbers that fall short of a player deserving of a loser's MVP.
Opposition is not a flawless argument, however, and his 1.47 rating in five maps against a resurgent Complexity side were a direct reason G2 made it so far — helping him end the event with a strong EVP regardless.
David "frozen" Čerňanský, like m0NESY, enjoyed playing against fairly weak opposition and only played three maps versus a top 10 team.
He did, however, end four playoff maps as Player of the Map and boasted strong round wins (1.08 KPRW) and round swing (+2.33).
In playoffs, he improved to a +4.10 round swing as he led FaZe's battering of 3DMAX and helped them secure third place over Complexity.
Nikita "HeavyGod" Martynenko, for all G2's struggles in 2025, has settled well into his anchor-lurker roles at the German club.
Bucharest was his best event yet, having a great group stage as G2 went 3-0 before confirming his EVP by putting up a fight in the grand final with 50 kills across three maps, the most of anyone in the server on either team.
Life without m0NESY represents a challenge but one half of the Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa-HeavyGod firepower duo has already proved worthy of the task.
Håkon "hallzerk" Fjærli and Complexity have waited a long time for a run like this. We would need to go back to IEM Sydney 2023 (or ESL Pro League S19) for anything comparable, and their AWPer X-Factor was a key reason for the North American's fairytale run.
Falling behind Michael "Grim" Wince and Danny "Cxzi" Strzelczyk in round wins (0.84 KPRW, to their 1.05 and 1.02, respectively) put his EVP in doubt but when we isolate statistics to the map wins that got Complexity into the semi-finals, that doubt disappeared.
He jumps to a more than respectable 0.99 KPRW in these eight maps, a slice where he ends on a 1.54 rating and 89 ADR. If that's not exceptionally valuable, it's hard to say what is.
  Complexity |
K - D | Swing | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 141 - 70 | +6.23% | 89.4 | 89.0% | 1.54 | |
| 125 - 88 | +2.23% | 86.3 | 76.1% | 1.29 | |
| 111 - 84 | +3.66% | 82.1 | 74.2% | 1.25 | |
| 120 - 99 | -0.29% | 84.7 | 76.8% | 1.23 | |
| 104 - 91 | -0.09% | 69.5 | 77.4% | 1.07 |
Complexity in their 8 meaningful map wins at PGL Bucharest
The best players of PGL Bucharest 2025, in order
Abdul "degster" Gasanov
Nikola "NiKo" Kovač
René "TeSeS" Madsen Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov
David "frozen" Čerňanský
Nikita "HeavyGod" Martynenko
Håkon "hallzerk" Fjærli
Honorable mentions
Grim had great peaks (2.39 vs FURIA, 1.79 vs FURIA, 1.79 vs Aurora) but struggled badly in the semi-final and lacked hallzerk's consistent high floor.
Oldřich "PR" Nový smashed Falcons in groups and, in a year without clear favorites thus far, is in the Rookie of the Year race if he continues his form.
Filip "Graviti" Brankovic and Pierre "Ex3rcice" Bulinge were strong in groups but fell apart with their team in the FaZe quarter-final.
Ayush "mzinho" Batbold, Martin "stavn" Lund, and Kaike "KSCERATO" Cerato performed well even as their teams floundered, while none of Aurora stood out enough for an award.
Best Five
Damjan "kyxsan" Stoilkovski deserves a shout-out for a 1.15 rating in playoff map wins, having big individual moments on map one of the semi and grand final, but makes it here for the calling that fired Falcons from 1-0 down to paiN into champions.
m0NESY and frozen just miss out to degster and TeSeS.
Players with multiple awards in 2025
Kaisar 'ICY' Faiznurov
David 'dav1deuS' Tapia Maldonado
Helvijs 'broky' Saukants
Henrich 'sl3nd' Hevesi
Ashley 'ash' Battye
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