B1ad3’s performance shows just how much better pro players are

After Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev announced that he would be missing from Natus Vincere’s roster for IEM Sydney, the team’s coach, Andrey “B1ad3” Gorodenskiy, decided to replace him.

In doing so, he gave us the opportunity to see just how much better pro players are than someone who is already very good at the game and a former pro player himself.

Natus Vincere needed to finish group A in the top 3 to qualify for the playoffs, out of a total of 8 competitors. To everyone’s surprise, they won the first match against Apeks (13 – 9) and then, as we all expected, lost against both MOUZ (1 – 2) and FaZe Clan (1 – 2). However, the fact that they won a map in each match shows just how strong Na’Vi are at the moment.

Expected to get through to playoffs.
Maybe it’s delusion, maybe I’m optimistic, but the results are disappointing.

Gg’s to @FaZeClan, next time we play with a manager maybe 🤭 pic.twitter.com/EZBf31AWn4

— NAVI jL (@jLcsgo_) October 17, 2023

B1ad3’s performance

B1ad3’s performance in each match played by Na’Vi at IEM Sydney offered us a glimpse into the world of high-level Counter-Strike. To put things in perspective, B1ad3 is 36 years old and started his career in 2005. He played CS until CS:GO was released and then switched to the new game.

In CS:GO, he competed for teams like KerchNET, dAT Team, and FlipSid3 Tactics. Then, in 2018, he became a coach. All this experience makes him far better than 90% of all Global Elite players. But when he had to play against the best players in the world at IEM Sydney, he was completely outclassed.

In the match against Apeks, which was a best-of-one, B1ad3 finished with a record of 4 kills – 16 deaths and a rating 2.0 of 0.44.

In the next match, against MOUZ, he had 17 kills and 49 deaths on three maps, and a rating 2.0 of 0.49. By contrast, his teammate Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy had 69 kills and 39 deaths.

In the third match of the tournament, against FaZe Clan, B1ad3 had 18 kills and 42 deaths, being by far the weakest player on the server with a rating 2.0 of 0.58.

Given the fact that Na’Vi did relatively well despite essentially playing 4v5 the entire time, when s1mple rejoins the roster they are guaranteed to destroy almost any opponent. If they’re competitive with a one-man handicap, imagine what they will do when that handicap is replaced by the greatest CS player of all time.

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