The Best Players of IEM Summer

We had already teased it in our event recap, but at the Intel Extreme Masters, there have been some amazing performances. ZywOo led the charge again, but he was joined by a large number of talented individuals.

Sergey “Ax1Le” Rykhtorov and Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov were just two of them. The Gambit duo had a big part in the team’s success story at IEM. In the Grand Finals, Ax1Le put up a stellar 1.49 rating and across the three maps, he secured 73 kills in total. On the other camp, Mateusz “mantuu” Wilczewski was the only OG player to really hold his own. During the event, he mounted a 1.26 rating, which is impressive given the insanely stacked playing field. Ax1Le and sh1ro, on the other hand, reached 1.28 and 1.33 ratings, respectively. Kévin “misutaaa” Rabier and Nikolay “mir” Bityukov sat in between on 1.27 ratings each.

THE BEST FLASH PLAYERS

Representing Imperial, Caio “zqkS” Fonseca raced to the top of the flash supporter chain. Even though he didn’t throw the most flashbangs overall, 97% of his throws were successful. Interestingly, he was still blinded for longer than the players he had flashed himself. Leonid “chopper” Vishnyakov was better in that regard. On average, his enemy players were blinded for about three seconds per round. With the exception of Josh “oSee” Ohm, he is miles ahead of any of his CS:GO colleagues. But if we’re talking “raw” kills, then none of these supporters really managed to keep up with the elite players.

ZYWOO IS BACK

When Vitality reached their lowest point in the early spring, even the infamous Frenchman wasn’t to be found at the top of the scoreboard. Ever since 2017, the BLAST Premier: Spring Showdown has been the only event where ZywOo got a negative rating for his efforts. But just weeks later, he’s back in form. At DreamHack Masters: Spring and IEM Summer, he was at the top of the scoreboard again, even though Vitality didn’t even make the Grand Finals in either of the two events.

He managed to conclude the Intel Extreme Masters with a 1.36 rating. In terms of opening kills, he was even stronger, recording a 1.45 rating. Alongside him is mantuu, the Polish-British OG superstar. He’s been successful in about 71% of his opening duels.

A NEWCOMER MAKES SECOND PLACE

Technically, Pavle “maden” Bošković isn’t new, but over the last year he has only had limited play-time versus the best teams. At IEM Summer, he has placed right behind ZywOo. Considering that FPX blew out in the Group Stage already, this is quite an achievement!

On top of that, he had great individual moments. After all, maden hasn’t just delivered an above-average performance, but he has outright dominated his opponents on some maps. His victims include none other than the G2 roster. In their Opening Match, Nemanja “nexa” Isaković and his men dared enter Ancient – which turned out to be a massive mistake. FPX had definitely done their homework beforehand.

There, they not just beat G2 Esports on a 16-12 scoreline, maden also may have put up the best performance of his entire career. In less than 30 rounds, he recorded 42 kills. The rest of his team had a negative KD, but they didn’t play bad at all. They just didn’t get the opportunity to prove themselves! At the end, he got a 2.15 rating for his efforts.

At Intel Extreme Masters, the old guard was joined by a host of fresh talent. We already knew that maden and misutaaa can perform, but after IEM Summer, it seems ever more likely that they can become permanent top performers for their teams.