HLTV Top 20 Players of 2021: blameF #13

Benjamin “blameF” Bremer is ranked 13th among the Top 20 players in the HLTV 2021 rankings. Last year, the Danish player played for Complexity Gaming for 11 months until joining Astralis in December.

With Astralis, Bremer’s highest finish was third in the BLAST Premier Fall Final 2021. The 24-year-old was an extremely valuable player (EVP) at this LAN event.

Why was blameF the 14th best player of 2021?

blameF’s exceptional consistency, along with his impressive performance against elite competition and in major events, secured him a berth in the top 20. He was very good at dealing damage and clutching, putting up 81.7 ADR and winning 66 1vsXs (6th overall, or 9th per-round average), and he was also third in utility damage (7.3 per round). His overall 1.15 rating placed 11th for the year, and despite playing in a number of qualifiers and medium events that were taken into account, his rating remained at 1.15 when just looking at Big tournaments, where he ranked 8th.

His sole EVP of the year occurred at the BLAST Premier Fall Final, and he was at least an extremely valuable player (VP) at every other Big event he attended, which, when paired with his high frequency of 1.00 or better map ratings (73%, 8th), made him one of the most consistent players on the list yet. However, with only one EVP and a handful of VPs, his peaks were likely lower than those of the players behind him; what distinguished him was his success against the greatest teams. He had a 1.15 rating vs top-five opponents (5th highest) in a very large sample size of 48 maps, and a 1.14 rating in 77 maps when extending to top ten opponents (6th highest).

Although his performances are on paper better than certain players who will be rated above him, he couldn’t go higher since he only encountered those large teams in qualifications and group stages, and he didn’t especially shine in them, given that he only played 19 major match maps (1.06 rating).

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