HLTV Top 20 Players of 2021: sh1ro #4

Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov, an AWPer, has been rated the 4th greatest player in 2021 by HLTV.org. As a result, the Russian joined fellow Gambit Esports members Sergey “Ax1Le” Rykhtorov and Abay “HObbit” Khasenov in the renowned list.

Sokolov and his team won six major events in 2021. He has garnered three MVP medals and eleven EVP (exceptionally valuable player) trophies for his individual contribution to Gambit’s success.

Why was sh1ro the fourth best player of 2021?

As HLTV.org approaches the Top 20’s tier of world-class players, sh1ro makes his first appearance, earning his spot by being the greatest clutcher, the toughest player to kill, one of the top AWPers, and the player with the most accolades in 2021.

When it came to his survival skills, he only had 0.52 deaths per round, which was not only the best in 2021, but also in the history of the Top 20, as he surpassed Yegor “markeloff” Markelov’s 0.53 DPR from the first edition of this ranking in 2010 (CS 1.6), and far exceeded anyone’s numbers since CS:GO was released. With those figures, he wasn’t only good for his team’s economy; he was also one of the top fraggers (0.76 kills per round, #5) and won the most 1vsX scenarios of any player, both in total (112) and on average (2.1 percent of his rounds), making him the best clutcher of the year.

The young Russian had the third-most AWP kills per round (0.44), and he used the big green to great effect in round opening situations, where he was the most successful (69.6 percent of opening duels won) but he was also one of the least aggressive players in that regard, only attempting the opener 16 percent of the time. He was incredibly consistent throughout the year, with his lowest rating at an event being a very respectable 1.14 (higher than the average of some of the Top 20 members); this helped him earn 11 EVPs and three MVP selections from 14 tournaments, the most of any player despite also playing the most events. On a map-to-map basis (84 percent of the time above a 1.00 rating, #2) and round-to-round basis (76.4 percent KAST, #1), his consistency shined through. While sh1ro excelled in some of the less competitive events, his stats didn’t much drop when filtering exclusively for Big tournaments a 1.22 rating, again the third highest.

NAVI is the main rival for us, since this year we played a lot of matches with them. Sometimes we ran out of ideas and had to come up with something new on the fly to beat them
Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov

All of those stats put him far ahead of everyone else on the list thus far, but there were a few reasons why he didn’t make it much further. To begin with, while having possibly the greatest floor of any player, his peaks were not as remarkable as those of the other top 3 contenders, with two of his MVPs occurring at medium-sized events and even his IEM Katowice MVP being somewhat less impressive than the best events of other candidates. That was mostly due to the second factor, which was a decline in his performance in big games against top opponents. While he was still one of the best in the Big matchups, placing 4th with a 1.18 rating, it was a significant dip from his 1.27 rating in all other matches, as was the drop to a 1.15 rating versus top 5 opponents, which was still joint-4th highest, but not enough in comparison to the best. Finally, while he had an influence on the game in a variety of ways, he didn’t have as much direct impact on the game that resulted in won rounds as the other options (for example, ranking 3rd in his own team when it comes to average kills in round wins).

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