It happened again. Hard as Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev tried to carry his teammates, he still lost the game. Natus Vincere isn’t the only team he couldn’t save. In the recent FPL game, s1mple dropped 63 kills and yet the result was so cruel with the young Ukrainian star.
Berlin Major is just 18 days ahead. While there is no big event going on, it is the time for CS:GO pros to finally catch some breath. Most pros chose to go on vacation with their family before the most important CS:GO event this year. Meanwhile, some pros are still grinding hard to best prepare for the Berlin Major 2019.
Natus Vincere has been fairly inactive after their debut with Kirill “Boombl4 “ Mikhailov in ESL One Cologne 2019 this July. However, their superstar s1mple has been playing a lot of PUG recently. The Na’Vi AWPer seems to be ambitious this Major.
While s1mple still retained his sky-high performance, not every match he played is easy. In the recent Dust2 match against random FPL players, our protagonist dropped 63 frags but was unable to close out the game. People would say CS:GO isn’t about just killing. However, this is just too much for viewers.
The match started out well for the Ukrainian star. s1mple teamed up with Magisk from Astralis and the IGL of Vitality, ALEX. Their opponents were random players in FPL with the two recognizable pro players: Lucas "Lucky" Chastang from G2 Esports and David "n0rb3r7" Danielyan from Winstrike. Team s1mple went off to a good start with the 4-1 scoreline. The AWPer found 8 frags and 3 MVP for himself in just 5 rounds.
However, things started to look shaky for the CT-side when Team Lucky managed to find kills and penetrated through the defense. Teammates of s1mple just died out of nowhere and he couldn't do all the work. They fell down hard and lost most of the rounds. The first half closed out with a scoreline of 10-5 in favor of Team Lucky. s1mple could only score 14 kills in this unfavorable situation.
Unfazed, s1mple and Co. started the second half with a pistol round victory to close out the deficit. The two teams traded rounds back and forth. s1mple had a great half when scoring a great number of frags, securing the round win for his team. He even got an ACE for himself in the 27th round.
Though having the advantage to close out the map, one questionable round stopped s1mple right on his track. Being 13-15 down, it was a do or die situation for him and his teammates. It was exactly what they did. In the last round, great shots from s1mple and ALEX helped them to bring the game to overtime. Up to this point, our hard carry has already scored 42 frags, ways ahead of his teammates with the closest being Magisk with 19 kills. Such a hard carry performance from the Natus Vincere's main carry.
The game was nail-biting with double overtime. Magisk eventually came closer to s1mple frag-wise. The Astralis Rifler was sharing the burden with s1mple with 5 MVPs.
However, that was the last they could do. The game ended with the scoreline 23-25. Magisk failed to deliver in the last round. A disappointed expression was visible on the face of the Ukrainian star. Unfortunately, s1mple couldn't "s1mply" carry the game.
The end result was staggering. s1mple's total kill number is more than two members of the opponent players' combined. However, he still received a loss.
We may experience this kind of scenario at times where hard carry plays could not save the days. However, we may find consolation as pros like s1mple sometimes finds it hard to win games. It is a game, after all.