s1mple

The top professional esports player from Ukraine, whose nickname is well-known even for players outside from the CS:GO community — Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev. His elder brother Alexey (famous Ukrainian entrepreneur and NaVi's creative director) instilled a love of games since childhood and Oleksandr's passion for Counter-Strike grew into serious competition.

His first serious victory at a LAN event happened when S1mple was playing for the Hashtag team, competing for the $8 300 prize pool at the Voronezh Cup (Russia). After winning this tournament Oleksandr, in his words, realized that he wanted to become a professional CS:GO player.

He played for 11 different teams in the 2013-2016 period, including loans and stand-ins. Improving his skill and team play as part of Amazing Gaming, s1mple showed good results and was taken to replace AdreN in Hellraisers.

Since he couldn't participate in ESL events until the end of 2015 due to a ban and had to miss two significant Majors, Oleksandr started his career from scratch in January 2016, trying his best in the Team Liquid squad at MLG Columbus and ESL One Cologne. In the semifinals, he showed a masterpiece in skill, killing two Fnatic players, which earned him graffiti immortalization on one of the walls on the Cache map. Later he tattooed the image of graffiti on the left shoulder.

S1mple's MVP reputation and promising potential led to a world-famous organization Natus Vincere's offering, where he is a member and media face to this day. After moving from Team Liquid to NAVI, along with new teammates, he won ESL One NY. In 2018, demonstrating incredible individual skill, s1mple helped NAVI win four tournaments. Today he is considered one of the best snipers in CS:GO. Of course, there are many other players in the game who can show a high level of AWP proficiency, but s1mple can perfectly wield AWP without losing skills with other types of weapons. For example, a pistol class weapon makes him the most dangerous enemy when facing off against an enemy on the map — that's why he became an irreplaceable player.

In 2018 s1mple became the best CS:GO player according to HLTV, in 2019 and 2020 he took second place after ZywOo.

The player's popularity is so high that 2.8 million accounts follow s1mple's Twitch channel, which is the 63rd most popular in the world and the first in the CIS. He takes 6th place in the number of prize money among all CS:GO players ($ 1,173 million) — only Astralis' "golden five" is higher. His track record includes nine big CS:GO Majors.

"My main goal is to become a part of history. If each player reminds himself of his goal and strives for it, then nothing or no one can stop them" — Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev