Dev1ce on s1mple chasing his MVP record: \u201cHe\u2019ll probably get there at some point\u201d Stephanie Lieske\/ESLWith PGL Major Stockholm fast approaching, Nicolai \u2018dev1ce\u2019 Reedtz has played down the fact that Aleksandr \u2018s1mple\u2019 Kostyliev is about to equal his medal haul. \u201cYou have to give it to him, he\u2019s the best player in the world right now,\u201d the NIP star said. S1mple has managed to elevate his game to another level in 2021 and already has five MVP medals to his name this year \u2014 three more than any other player. He is now just two medals away from tying dev1ce\u2019s record of 18 MVP honors, which could happen in October at PGL Major Stockholm, provided that the Ukrainian is also named the best player of IEM Fall CIS. There is mutual respect between the two players, inside and outside of the game. In his documentary, \u2018s1mple formula\u2019, the NAVI player said that he sees dev1ce as the GOAT because of his incredible consistency and collective achievements. And dev1ce has now said that he is not worried that s1mple is catching up with him. He stressed that his focus is on winning tournaments, not individual awards while labeling the Ukrainian the \u201cbest individual player\u201d in the game. \u201cIndividual accolades are just that,\u201d he told Dexerto. \u201cThey\u2019re cool and part of the game, but I honestly don\u2019t care too much about them. \u201cFor me, s1mple is the best individual. I think he will probably get there at one point or another because he\u2019s also younger than me. It\u2019s cool for him, he is a nice guy and his success is well deserved. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s more about looking at which tournaments we can win rather than which tournaments I can get an MVP again from. It\u2019s the second priority in some way. \u201cKudos to him, you have to give it to him. He is the best player in the world right now, in my opinion.\u201d Lack of silverware Dev1ce joined NIP in April with the ambition of taking the team to the next level after winning almost all there is to win during his five-year stint with Astralis, including four Majors. His impact is such that he was even compared with soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. But five months on, NIP are yet to win a title with the Danish superstar. They have only been to one final, in Flashpoint 3, and their last two tournaments, IEM Cologne and ESL Pro League Season 14, ended in disappointment. Dev1ce has acknowledged the expectations surrounding the team are high, but he insisted that the focus is on achieving sustainable long-term success. \u201cWe definitely have some pressure to go far in tournaments,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve done quite alright in most of our tournaments. We\u2019re still not quite on the same level as NAVI and Gambit, who have been dominating everything, pretty much. \u201cWe were not good enough in Pro League and Cologne but, other than that, I\u2019d say we\u2019ve had pretty good runs at most tournaments. \u201cIt\u2019s a process you\u2019ve got to stick to, instead of just being \u2018We\u2019ve got to win now,\u2019 because then you get blinded by the urge to win. You don\u2019t work on the things you have to work on, you\u2019re just trying to make quick fixes.\u201d Worst Tournament In the aftermath of NIP\u2019s elimination from ESL Pro League Season 14 in the quarter-finals, dev1ce vented his frustration over his recent performances and described the tournament as being the \u201cworst\u201d of his career. GG @OGcsgo and gl in the semis Worst tournament of my career, a lot of shit going on and i just gotta fucking get better\u2026. 26 y\/o noob out, sorry for letting you down \u2014 Nicolai Reedtz (@dev1ce) September 9, 2021 The Danish AWPer has now explained that his head was not in the right place during the event due to issues \u201coutside of the game\u201d. \u201cI started out the tournament well, everything was going great, but as soon as I didn\u2019t find the level that I wanted, I didn\u2019t have a way to switch off, get away from CS and think about other stuff,\u201d he explained. \u201cI was just overthinking and I made it too hard for myself. It\u2019s not I\u2019m having a really bad time in scrims, I still think I\u2019m playing at the level I was at a few years ago. \u201cI get too eager sometimes, overpeeking, not playing the percentages, stuff like that. I think it was the worst tournament that I\u2019ve played. I\u2019ve just got to learn from that, move on and do better next time.\u201d Dev1ce is averaging a 1.08 HLTV rating for NIP, which is a far cry from the sort of numbers he used to put up while playing for Astralis. Questioned about this drop, dev1ce argued that he is not going through a slump in form. He explained that getting acclimated with a new team normally takes up to a year in traditional sports and that his Astralis numbers were somewhat boosted because of how dominant the team used to be. \u201cTransitions pretty much take a year in traditional sports,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how long they normally take in CS, it\u2019s the first time for me. I\u2019m not too stressed, trying to find my level. I\u2019m doing good enough in practice, I\u2019d say, playing at the same level I\u2019ve always played. \u201cWhen you take a look at the numbers, it\u2019s natural that they go down a bit, though not as much as they did in the last tournament. But in general, when you don\u2019t win all games in a tournament you won\u2019t have silly stats as it sometimes happens when you keep on winning and winning. \u201cI don\u2019t need to have a good game for us to win, which is more or less what happened on Astralis. We want to find out how to use all the pieces of the puzzle as best as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dev1ce on s1mple chasing his MVP record: \u201cHe\u2019ll probably get there at some point\u201d Stephanie Lieske\/ESLWith PGL Major Stockholm fast approaching, Nicolai \u2018dev1ce\u2019 Reedtz has played down the fact that Aleksandr \u2018s1mple\u2019 Kostyliev is about to equal his medal haul. \u201cYou have to give it to him, he\u2019s the best player in the world right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}