The Changing Face of the CS:GO Scene

A few weeks ago we posted a graphic which showed the change in HLTV’s CS:GO rankings over the years. This showed the dominance of some teams, along with the short lived success of others. Let’s take a look at the longest reign and how the ranking is calculated.

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Longest Reign

Astralis dominated from April 2018 to May 2019 being top of the HLTV Rankings for 13 months straight. This team consisted of Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth, Peter “Dupreeh” Rasmussen, Lukas “Gla1ve” Rossander, Nicolai “Device” Reedtz and Emil “Magisk” Reif. In this time, Astralis won 14 tournaments, winning over $4.25 million in prize money. This year equates to over 40% of Astralis’ total prize money earned, showing how extremely dominant this team was. 

However, all reigns come to an end. Some teams have a shorter stay at the top than expected such as Fnatic earlier this year in May, only lasting one month in that #1 spot. Newcomers BIG find themselves at the top of the HLTV rankings for the first time in their history following their CS Summit 6 victory last month. They’ll be looking to stay in that top spot heading into Dreamhack Open Summer and ESL One Cologne. 

How Does HLTV Calculate their CS:GO Rankings?

Unlike your usual biased and opinionated Power Rankings, HLTV uses maths to calculate their rankings. According to HLTV themselves:

“The world ranking is based on teams’ achievements over the past year (with severe decay in points throughout each month), recent form over the last 2 months and performance at the last 10 LAN events. All of that is predicated around a 3-man core each team is required to have in order to retain their past points. Online matches and tournaments are included, but with a diminishing factor which means they cannot make a big difference among the top teams, and mainly serve to put new teams on the map.”

This means that the HLTV Rankings will always be unbiased and accurate based on teams recent results, with no external input. 

Biggest Downfall

The biggest downfall in CS:GO has to be Astralis recently. They went from dominating the rankings to dropping out of the top 10 for the first time since November 2016 this month. Following Gla1ve and Xyp9x leaving for a break around the same time. Astralis have suffered and this has been reflected in their HLTV Ranking. However, they are supposedly in talks with MAD Lions’ Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen. The 22 year old Dane could be the player Astralis need to reach the top again. 

With Tier 1 CS:GO returning in August with Dreamhack Open Summer and ESL One Cologne we will have plenty of previews and betting tips published, so keep an eye out for those!