HLTV Award Show panel: Who voted and how it works

In just a few weeks, we will be hosting the HLTV Award Show 2022 by 1xBet, a ceremony celebrating the best of the year in Stockholm, Sweden. The show will feature six new categories voted for by a panel of 31 experts.

The voting process works the following way. Each member of the panel selected three players from a list of seven to ten options per category, with the first option awarded five points, the second three points, and the third one point. All of the points are summed up to decide the top three in a category (nominees) as well as the eventual winner.

The panel constitutes of three groups of experts. The first and largest is the one made of professional players and coaches, with every top 20 team of the year reached out to and asked to put forward a representative who would cast his votes. Three teams did not manage to vote by the deadline, resulting in just 17 team votes. In addition to that, ten on-air talent members and four HLTV writers made their picks.

Panelists for the HLTV Award Show 2022 by 1xBet:

Team representatives
– Lukas “⁠gla1ve⁠” Rossander (Astralis)
– Vladislav “⁠nafany⁠” Gorshkov (Cloud9)
– Karim “⁠Krimbo⁠” Moussa (BIG)
– Daniel “⁠Vorborg⁠” Vorborg (Copenhagen Flames)
– Marco “⁠Snappi⁠” Pfeiffer (ENCE)
– Robin “⁠ropz⁠” Kool (FaZe)
– William “⁠mezii⁠” Merriman (fnatic)
– Casper “⁠cadiaN⁠” Møller (Heroic)
– Rasmus “⁠HooXi⁠” Nielsen (G2)
– Nick “⁠nitr0⁠” Cannella (Liquid)
– Galder “⁠bladE⁠” Barcena (Movistar Riders)
– Dennis “⁠sycrone⁠” Nielsen (MOUZ)
– Andrey “⁠B1ad3⁠” Gorodenskiy (Natus Vincere)
– Daniel “⁠djL⁠” Narancic (Ninjas in Pyjamas)
– Nemanja “⁠nexa⁠” Isaković (OG)
– Leonid “⁠chopper⁠” Vishnyakov (Spirit)
– Ismail “⁠refrezh⁠” Ali (Sprout)

On-air talent
– Sudhen “⁠Bleh⁠” Wahengbam
– Aleksandar “⁠kassad⁠” Trifunović
– Tyler “⁠hugo⁠” Hugo
– Mohan “⁠launders⁠” Govindasamy
– Alex “⁠Mauisnake⁠” Ellenberg
– Mathieu “⁠Maniac⁠” Quiquerez
– Danny “⁠mahone⁠” Hsieh
– Jason “⁠moses⁠” O’Toole
– Chad “⁠SPUNJ⁠” Burchill
– Janko “⁠YNk⁠” Paunović

HLTV
– Lucas “LucasAM” Aznar Miles
– Danish “Nohte” Allana
– Milan “Striker” Švejda
– Petar “Tgwri1s Milovanović

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HLTV Award Show to take place in January with live audience and new categories

The new award categories are based around a template for a professional CS:GO team, including self-explanatory roles like its coach, in-game leader, and AWPer.

The other three awards are for types of rifler: the opener, closer, and the anchor. The seventh and final award is a combination of all of the player awards, the ‘best five’ of the year that functions as an all-star squad of the year. Here is the list in full:

Panel awards presented by 1xBet:

– IGL of the year
– AWP of the year
– Opener of the year
– Closer of the year
– Anchor of the year
– Coach of the year
– Best five of the year

The three awards that need greater explanation are the riflers. Counter-Strike, for the most part, is a game without defined roles. You do not play as a character. There are no special abilities for one player that is not available to a teammate. Aside from the AWPer, which relies on a weapon that is so expensive and impactful that specialisation is essential, roles are fluid.

Every player in the professional circuit is fairly proficient whether they are first into a bomb-site, throwing complicated utility, or in a tricky clutch. Yet, players still fall into where they are comfortable. They occupy similar positions across maps, and play similar styles. We have narrowed all of these styles into three categories, ones that are not without overlap but are broad enough to encompass every type of player.

‘Opener of the year’ includes entry fraggers, in addition to more withdrawn pack players who follow up another player while taking map control. Martin “⁠stavn⁠” Lund is a good example of why we have called this award ‘Opener’ rather than simply ‘Entry’. He is rarely an entry fragger in executes, usually running into sites behind a few other players. But, he is not a lurker either, being found in the pack for most defaults alongside René “⁠TeSeS⁠” Madsen and cadiaN. This fact, in addition to his proficiency (0.11 OpKPR) in opening duels, means it is fairer to include him under the ‘Opener’ umbrella.

‘Closer of the year’ does a similar thing but for lurkers. Most defaults, on most maps — but not all — have a 1-3-1 type of default. On Dust2, for example, you would a lurker at Long A and in Upper Tunnels, with an AWPer and two riflers operating around middle and catwalk. Other maps are harder to pin down. Is the connector player on Overpass a lurker, or a pack player? The same can be asked regarding the boiler player on Inferno, or B ramp on Ancient.

Because of this type of position, a few maps only have one pure lurker position, like B on Overpass or Apartments on Inferno. This then means that most teams have a ‘hard lurker’ as well as a ‘soft lurker’, a player like Russel “⁠Twistzz⁠” Van Dulken on 2022 FaZe, who is frequently among the pack while ropz is alone. Our ‘closer of the year’ includes both types of player, the requirement being to play at least three ‘extremity’ positions for the majority of the year.

This is still imperfect, of course. It is rare that a player has a consistent role on all seven maps, with it being fairly likely that they have a preferred position outside of their whiteboard-perfect role in a team. The entry fragger in executes can even be an extremity player on paper, such as David “⁠n0rb3r7⁠” Danielyan‘s role in Outsiders or Shahar “⁠flameZ⁠” Shushan in OG. For the most part, however, these are exceptions.

Another example is Nikola “⁠NiKo⁠” Kovač, who we have included as an ‘opener’ this year despite him being a far cry from the ‘entry fraggers’ of old like Adam “⁠friberg⁠” Friberg and pre-Vitality Dan “⁠apEX⁠” Madesclaire. While he is only in the true ‘pack’ on four maps, his B Ramp and Banana lurks often end with him entrying into the B site thanks to an advanced position, so it is clear that he should be considered as an opener rather than a closer.

Our final category, ‘Anchor of the year’, attempts to do the same for ‘support’ players. The idea of a support player has always been controversial, from SK calling Marcelo “⁠coldzera⁠” David their support in 2016 to moses‘s claims that the role does not exist.

There is good reason for the confusion: How can one role encompass players as different as the ‘Clutch Minister’ Andreas “⁠Xyp9x⁠” Højsleth, hard entry fragger Epitacio “⁠TACO⁠” de Melo, and a pack player like Nathan “⁠NBK-⁠” Schmitt? Our answer is to define the role purely by CT-Side positions, leaving an award for only the players that toil in the lower-intensity anchor and auxiliary positions.

This encounters the same problem as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ lurkers, given that there is a ‘big’ and ‘small’ site to anchor on most maps. Some maps are also not so simple, with the ‘A Anchor’ on Overpass or Vertigo actually being the highest-performing roles, so there is not a clean two positions we can assign as ‘supportive’ on each map.

But it is close enough, and by only allowing nominees with at least three ‘anchor’-type positions our list does become one of the types of names that typically do not get recognition in our Top 20 ranking, but are specialists at their role. These are the players teams rely on to hold down their position three or four times a half, without too much freedom to rotate around the map looking for gunfights.

With these three distinctions in practice then, our ‘best five’ of the year should reflect a team that would be fairly reasonable — aside from language barriers and AWPing IGLs — to assemble in real life. Perfection, however, is unlikely to be achieved. Players that play similar spots can have widely varying styles, and there are more than a few ways to build a team from scratch.

This is just one attempt, that will only look ‘right’ if we assume a rifling IGL who will play anchor spots on CT-side and take map control on T. In the years to come, this process will be smoothed out as we take feedback from our experts and the community. For now, however, it should provide a fairly meta best five of the year.

Stay tuned to HLTV for the list of nominees for each category and watch the show on the 14th of January to see who will be taking home the awards.