Dev1ce declared as the third-best CS:GO player of 2019

Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz has been declared as the third-best CS:GO, player of 2019 by the leading Counter-Strike: Global Offensive news website HLTV, due to his consistency and incredible results in the biggest tournaments of 2019.

Dev1ce started his career as a CS player as a teenager when he was attending CS: Source LAN events in Denmark and was quickly spotted by Copenhagen Wolves who decided to sign him to their roster in 2011. Despite his incredible performances in CS: Source, it was not until CS:GO when dev1ce truly started to make a name for himself and soon became regarded as one of the best Danish players.

At the start of 2013, dev1ce joined with Copenhagen Wolves' CS:GO team, where he played alongside now-retired Henrik "FeTiSh" Christensen, as well as two Danes Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen and Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth, with whom he would later establish the core at Astralis.

Despite his immense skill and potential, dev1ce was unable to commit to CS:GO full time, as he had other life priorities such as school and badminton, which he played at a high level. That said, he never quit playing CS:GO and after he suffered an injury, which prevented him from playing badminton, dev1ce decided to put his energy and time into CS:GO which paid off big time. In 2013, dev1ce appeared in several LAN events with Copenhagen Wolves and ended the year with a 1.14 LAN Rating, which was an impressive result, yet not enough to make him one of the top 20 players of the year.

The Copenhagen Wolves' roster left for Team Dignitas in 2014, which constantly competed in the top-tier tournaments, which allowed dev1ce to get more international recognition. Unfortunately, the Danes failed to see any massive success in their tournament ventures, as they constantly fell short of producing deep runs at the biggest events. Despite their strong starts in tournaments, the Danes' playoffs appearances turned sour as they seemingly always found a way to lose, no matter the opponents they were facing. The CS:GO gods seemingly did not allow Dignitas to make it further than the semi-finals. Nonetheless, dev1ce's recognition grew and in 2014 he was recognised as the 20th best CS:GO player of the year, which was his first appearance on HLTV top-20 list.

In December 2014, Dignitas replaced FeTiSh with Finn "karrigan" Andersen who was promoted to the position of an In-Game-Leader. More changes took place shortly after when the whole Danish roster decided to leave Dignitas at the end of January 2015 and joined TSM. Under a new banner and new leadership, dev1ce started to shine brighter than ever, helping his new team win three events in a row, including CS:GO Championship Series Kick-Off finals, FACEIT League Stage 1 Finals and Fragbite Masters S4 Finals, to which TSM added two more titles at FACEIT League Stage 2 and PGL S1 Finals. A lot of the team's success came due to dev1ce's impressive performances, which earned him a third-place on HLTV list of top 20 players of 2015, marking his career second appearance in HLTV top-20 list.

Due to internal issues in TSM, the North American organization and the players decided to part ways, leaving dev1ce and his teammates without a team. The quintet played under a new team "?" for one month before the said team rebranded into Astralis on January 18, 2016.

Four months after Astralis was formed, René "canjub" Borg opted to leave the team and rejoined Team Dignitas, which left the team was without an AWPer. Instead of signing a new AWP player, however, Astralis signed Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjærbye as their new rifler and appointed dev1ce as the team's main AWPer. Since dev1ce has to switch roles, he needed a certain period of time to hone a new skill set and to adapt to his new role in the team. That was, unfortunately, seen in Astralis' performance as they found themselves in a downright spiral. Shortly after came another roster change, which saw the departure of karrigan, who was replaced by Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander as the new IGL of the team. With the help of their new IGL, Astralis secured silver at ELEAGUE Season 2 and hoisted their only trophy of the year at ECS S2 Finals in Anaheim. Although Astralis failed to impress in 2016, dev1ce once again shone bright and secured his second third-place at HLTV top 20 rankings of the year.

Since gla1ve took over as the team's IGL Astralis got themselves back on track and found their long lost form, as they went on to win ELEAGUE Major in Atlanta and IEM Katowice 2017. Unfortunately, all the stress took a toll on dev1ce, who was in March 2017 diagnosed with hiatal hernia (a stress-induced condition, causing severe acid reflux), which prevented him from helping his team throughout 2017. Besides the ELEAGUE Major and IEM Katowice, Astralis did not win a single tournament, and it became clear Astralis are not the same without dev1ce.

Despite missing most of the season, dev1ce ended 2017 as fifth-best CS:GO player of the year, meaning he earned a spot on HLTV top-20 list for the fourth year in a row.

At the start of 2018, dev1ce returned to the team, which not only marked his return to the CS:GO scene, but began the famous Astralis era. The Danish team fluked out of ELEAGUE Major Boston in January 2018, which resulted in the signing of Emil "Magisk" Reif, who was seemingly the last missing piece in the Astralis machine.

Throughout 2018, Astralis won 10 tournaments, which included FACEIT Major and four IGS events – DreamHack Masters Marseille, ESL Pro League S7 Finals, IEM Chicago and ESL Pro league S8 in December, which earned them the IGS S2 title and $1 million in winnings. Dev1ce finished 2018 with seven MVP awards and 1.24 LAN rating, but still finished only second in that year's top-20 rating, behind Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev who had the best year of his career.

Following an incredible year, Astralis suffered a crushing defeat in January 2019, in the finals of iBUYPOWER Masters IV where they lost to Team Liquid, which ended their streak of seven consecutive tournament titles. Nonetheless, Astralis dusted themselves off quickly and secured the IEM Katowice Major in March 2019, where dev1ce claimed his first-ever EVP (exceptionally valuable player) after averaging 1.32 tournament rating.

At that point, it all seemed like Astralis were set to repeat their run from 2019, as they won the BLAST Pro Series Sao Paulo, where they defeated TL in the finals. At the said event, Astralis dropped only one map, and with that once more showed their superiority. Dev1ce was once more awarded the MVP award, having averaged 1.35 rating and 1.47 impact rating.

A month later, another BLAST Pro Series event took place, this time in Miami. There Astralis completely dropped the ball, lost three out of five group stage matches and crashed out of the tournament before even making it into the playoffs. At the said event, dev1ce also averaged a disappointing 0.94 rating. The third BLAST Pro event of the year, which took place in Madrid in May 2019, saw Astralis reach the grand finals where they lost to ENCE, who took home gold while leaving the Danes in the dust. Despite their underwhelming result, dev1ce earned another EVP award due to his 1.23 tournament rating.

In the months that followed, Astralis attended ECS S7 – Finals, ESL Pro League S9 – Finals and ESL One: Cologne, but failed to see much success. In the first two events following the BLAST Madrid, Astralis finished fifth-sixth, while they managed to fight their way to the third-fourth place finish in Cologne before the summer break.

After the summer break, it was time for StarLadder Berlin, which was a great opportunity for Astralis to show their worth – and they did just that. Astralis entered the Major with all guns blazing and despite losing to NRG in the group stage, went on a tear through the playoffs as they did not drop a single match en route to the title. Dev1ce ended the Major with a 1.26 rating and was once more awarded an MVP award.

Since Berlin, Astralis won ESL Pro League S10 – Europe, ECS S8 – Europe, IEM Masters XIV – Beijing, ECS S8 – Finals and ended the year with a BLAST Pro Series Global Final title. In Beijing, dev1ce recorded his highest rating of the year (1.43) in addition to an 89.3 ADR and 1.56 impact rating, however, was denied the MVP award by his teammate gla1ve, who had a stellar performance on the Chinese soil. That said, dev1ce pocketed his third and last MVP medal in ECS S8 Finals, where he averaged 1.27 rating and 0.79 KPR. In the final event of the year – BLAST Pro Series Global Finals, dev1ce secured his seventh EVP award, after finishing fourth in the MVP race with a 1.20 rating.

Throughout 2019, dev1ce was one of the most consistent players in the CS:GO scene. He averaged 0.77 KPR (fifth-highest) and produced multi-kills in 19.5% of the rounds he played (sixth-best). That said, where dev1ce really shined was in his opening duel prowess, as he reached fifth-highest opening kills ratio (0.13/round) and the fourth-highest success rate (61.5%). Dev1ce also finished the year with a fourth-best impact rating (1.29). Adding to his incredible numbers, dev1ce averaged only 0.6 deaths/round (eighth-lowest), which helped him achieve a remarkable 1.22 rating in 2019.

Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz stats for 2019:

Rating: 1.22

DPR: 0.60

KAST: 72.5%

Impact: 1.29

ADR: 81.1

KPR: 0.77