5 Most Underrated Pro Players in Counter-Strike
Any person who has ever touched competitive Counter-Strike knows that at heart it's a team game. Each player has a specific role to play in every round, which should ideally allow the team to reach its full potential. Usually, the public attention is drawn to those who score more kills. While this is indeed one of the most significant indicators of the player’s quality, it has also caused some true legends to join the ranks of the most underrated players in CS.
In this article, we’ll focus on the players making flash assists for “s1mple” or covering back for “ZywOo” when he is holding a preferable angle with an AWP. For example, “NiKo” doesn't buy grenades and defuse kits, makes a few miraculous opening kills, and leaves the rest of the job for his teammates — probably some of the most underrated CS players in history.
We had researched the players who have never enjoyed the spotlight despite their incredible consistency, teamwork, and brilliant thinking while under fire. Here is our list of the most underrated pro players in Counter-Strike 2.
Chris "chrisJ" de Jong | MOUZ
The oldest underrated player in our rating is the 34-year-old Dutch player Chris de Jong, also known as “chrisJ”. He joined the Pro scene during the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and, in just a year, earned a place in the legendary MOUZ team. He even managed to become a star player and delivered a 1.24 rating in 2013.
At that time, MOUZ was a typical tier-1.5 team, yet to win any significant trophies on the elite level but too consistent and talented to be a tier-2. The breakthrough for MOUZ started in 2017 when they sold Nikola "NiKo" Kovač to FaZe and replaced him with a sniper, Tomáš "oskar" Šťastný, and young prospect Robin "ropz" Kool. The team became a real contender on the tier-1 scene in 2018, winning Starlader i-League Season 4, V4 Future Sports Festival, and ESL One New York. The next year, they added CS:GO Asia Championship and ESL Pro League Season 10 to their hall of trophies.
Although “chrisJ” got a pretty difficult role to fill as the secondary AWPer, he’s an incredible anchor and can handle clutches as well, helping his star teammates to earn MVPs. However, he faced a slip-up in form and motivation in 2020, and was benched for some period until finally leaving MOUZ in 2022. Without MPV medals and places in the HLTV’s Annual Best Players ranking, Chris de Jong became one of the most underrated pros in CS:GO despite helping the talents like “NiKo,” “oskar,” “ropz,” “woxic,” and “frozen” become the legends they are today.
Johannes "tabseN" Wodarz | BIG
Johannes Wodarz, better known as “tabseN,” is another old lion for the game’s early years. He is five years younger than “chrisJ,” and yet he had entered the Pro scene at the same time — in 2012. Being a pretty universal player but without wide appreciation, he changed teams nine times until 2017 before joining BIG, where remains to this day.
Berlin International Gaming (BIG) gained its share of popularity during the Covid-19 period of purely online CS. With the guys like “XANTARES” and “syrsoN” at their prime, “tabseN” had little chance to shine, but his stable performance made all the difference in several matches. He reached a rating of 1.2 in 2017 and 2018, and has continued delivering 1.09+ since 2019, taking the IGL role after “gob b” retirement.
There are only five notable trophies under his belt (cs summit 6 Europe and Dreamhack Masters Spring Europe as the most notable ones, both won in 2020), but his consistency is incredible. He’s especially prolific with pistols and rifles, and stayed remarkably calm during clutches.
However, a lack of a well-established squad to share the fame sours the overall impression, making him one of the most underrated CS pro players of all time.
Justin "jks" Savage | Renegades, G2
Maybe it’s quite unfair to call a two-time entry of the HLTV’s top-20 best players underrated, but the shy nature of Justin Savage still makes him lose a lot of potential popularity. Being 1995, “jks” started his professional career in his homeland in Australia in 2014. His longest stay was with the Renegades (and then the same roster in 100 Thieves until late 2020), and the Aussies weren’t a strong force in the S-tier events at the time, typically struggling to get past playoffs.
However, the smart plays of Justin Savage earned him two HLTV’s top-20 entries and made him a name, so he started playing for international squads in 2020. His period in Complexity wasn’t fruitful, but a later stand-in role at FaZe helped him grab IEM Katowice in 2022. G2, on the other hand, understood well that claiming big trophies requires reliable anchors and clutches like “jks,” and signed him in the middle of 2022. In just a year, the team finally got the puzzle pieces right and won three elite events with a million prize pool each: BLAST World Final 2022, IEMs in Katowice and Cologne in 2023.
What makes “jks” one of the really undervalued pro players of Counter-Strike is his ability to deliver at big tournaments without getting into the spotlight. His stay and then departure from G2 demonstrates this well.
Viktor "sdy" Orudzhev | Spirit, NaVi, Monte
Victor “sdy” Orudzhev is the most recent addition to the CS pro scene we’re gonna mention today, entering the big stage in 2017. After a few team changes, he eventually joined Team Spirit in early 2018, where he spent four productive years. In fact, Orudzhev was going strong till the last season, when his rating dropped below 1.1 level. So, what went wrong? The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 changed much for the CIS region players, and “sdy” was no exception. For instance, he wasn’t able to cross the border while NAVI was looking for a replacement for “Boombl4,” losing his chance to join a famous squad.
However, joining the top-1 team at that point was a tough task even for a player of “sdy’s” caliber, who had to change roles and positions and dive into vast “B1ad3’s” tactics book. Still, Victor had an elite trophy to boast — BLAST Spring Finals 2022. Sadly, just shortly after claiming this prize Team Spirit became overwhelmed by multiple problems inside and outside of the team. Victor left the squad at the end of 2022, and “somedieyoung” (his initial nickname) joined a Ukrainian team called Monte.
With young guns like “Woro2k” and “BOROS,” Monte grabbed a few A-tier events and proudly joined the elite level with HLTV’s top-10 placement. The departure of Jordan, the squad’s rising star, shook things and dropped the team back, but didn’t prevent Victor from becoming an IGL and even grabbing his only MVP on the triumphant ESL Challenger Jonkoping 2023.
In fact, he is still hungry for victories and has enough experience to be a secondary AWP, IGL, or anchor, joining ENCE in mid-2024. It also further proves that “sdy” is among the most underrated professional players in CS, as he could easily go for a top-tier team instead.
Fredrik "REZ" Sterner | Ninjas in Pyjamas
Fredrik Sterner has been playing for NiP for so long (since 2017) that only a few devoted fans actually remember that he played for two other teams at the beginning of his career. A 26-year-old “REZ” is the youngest in our rating of the most underrated players in Counter-Strike and is probably a hostage to his Swedish roots. “REZ” spent most of his career in the Ninjas in Pyjamas — a name that any long-time fan of CS knows and loves, and even was their most consistent player at some events. His rating dropped below the 1.08 level only in 2019 and 2023, which were the worst periods for NiP in general.
Sterner’s playstyle is reminiscent of another Swedish legend and his former teammate, Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg. We are talking about a deadly aiming skill with a Desert Eagle, the ability to be a secondary AWPer, calm anchoring, and clutching with the rifle. “REZ” could have easily repeated the fate of “rain” or “Aleksib” would he opt to join a rich international organization. However, he chose to remain faithful to Ninjas instead, even throughout the team’s shaky periods. Still, Sterner is young enough to challenge himself in another team and replenish his shy collection (IEM Oakland 2017 with MVP to his name and IEM Fall 2021 Europe) with a few S-tier trophies.
Conclusion
With Counter-Strike coming close to its 25-year Esports anniversary, the number of professionals involved in the game keeps increasing. Some of them are pure icons who inspire the next generation of players, while others are dedicated teammates who help the first to reach the heights. The new game version will surely create new underrated pro players in CS2, but every young talent should remember that it's a team game. It requires training in diverse roles, and sometimes, forgetting about personal statistics can bring more glory to your team’s name.
