17-year-old Counter-Strike prodigy carries his team to tournament victory in a performance dubbed one of the greatest in the history of the game
Feb. 13, 2024Danil “donk” Kryshkovets dominated IEM Katowice
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A Counter-Strike 2 pro is being hailed for delivering one of the greatest esports performances of all time, despite having only played in one major tournament and being just 17 years old.
Claiming 82 kills over just 62 rounds, and with only 40 deaths, donk also secured an average damage per round (ADR) of 124 - more than 40 higher than anyone else in the game. It’s a performance so impressive that even when you see it for yourself, it’s hard to believe these are purely human reactions. In the highlight reel below, the first two clips alone seem almost supernatural, and the expressions of donk’s opponents make it clear that they have no idea what to make of it.
This was no single incident, either. Donk topped tournament-wide stats for ADR, total kills, kills per round, tying a seven-year record for overall rating. In almost all of those stats, while positions #2-5 were all pretty close, donk was a clear frontrunner, leaving teammate and opposition alike far behind.
His performance is already seeing him hailed as one of the greats. In one clip, tournament caster Machine labels him “unprecedented, eclipsing all who came before him.” Team Liquid content creator Alex Debets suggested that donk’s tournament performance could be “statistically the best off [sic] all time,” while former pro Jacob Winneche described his finals effort as “the single greatest tournament performance I can ever remember.” Some of those sentiments even extend to esports as a whole, with the suggestion that donk’s finals performance was up there with some of the best solo efforts in the entire industry.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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