Stats of the Week: A Star is Born? Paraguayan player becomes top-rated player in LATAM just two weeks after 18th birthday

^{Banner image: Ubisoft Brazil/Gui Caielli}

This week has seen surprise showings in all four regions as the league portion of Stage 3 came to a close. During these games, we saw some remarkable plays and standout flops, so let’s take a look at some of the numbers that drove this week’s results.

Blk beats Fntzy & Astro to become top-performing LATAM player in debut season

Since turning 18 years old on September 28th, the Paraguayan player Richard "blk" Rodriguez managed to hit a 1.52 SiegeGG Rating in his debut game, helped Malvinas Gaming take both Liquid and FURIA to overtime, finished one game short of the Six Sweden Major, and, crucially, secured the highest SiegeGG Rating of any player during the Elite Six Cup. He even finished ahead of Brazil’s newest superstar, Diogo "Fntzy" Lima.

This Rating was hit thanks to him reaching an overall 1.14 kill-per-round number, making him one of only two players to break the 1.0 barrier. Looking at each game, he also went 26-16 across two maps against FaZe, and 22-13 in just one map against Liquid, taking top fragger honors in both matches.

This rather remarkable list of accomplishments has made blk a real player to watch for 2022 and puts Malvinas in contention for a 2022 Six Invitational spot. Their main competitor during the open qualifier will likely be MIBR, a team they already finished ahead of in the CES group stage.

While this was his debut in the pro-tier level, blk previously also played for Malvinas way back in 2019 in a number of sub-regional tournaments.

Hotancold top player during Stage 3, APAC North rosters dominate top 10

With all five of the main Pro Circuit leagues now complete, here are the top players by SiegeGG Ratings across these tournaments (excluding the APAC Playoffs and Elite Six Cup):

The highest rating seen globally this stage was from the American Matthew "Hotancold" Stevens. This is the second stage he’s topped this metric in the NAL. He climbed from a 1.33 Rating during Stage 2 to a massive 1.48 Rating this stage.

Franklyn "VertcL" Cordero, meanwhile, had the biggest glow-up between stages in the NAL as he moved into a primary entry role on the Oxygen Esports lineup and increased his Rating from 0.88 to 1.37.

Over in Europe, Stéphane "Shaiiko" Lebleu was the lone name to make it onto this top 10 list. This was also his second stage running at the top of the EUL leaderboard. Just below him is Maurice "AceeZ" Erkelenz who, just like VertcL, saw a massive jump in his performance from last stage from 0.79 to 1.23.

While Benjamin "Benjamaster" Dereli started the season in the top three, a weak second half from Cowana meant he dropped down to 10th with a 1.12 Rating. That’s still very impressive for a debut season, making him a name to keep an eye on in 2022.

Onto LATAM, Stage 3 of the Brasileirão tournament was really Fntzy’s show, with the rest of his roster trailing by quite a bit. While Fntzy hit a Rating of 1.33, all four of his teammates sat in the 0.90 to 0.97 range.

Just below him sat the two names we’d expect to be challenging for this top spot -- Karl "Alem4o" Zarth and Luccas "Paluh" Molina -- while André "nesk" Oliveira only hit a 1.06 Rating, disappointing by his normal standards.

Finally, we have APAC, which saw a lot of APAC North names achieve very high ratings as seen in the overall top 10 list.

Probably most interesting, however, is that three different members of CAG sat in the bottom 10 while the team’s top fragger, Hideki "gatorada" Nishida, played primarily on the curious operator choices of Finka and Castle.

While the North, NAL, and the EUL all mainly saw Iana or Jager mains achieve the best ratings, the APAC South League leaderboard ended with the top players on primarily support centered roles, with the Thermite/Kaid-main Siwa "Nerix" Kaewtossapone coming in fourth.

Worthy hits career-topping performance to reach Sweden Major

During this week’s APAC Playoffs, the lone New Zealander at the event, Trent "Worthy" Mitchell-Rose, blew everyone out of the server with a truly remarkable set of results as the Chiefs qualified for the Six Sweden Major in straight maps.

Across the four maps, he hit a SiegeGG Rating of 1.55 and kill-death ratio of 2.17, well above his closest rival Hikaru "Li9ht" Osawa in second place, who ended at a Rating of 1.29.

To average a tournament rating of 1.55, he achieved individual game ratings of 1.34 and 1.72 against Monkey Hunters and Dire Wolves respectively in best-of-ones. That was followed by a 1.60 Rating in the best-of-three against Elevate. Most notably, this included a 1v2 on Vigil, a 1v1 on Lion, and the second-highest entry differential of the tournament.

As well as dominating this tournament, 1.55 is the highest SiegeGG Rating achieved by any APAC player in any pro-tier tournament, regionally or globally, with the one exception of South Korea Season 8. Elsewhere, the closest to him was Ysaera back in Season 7, who hit a 1.50 Rating. 

Mexico’s best player dropped for “bad performance”

Earlier this week Fenix Esports’ made the surprising decision to drop Arturo "XigmaZ" Vizcarra, with him claiming in a Twitlonger that it was due to his “performance”.

This raised many eyebrows in the region, as XigmaZ was the statistical best player this Mexican Championship stage, with a 1.29 SiegeGG Rating. His closest teammate sat in sixth place. 

He led in kill count and kill differential while notching twice the number of entry kills of anyone else in the top-10 by Rating.

XigmaZ’s performance did fall off significantly during the Copa Elite Six, down to a 0.70 Rating, as did his whole roster’s, as they were unable to compete with their regional counterparts.

This change means Fenix will need to bring in their substitute “Paby” in as their new fifth, while XigmaZ himself will be unable to join another team till the next transfer window opens in March 2022. He will miss both the Mexican Finals and SI 2022 qualifiers.