{"id":13520,"date":"2022-09-11T15:13:08","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T15:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/news\/cs-2\/yekindar-is-the-savior-team-liquid-needs"},"modified":"2022-09-11T15:13:08","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T15:13:08","slug":"yekindar-is-the-savior-team-liquid-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/news\/cs-2\/yekindar-is-the-savior-team-liquid-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"YEKINDAR is the savior Team Liquid needs"},"content":{"rendered":"

North American fans can finally relax. Team Liquid <\/a>has landed the services of Mareks ‘\u009cYEKINDAR’\u009d Ga\u00c4\u00bcinskis for the upcoming event IEM Cologne, which will hopefully lead to a long-term deal with the organization. Over the past week, rumor on rumor emerged for where YEKINDAR would end up. With his arrival at Liquid confirmed, he chose the team where his abilities will be best used. Out of all the teams who were in the market for him, Team Liquid needed him the most.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

YEKINDAR recently became available from Virtus.Pro due to him not wanting to play for the organization. YEKINDAR is not Russian, but he found himself playing for an organization backed by\u00a0public enemy number one<\/strong>\u00a0due and facing backlash for it. Although his numbers fell off in the last few months, a change of scenery is just what he needs to be the unstoppable force he was during the peak of Virtus.Pro and Team Liquid is the best destination for him.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Why YEKINDAR is perfect for Liquid.<\/h2>\n

When Team Liquid peaked with their Intel Grand Slam run in 2019, many things were in place for the team. Mainly, Jacky ‘\u009cStewie2K’\u009d Yip was at the top of his game and posting entry kills alongside Jonathan ‘\u009cEliGE’\u009d Jablonowski. Now, things are different. Stewie is gone, but a solid core of EliGE, Keith ‘\u009cNAF’\u009d Markovic, and Joshua ‘\u009coSee’\u009d Ohm are present. However, there is one thing missing: an aggressive entry player to open up rounds.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Most of the team’\u0099s firepower comes from EliGE and NAF, and both need lots of space to operate. During shox’\u0099s tenure with the team, Liquid either used nitr0 as an entry or played passively around oSee’\u0099s AWP, with the occasional straight-up duel from NAF. In fact, since 2020, Team Liquid has been a very passive team because of the time and space EliGE and NAF take up. Their entire style will change with the addition of YEKINDAR: a player who is arguably the best entry fragger in Counter-Strike.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

With YEKINDAR, EliGE and NAF will have the room they need. oSee can pick off players and fall back, and nitr0 can adopt a more supportive role for the team while continuing to IGL. Additionally, YEKINDAR provides a much-needed boost in overall firepower. At the recent major PGL Antwerp, Team Liquid had the worst Kill\/Death differential of the entire tournament at -92, with the team K\/D sitting at .76. Adding a player who has a positive K\/D (1.06) and consistently gets entries will only improve the team.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A Deep Dive into the Statistics<\/h2>\n

In case you don’\u0099t believe the aggressiveness YEKINDAR brings to the table, let’\u0099s dive into his stats. In the past year, he attempted entry kills in 32.6% of rounds ‘\u0093 the second most behind Andrei ‘\u009carT’\u009d Piovezan. Of those rounds, he succeeds 58.6% on the CT side and 44.4% on the T side, with a combined success rate of 51.6% of rounds. Of the players who attempt opening kills in over 25% of rounds, he has the highest kills per round (.17) and the third-highest success rate, behind Fredrik ‘\u009croeJ’\u009d J\u00c3\u00b8rgensen (53.8% success over 26.3% of rounds) and Nikola ‘\u009cNiKo’\u009d Kova\u00c4\u008d (57.8% success over 29.1% of rounds). His aggressiveness and willingness to die are exactly what Team Liquid needs so that EliGE and NAF can have space to frag out and not be forced to entry on a site with 10 seconds left (The Statistics are against top 30 teams in the past 12 months and are from\u00a0HLTV<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

No More Jame Time<\/h2>\n

Not only did YEKINDAR struggle throughout the past few months during the conflict in Ukraine, but his style has been limited by Dzhami ‘\u009cJame’\u009d Ali. Virtus. Pro’\u0099s playstyle very much revolves around Jame’\u0099s AWP, and YEKINDAR has been forced to decrease his aggressive playstyle to match the team’\u0099s pace. But, on Liquid, he can do what he wants to do as his style is perfect for the team. We’\u0099ll have to wait and see for IEM Cologne, but YEKINDAR could turn into an even better player than he already is because of the passive AWP playstyle not being present.<\/p>\n

We’\u0099ll have to wait until after Cologne to see if a long-term deal is formed with Team Liquid and YEKINDAR, but things are looking up for the North American squad. Having been a top 15 team with such a key piece missing, Team Liquid will most likely find themselves in the top five very soon if they can hold on to the Latvian player.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North American fans can finally relax. Team Liquid has landed the services of Mareks ‘\u009cYEKINDAR’\u009d Ga\u00c4\u00bcinskis for the upcoming event IEM Cologne, which will hopefully lead to a long-term deal with the organization. Over the past week, rumor on rumor emerged for where YEKINDAR would end up. With his arrival at Liquid confirmed, he chose<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":13521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cs-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blix.gg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}