Mikhail ‘Dosia’ Stolyarov is a 34-years-old Russian professional player for both CS and CS:GO. A former winner of PGL Major Krakow 2017 with Gambit Esports. Dosia has become one of the CIS Counter-Strike legends during the time he’s spent as a pro player in the industry as well as his contribution to CS development in the CIS team and creating teams and streaming CS:GO.
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Dosia: How the Steel Was Tempered ‘ his career path in a competitive CIS region
Dosia started his professional CS career, playing for such teams as tp.uSports, forZe and Moscow Five with his brother Fox (Sergey Stolyarov) and OverDrive (Aleksey Biryukov.) At the end of 2012, Mikhail transitioned to CS:GO, joining Virtus.pro, along with Fox, AdreN (Däuren Qystaubaev), kUcheR (Emilj Akhundov) and ANGE1 (Kyrylo Karasjov). Despite winning StarLadder StarSeries 5 and taking top-4 places at many other cups, Mikhail and his squad left the organization after 9 months. Joining Astana Dragons with markeloff (Jeghor Markelov) replacing Fox. Astana Dragons only lasted for 5 months, but it was enough time for Dosia and Co to defeat teams such as fnatic, Na’Vi, ENCE, mousesports, as well as some of the other top-20 teams of that period.
Unfortunately, despite playing for his next organization, HellRaisers, for 1.5 years, Mikhail didn’t manage many wins. HR’s only victory apart from some qualifications was a 4:3 finals against mousesports in the Acer Predator Masters Season 1 (2015). However, the team performed persistently at many tier-1 and tier-2 championships, taking the top places and remaining an unpleasant opponent for many teams.
Gambit Esports: The team of his life ‘ from forming to winning a major
In September, 2015 Dosia decided to leave HellRaisers. And right as 2016 started, a new team was born: Gambit Esports with a roster made up of Dosia and his old friends ‘ AdreN, mou, hooch (Dmitry Bogdanov) and wayLander (Jan Rahkonen). The team appeared to be a tough nut to crack from the very beginning, defeated only in finals at their first tournament and then winning their next one ‘ CIS Minor Columbus 2016.
Although Gambit failed to get out of the group stage at the Columbus Major, the fact of qualifying itself in comparison to Dosia’s run with Hellraisers, was a sign he was going in the right direction.
Fate was testing the strength of Dosia for almost all of 2016 ‘ after the team failed several StarLadder series, Dreamhack, ELEAGUE, ESL the organization shuffled players, coaches and other staff, until in October two players were added to the roster: Zeus (Danylo Teslenko) and HObb1t (Abai Khasenov).
Dosia and HObb1t. Image credit: Dreamhack, Robert PaulThe new roster managed to qualify for Dreamhack Winter 2016, taking down Team Kinguin and ALTERNATE aTTaX in their first attempt. A month later, Dosia along with his team took first place in the Acer Predator Masters Season 3, taking home $25K USD. Furthermore, just 3 weeks later Gambit managed to win Dreamhack Open Winter 2016, earning $50K USD for the team.
Despite these performances Dosia and his team were stopped in the quarterfinals of the ELEAGUE Atlanta Major 2017 by fnatic. Still, their performance at the event qualified them to PGL Major Krakow 2017. Where they ended up winning, and at the time what was Mikhaiil’s highest achievement.
Gambit ended their group stage flawlessly, beating chrisJ’s mousesports roster, G2’s Super French Team and Virtus.pro’s golden Polish squad. After defeating fnatic’s Major Winners team in the quarterfinals, Dosia felt for the first time they had a chance to win the tournament, as he confessed in a 2020 interview conducted in Russian.
It took 2 more series to prove his thoughts were true: 2-1 vs Astralis’ most honored roster and then 2-1 vs future 100 Thieves Immortals roster in the finals.
Dosia at PGL Major Krakow 2017. Image credit: PGL, GrygierczykConflict with Kane and new reshuffles
The team’s internal problems reached the peak right after the major ‘ Dosia, along with his teammates; with the exception of Zeus, were not satisfied with their coach’s attitude and strategies. Mikhail claims that Kane (Mikhajlo Blaghin) had almost no mutual understanding with the team, keeping them unsure of what the team’s ideas were and what step to expect next. Dosia and Co voted for a coach replacement. As an old friend of Kane, Zeus tried to stop it, setting an ultimatum: either Kane stays or both he and Danylo would leave the team.
Gambit at Dreamhack Open Austin 2017. Image credit: Dreamhack, Adela SznajderThe organization’s decision fell in Dosia’s favor, and the team got a new player ‘ fitch (Baqtyar Baqytov) and a new coach ‘ Andi(Andrij Prokhorov).
But after winning the Major, Dosia and his team struggled to take first place at tournaments ‘ both the exhaustion from the rigid gaming schedule and an ‘acclimatization’ period after the roster change played a role.
Until the very end of the year where Gambit won the ROG Masters 2017 in Kuala Lumpur, taking $117.5K USD in prize money.
However, for the whole of 2018, Gambit struggled to maintain consistency and stable results ‘ constantly rotating players and coaches through the summer. Andi left, replaced by Blad3 (Andriy Ghorodensjkij). Blad3’s arrival brought adjustments to the team’s communication and ended up contributing to the further roster changes. The instability continued until May 2019, when Gambit’s management decided to bench its main roster completely, especially considering Gambit.Youngsters (future 2020 Online Kings squad) performance background. As Gambit’s Chief Gaming Officer, Konstantin ‘groove’ Pikiner later commented: ‘…we’ve been conducting a series of negotiations, however, a suitable combination of players hasn’t formed to this day.’
X God’s after Gambit: streaming and having fun
Dosia spent the last of 2019 streaming CS:GO, waiting for invites from the other teams. Sadly, no such invites arrived; it seemed top teams were not interested in the major winner. According to the same interview mentioned above, he didn’t want to play in a tier-3 team, and creating a new one of his own (Mustang Crew) proved to be an unsuccessful endeavor at the time. Later, in August 2022, he joined Team Forward. However, the team didn’t achieve any serious results and in December 2022, Dosia was benched.
On the other hand, Mikhail confessed he loved streaming, the process was fun for him ‘ interactions with his chat motivated him to keep streaming.
When it comes to other interactions with CS:GO fans ‘ Dosia is also often called Sex God (or X God). The story started when some hltv.org user launched a thread called ‘the sexiest CS:GO players’. Possessing a good sense of humor, other website users supported the idea, putting forward players such as Dosia, flusha (Robin Rönnquist) and JW (Jesper Wecksell) into the running. Groove embraced the idea and organized a promo-video where people at the shopping mall answered the question: ‘Do you know who X God is?’
All the girls answered right: Dosia. After this PR-campaign, the new nickname stuck with Mikhail.
X God support. Image credit: Dreamhack, Adela SznajderPresently, Dosia streams a lot; his twitch channel has 460k followers. For his set up he uses a Logitech G PRO Wireless mouse with a SteelSeries QcK Heavy mousepad. His keyboard is Logitech G512, and his headset is also Logitech; the G PRO. Dosia uses a 240Hz ZOWIE XL2546 monitor and plays CS:GO at a resolution of 1920×1080. His mouse set at 400 DPI with 2.0 in-game sensitivity and raw input on.
Mikhail’s approximate total winnings in CS:GO are $334,512 USD, he is 2013’s fourth best player and 2011’s nineteenth best player according to hltv’s rating. Dosia also holds the record for the most knife kills in a series and map, with 3 knife kills. He’s achieved this record twice so far. Dosia also has two MVPs: for StarLadder StarSeries V and Dreamhack Open Austin 2017.
