Who is Zeus?

Danylo “Zeus” Teslenko is a 35-year-old retired Ukrainian Counter-Strike player. He is known for being the legendary captain of Natus Vincere and the winner of the PGL Krakow Major in 2017 with Gambit. Zeus is considered one of the most impactful players in both CS and CS:GO and, as a result, ranked the 13th-best player of the decade by ESL.

Early career

His professional path in CS started in 2002, playing for one of the strongest teams of that time - Arsenal. During the next few years, Danylo was involved in various projects including pro100, Virtus.pro, and KerchNET. This period connected Zeus to other great players like Ioann “Edward” Sukhariev and Mykhailo "Kane" Blahin.

NAVI

After Arbalet Cup Europe 2009, businessman Murat "Arbalet" Tulemaganbetov decided to assemble and fully finance a Ukrainian team called Natus Vincere. The squad included Serhii “starix” Ishchuk, Edward, Yehor "markeloff" Markelov, Zeus, and Arsenii "ceh9" Trynozhenko. As well as this, Oleksandr "ZeroGravity" Kokhanovskyi became the team manager.

After three successful years in CS 1.6, NAVI switched to CS:GO, but failed to maintain the roster, and even so, remained one of the strongest teams and reached two Major finals at DreamHack Open Cluj⁠-⁠Napoca 2015 and MLG Major Championship: Columbus 2016.

Gambit

Natus Vincere were not playing badly and were having deep runs at most of the events. In spite of this, other players on the team decided to kick Zeus after ESL One Cologne 2016. This led to him searching for a new opportunity, where he joined Gambit alongside his good friend Kane.

Alongside Däuren "AdreN" Qystaubaev, Mikhail "Dosia" Stolyarov, Rüstem "mou" Telepov, and Abai "HObbit" Hasenov, Zeus was able to win Predator Masters 3, DreamHack ZOWIE Open Winter 2016, and DreamHack Open Austin 2017. Also, Gambit placed 5th-8th at ELEAGUE Major 2017. Coming to the next Major event at Krakow, Gambit were considered complete underdogs, but against all odds managed to win the tournament and became the lowest-ranked Major champions ever.

Back to NAVI and the after-retirement period

Good times didn’t last long, and after conflicts between Kane and other players Zeus left Gambit. Both Ukrainians were picked up by NAVI and managed to win a couple of events, including ESL One Cologne 2018 as well as reaching another Major Final at the FACEIT Major 2018. The last event in his professional career was BLAST Pro Series: Moscow 2019, where NAVI failed to win a single map and placed 6th.

Zeus at StarLadder i-League StarSeries S4 (Image Credits: StarLadder)

In 2017 Zeus relaunched a Ukrainian organization pro100, and looked for young prospects from post-Soviet countries. YEKINDAR and NickelBack were among the pro100 players. The team was functional till 2020 and, after a break, was relaunched in 2023.

After the end of his professional activity, Zeus opened the esports club “Z-Arena” and pizzeria “Chicago Pizza by Zeus”. With the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Danylo moved to Indonesia and recently announced an esport club franchise in Asia.

How much money did Zeus make?

Throughout his 17-year Counter-Strike career, Zeus was able to earn almost $800,000. He is the third highest-earning Ukrainian in the game behind only Valerii "b1t" Vakhovskyi and Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. The biggest prize pool Zeus won was $500K which he earned from his Major victory in Poland. Also, he had a $250K win with NAVI at StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 7.

Zeus’ crosshair settings

In CS:GO, Zeus used the following crosshair settings:

Draw Outline - 0

Alpha - 255

Color - 2

Blue - 0; Green - 0; Red - 0

Dot - 0

Gap - -3

Size - 2

Style - 4

Thickness - 1

Zeus’ keyboard and mouse

Danylo’s beloved keyboard and mouse are the ZOWIE FK2 and HyperX Alloy FPS Pro, respectively. His settings are the following:

DPI - 1600

Sensitivity - 0.43

eDPI - 688

Zoom Sensitivity - 1.00

Hz - 1000

Windows Sensitivity - 6

Raw Input - 1

Mouse Acceleration - 0

Zeus’ monitor and video settings

Zeus uses the ZOWIE XL2540 with the following video settings:

Resolution - 1600x900

Aspect Ratio - 16:9

Scaling Mode - Native

Color Mode - Computer Monitor

Display Mode - Fullscreen