For the third time in history, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut can call himself the best Counter-Strike player on the planet. To no surprise for anyone, ZywOo took down the award after a superb 2023, where he and Team Vitality won the Blast.tv Paris Major alongside IEM Rio, Gamers8, BLAST Fall Final, and BLAST World Final. Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut won five MVP medals to underline his contribution to the incredible year.
With the win ZywOo equalizes Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyljev record for three HLTV Best player of the year awards.
Here is all HLTV’s Top 20 CS:GO players through the years
In second place Nikola “NiKo” Kovač picked up his best placement since 2017. The G2 rifler won IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne and sported a 1.20 rating this year.
In third Robin “ropz” Kool took a big jump up compared to his best year in 2019, where the Estonian was ranked 7th.
HLTV’s Top 20 player of 2023:
1. 
Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut
2. 
Nikola “NiKo” Kovač
3. 
Robin “ropz” Kool
4. 
Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov
5. 
Lotan “Spinx” Giladi
6. 
Álvaro “SunPayus” García
7. 
Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev
8. Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov
9. 
Martin “stavn” Lund
10. 
Helvijs “broky” Saukants
11. Nicolai “device” Reedtz
12. 
David “frozen” Čerňanský
13. Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač
14. Guy “NertZ” Iluz
15. Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard
16. Benjamin “blameF” Bremer
17. Emil “Magisk” Reif
18. Casper ”cadiaN” Møller
19. 
Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato
20. 
Russel ”Twistzz” Van Dulken
You can see the players ranked 20-30th in the tweet below.
