This video is sponsored by… MY BROTHER, 2kliksphilip, whose new Odgrub video contains
a surprise twist! You’ll never guess who Odgrub’s Brother turns out to be, so check
it out to have your mind blown.
The winner of the PGL Major got $1,000,000. Second place got $300,000. And in the Grand
Finals, on the second map, the outcome was largely dictated by a single shot.
‘AND SIMPLE’S SITTING NOOOOOOO’
And then 2 more which also missed.
Let’s recap: Navi won the first map of the Grand Final.
G2 looked like they were about to win the second! They were 15-10 up and all they needed
to do was to not choke and to win a single round and it would go on to a third, decider
map.
But this didn’t happen! Navi successfully brought it back to 15-15, and then won in
double overtime, winning the game. Spoiler alert.
There are always going to be ‘what if’ moments. Especially on the most viewed Counter-Strike
match of all time, between two of the best and most loved teams and players in the world.
And especially when there’s a million dollars of prize money on the line!
But one moment in particular stood out! Bearing in mind G2 had to win just 1 of the 5 final
rounds, they got extremely close to doing this on round 28.
G2 were strapped for cash, buying just pistols and a bit of utility. They were going up against
Navi, who were fully kitted out with weapons, armour and lots of utility… and who were
on the CT side of Nuke. Yet despite all of this, G2 somehow managed to bring it back
down to a 3 VS 2 in their favour, and they got the bomb planted! It was all looking hopeful.
Simple killed one, bringing it back down to a 2v2. Now all G2 had to do was to delay them
until the bomb exploded. And it was all up to Hunter and Niko. Hunter had done brilliantly
so far that round: he had killed 2 members of Navi AND got the bomb planted.
Navi didn’t know specifically where Hunter was, but they could make an educated guess,
and wait for him to show himself. But they didn’t have a clue where Niko was, who had
successfully snuck all the way around behind them and up into heaven.
And this was the moment that everybody remembers. ‘AND SIMPLE’S SITTING NOOOOOOO HOFOWHODFHJNO
MFVOFGMOGM MLCVMMANMF’
All 3 shots missed Simple, who then killed Niko, with Navi quickly winning the round
and defusing the bomb. What happened?
Well, ignoring the deagle’s inaccuracy for a second, it looks like the first shot WAS
a miss. A last-second adjustment from Niko overshot the target, meaning he did miss ever
so slightly. The second shot looked like a hit, but the
third looked like it missed again because of the last-minute crouch by Simple.
But how much can we trust these recordings of the round? I got these video files from
a slow-motion recording of the 128 tick gotv demo file. This records everything in the
match 128 times a second, and I’d say is one of the best playbacks we can hope for.
HOWEVER, I still don’t think they’re 100% accurate- for a start, they interpolate character
model movements, and so there are minor variations every time you play it. For example, in this
recording, Niko’s body fell down the ladder, while in this one, it collapsed on the side.
On THIS recording, the gun animations bugged out, and on another it looked like the crosshair
was right on Simple when he fired that first shot!
But if we watch the official stream, we can make out a last-second mouse adjustment from
Niko that moved the crosshair off to the side of Simple’s head slightly. So I guess you
COULD make arguments for whatever reality you’d like to live in, but by most metrics,
that first shot did miss.
But things are never this ‘simple’, because we ALSO need to account for weapon inaccuracy!
And the deagle is notoriously unreliable for this.
If you want to calculate all this mathematically then be my guest. But I opted for the less
precise, but far more entertaining option of recreating the doomed moment, from Niko’s
perspective, but using the console command cl_weapon_debug_show_accuracy 2
to represent where each bullet could have gone. You can see, even when being patient
and crouched, the amount the bullet can still deviate from the crosshair is QUITE BIG!
So here is what happened, compared with my recreation of it. As you can see, 100% the
same, I did an excellent job, and don’t forget to smash that subscribe button.
Now let’s overlay these circles in my clip onto the real deal. Remember, it’s only
the timings that matter- the distance to the target won’t affect the size of these circles
because bullets travel in a straight line. Now, from this distance, at the moment Niko
fired after stopping and crouching, the first shot’s accuracy is almost EXACTLY the same
size as Simple’s head is! Which means that- had Niko fired just 1/20th of a second sooner,
he would almost have guaranteed a hit. Isn’t that sickening! …but he didn’t do that,
so there. Enhance.
This is the moment right before he did fire. So there was still a chance that it would
have hit- but it wasn’t much. A lot less than 50% and I’d argue even less than 25%.
There are already a few assumptions leading up to this point so I won’t be more specific
than that. But I do think the first shot SHOULD have missed.
But let’s look at the second shot, which I think is the most exciting of the 3!
Enhance! …Sharpen?
Denoise- Oh whatever.
So the second shot was BANG ON Simple’s character model. But unfortunately missed
again! Now, this one was unlucky- and I think Niko did the best he could have done to remedy
his first miss. There was definitely a chance that it could have hit Simple’s head, killing
him instantly at a range of just 850 units. But there was probably a bigger chance that
the bullet would have just hit his upper body, which with 93 health and armour on, would
still have taken 3 hits to kill. But as it turns out, neither of these things happened,
and instead the bullet completely missed Simple, with the decal landing right behind his head,
for added insult. And moving onto the third and final shot,
that was a miss, fair and square… but with Niko using the deagle, there was STILL a chance
that it could have been a headshot!
I noticed a tiny bit of movement between shots. Niko was still crouched, and moving only very
slowly, and from my testing, this wouldn’t have made any significant difference to the
deagle’s accuracy, other than to very marginally to have reduced his chances further.
In conclusion: of the 3 shots, all 3 COULD have killed, all 3 probably shouldn’t have
done, but I think Niko deserved to hit him at least once, and for a bit of damage. But
given how the deagle is, were this repeated a hundred times, I believe that Simple would
survive more often than not.
Now onto the speculation of what would have happened next: What would have happened had
one of those bullets been a headshot, and killed Simple? Well, it would have -briefly-
become a 2v1, with B1t having to somehow survive and to defuse against all of the odds. Had
G2 known this was going to happen, Niko and Hunter could then easily have worked together
to distract him for long enough to win the round, and game, pushing the match onto a
third and final map. But maybe this wouldn’t have happened! Even
while Niko was still missing all of his shots, Hunter was already pushing the site, whereupon
he duelled B1t and lost. And given the timing, this might still have happened even if Simple
HAD been killed, which would have made it a 1v1 situation. Niko, still armed with just
a deagle and up in heaven, against B1t, on the site, attempting a defuse. What a tense
situation that would have been. And it’s at this point I’ll hand the speculation
over to you. What do YOU think would have happened then?