The fourth best player of 2021 kicks off his year with a bang by securing the fourth MVP of his career at Funspark ULTI Finals.

Gambit marched imperiously to the title at Funspark ULTI Finals, winning every series they played, and in doing so also secured the MVP by HLTV x BitSkins for star AWPer Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov.

The young Russian promised to "achieve higher and more stable results" after grabbing the fourth spot in his debut on the HLTV Top 20 list, and set about that task with purpose in his first event of 2022.

sh1ro was the clear MVP in this event

sh1ro stood out in plenty of categories statistically across the event, including rating (1.43), KD-diff (+102), multi-kill rounds (54.9%) and success in opening duels (80%); he also posted an impressive impact rating of 1.41, improving in an area that at times let him down in 2021.

The 20-year-old's best match came against Complexity in the opening round, where he posted a monstrous 1.95-rated 31 kill performance on Dust2 to close the series, but he was outstanding in every single game.

The two other MVP candidates were fellow teammates of the eventual winner, Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov and Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov, but neither came close to sh1ro's sheer output or consistency by the time the grand final was done and dusted.

2022 MVPs by HLTV.org:

Funspark ULTI Finals- sh1ro

Abay 'HObbit' Khassenov Age: 27 Team: Gambit Rating 1.0: 1.07 Maps played: 1113 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.65 Gambit #2 Abay 'HObbit' KhassenovTimofey 'interz' YakushinSergey 'Ax1Le' RykhtorovDmitry 'sh1ro' SokolovVladislav 'nafany' Gorshkov Dmitry 'sh1ro' Sokolov Age: 20 Team: Gambit Rating 1.0: 1.22 Maps played: 813 KPR: 0.77 DPR: 0.53 Sergey 'Ax1Le' Rykhtorov Age: 19 Team: Gambit Rating 1.0: 1.09 Maps played: 886 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.63 Complexity #28 Johnny 'JT' TheodosiouRicky 'floppy' KemeryMichael 'Grim' WincePaytyn 'junior' JohnsonJustin 'FaNg' Coakley