An hour before their match against Astralis, Natus Vincere announced that their academy player, Valeriy “B1T” Vakhovskiy, will play under the Natus Vincere. Who is this player that is now playing against tier one teams?
A little Bit news incoming #BlastPremier
— NAVI (@natusvincere) December 8, 2020
About B1T
In 2019, Natus Vincere announced the project of NAVI Junior to help new player talent grow and possibly join the main roster in the future. To kickstart their roster, NaVi also announced an application process to find ten players. Those ten players would attend a two-month boot camp, and after, five would be chosen for the roster. At the end of the camp, 17-year-old B1T was one of three to join the roster permanently, while four other players joined on a trial period. In-game, he is one of the stronger players and has an HLTV rating of 1.14. In terms of tier-one experience, B1T and NAVI Junior have played Virtus.pro in two best of three series. Although the team has lost both series, B1T seemed to perform very well against the team.
B1T in Natus Vincere
The Astralis match is not the first time he has played under the Natus Vincere main roster. B1T briefly stood in for electronic while he was having Wi-Fi issues against Heroic. Although it was only for a few rounds, he went 3-2 against the number two team of the time. Now, Natus Vincere looks to copy Vitality and others’ team structure by having “a roster with 6–7 members.” While he did not do fantastic in his debut game, it was his first game, and not much practice has gone on. However, it will be interesting to see how Natus Vincere utilizes a possible 6-7 man roster and how that affects their playstyle and map picks.
Hi @AstralisCS #BlastPremier @BLASTPremier pic.twitter.com/ULmMIajpMq
— NAVI (@natusvincere) December 8, 2020
As seen from top teams such as Astralis and Vitality, 6+ man rosters are the game’s future. Six-man rosters “allows the players to focus on specific maps, spend more time on the key positions, and have more opportunities to recover in the conditions of a tight tournament schedule.” Hopefully, the addition of B1T, and possibly more, will allow Natus Vincere to rise up the rankings and shine as a team.
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