Richard "Xizt" Landström has been voted MVP of IEM5 European Championship Finals. Also, along with four other players, he is a part of the All-star team of the tournament. For complete results of the vote, read below.

Most tournaments these days do not give out individual awards to players, so we decided to bring you an innovation in 2011 by having an MVP and an All-star lineup vote for every major tournament of the year. However, in order to make the results more credible, they will not only be decided by the public vote, but also by the votes of experts, such as players who participated in those tournaments, as well as journalists from all over the world.

On our first occasion, after IEM5 European Championship Finals, we managed to collect over 3700 votes from our users (with polls in this article) and 60 expert opinions. We have added the results from those two polls and reached the final decision on who the MVP is and what the All-star team of the tournament in Kiev looks like.

MVP

The MVP (Most Valuable Player) of IEM5 European Championship Finals in Kiev is Richard "Xizt" Landström, as he topped both sides of the poll, getting 54% of votes from the experts and 47% from the public.

Even though he is a relatively new name on the scene, during 2010 Landström showed us his potential on several occasions, and in the end he was even placed 18th on our Top 20 players of 2010 ranking. Recently he changed teams, joining fnatic near the end of last year, after previously playing for H2k and Lions.

In his first official appearance with the new team, he became the revelation of the tournament, having the best performance of his career so far and reaching his biggest success. His amazing display in the semi-final and especially the final of the tournament earned him the MVP nomination and subsequently made him the choice of most voters. 

Statistics also back up Landström's MVP claim, as he was the best rated player in the playoffs (1.29 rating, 4th overall with 1.19 rating), and also the best clutcher (9 rounds won in 1vsX situations) and the best pistol-round player of the event.

MVP of IEM5 European Championship Finals:

Richard "Xizt" Landström (fnatic)

Here is what Landström's performances looked like match by match:

Opponent (Result)	Stage	Score	+/-	Rating	Demo
Na´Vi (16:14)	Group stage	22-21	+1	1.01	HLTV
Lions (15:15)	Group stage	23-20	+3	1.07	POV
forZe (16:1)	Group stage	13-6	+7	1.34	POV
TCM (16:3)	Group stage	5-10	-5	0.61	HLTV
Alternate (16:3)	Group stage	17-10	+7	1.26	HLTV
Na´Vi (2:1 in maps)	Semi-final	64-44	+20	1.30	HLTV
mTw (2:1 in maps)	Final	86-62	+24	1.28	HLTV

We also conducted an interview with Landström after the event (you can read it here), as well as made a mini-movie with his best moments from the tournament:

All-star

For the first time ever, we have also conducted an All-star lineup vote, whose goal is to give recognition to a few other players who performed well at the tournament along with the MVP. The two sides of the poll agreed on the first four players, while the 5th one was a close call between Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas and Marcus "Delpan" Larsson. 

All-star lineup of IEM5 European Championship Finals:

Filip "Neo" Kubski (Frag eXecutors)
Richard "Xizt" Landström (fnatic)
Martin "trace" Heldt (mTw)
Patrik "cArn" Sättermon (fnatic)
Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas (Frag eXecutors)

Filip "Neo" Kubski was the most frequent choice for the All-star lineup in both sides of the poll. He found himself in every 9 out of 10 lineups by our users, and almost as much in the experts' votes. Kubski was statistically the most impressive player of the event, with the by far best rating of 1.33 and without a single bad performance in his 10 maps.

The MVP of the tournament, fnatic's Richard "Xizt" Landström was a very close second most chosen player with around 85% of the votes from both the public and the experts.

The only player from runners-up mTw who stood out significantly was Martin "trace" Heldt and that was recognized in the vote as he was the third most picked player. The experts gave him quite a bit more credit, having him in 85% of their teams compared to our users 64%. Heldt was a real one man army in this tournament, having a rating 20% better than his team's average and the 2nd best of all players (1.23).

The fourth most picked player was the ingame leader of the winning team fnatic, Patrik "cArn" Sättermon. He was the choice of 65% of his colleagues and journalists, while our every second user had him in their lineup. In addition to leading the team in the game, Sättermon also excelled statistically, particularly during the group stage as he helped fnatic secure some very important wins early on, especially the one in their debut against Na´Vi which proved to be the catalyst for their further success.

The last place in the All-star team was a close call in the vote, as Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas barely edged the best awper of the tournament, Marcus "Delpan" Larsson to complete this fearsome fictional lineup. The choice of those two players was also the biggest disagreement between the experts and the public, as our users wanted Larsson with 42% of their votes, while the experts gave the advantage to Wojtas as their 5th player with 36%. In the end, either of them would have been a justified pick, while Wojtas deserved it if by nothing else then by his impressive stats, as he was the 3rd best rated player of the event (1.21 rating).

Poll results

Results of the MVP poll:

Player	Total	Experts	Public
Richard "Xizt" Landström (fnatic)	50.1%	53.3%	46.9%
Filip "Neo" Kubski (Frag eXecutors)	40.4%	36.7%	44.2%
Martin "trace" Heldt (mTw)	9.5%	10.0%	9.0%

Results of the All-star poll:

Player	Total	Experts	Public
Filip "Neo" Kubski (Frag eXecutors)	88.2%	86.7%	89.7%
Richard "Xizt" Landström (fnatic)	84.7%	85.0%	84.3%
Martin "trace" Heldt (mTw)	74.3%	85.0%	63.6%
Patrik "cArn" Sättermon (fnatic)	57.4%	65.0%	49.9%
Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas (Frag eXecutors)	33.1%	36.7%	29.5%
Marcus "Delpan" Larsson (fnatic)	32.2%	21.7%	42.7%
Yegor "markeloff" Markelov (Na´Vi)	28.3%	20.0%	36.7%
Harley "dsn" Örwall (fnatic)	22.3%	28.3%	16.2%
Rasmus "Gux" Ståhl (Lions)	21.2%	21.7%	20.8%
Sergey "starix" Ischuk (Na´Vi)	14.8%	11.7%	17.9%
Niklas "niko" Johansson (Lions)	12.2%	18.3%	6.1%
Jakub "kuben" Gurczynski (Frag eXecutors)	9.2%	5.0%	13.3%
Christophe "sixeR" Xia (eSahara)	8.7%	6.7%	10.8%
Eduard "ed1k" Ivanov (MYM)	6.2%	5.0%	7.4%
Oliver "minet" Minet (mTw)	4.5%	1.7%	7.2%
Michael "Friis" Jørgensen (TCM)	2.7%	1.7%	3.8%

In the end, we would like to thank the journalists from the following fellow sites for contributing their votes for our non-public poll: fnatic.com, XplayN.com, mymym.com, fragbite.se, cyberarena.tv, team-aAa.com, cnfrag.com, SK-gaming.com, rakaka.se, proplay.ru, ESL TV.

We hope to get in contact with even more colleagues next time and even more players, but at the same time we also feel that the poll didn't suffer from a lack of votes, as the results show enough diversity and feature many different opinions.

We hope you enjoyed our coverage of the IEM5 European Championship Finals, as we are now putting an end to it and we are turning to the future. The next tournament that you will be able to follow closely on HLTV.org will be WGF from 17-19th February, while soon after that comes one of the biggest tournaments of the year, IEM5 World Championship from March 1-5.