Liquid Let Siuhy Go: A 0.87 Rating, Three Majors, Zero Playoffs — and One Empty Chair

The number on the screen is small enough to scroll past: 0.87, averaged across 185 maps. For an in-game leader that figure is not an accident — it is the summary of a long, slow decline. Team Liquid has finally released Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek, and the Polish player is now a free agent.

The notebook had twelve columns, but the story kept adding a thirteenth. When I sat in Rajshahi in 2026 logging 612 shots from 24 Bangladesh Premier League matches by hand — location, body part, pressure, assist type — I did not imagine that seven years later the same method would be used to measure the collapse of a European Counter-Strike roster. Twelve columns capture the data. They do not capture the person.

Context: Only the Major Tells the Truth

In the Counter-Strike 2 calendar, not every event carries equal weight. The Major is Valve's sanctioned world championship, and it is the only benchmark that prices a roster. Third-party events such as FISSURE Playground can be won and rankings can rise, but a trophy at that level loses half its meaning if the team cannot survive a Major Swiss stage.

Liquid's problem accumulates here. The shot-calling chair has changed hands four times in recent seasons — Casper “cadiaN” Møller, Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken, then Szkaradek, now Johnny “JT” Theodosiou. When a team hunts for a new in-game leader every season, it is not searching for a new system. It is starting from zero each time and losing the work already done.

Szkaradek arrived on loan from MOUZ in April 2026. Sixteen months followed, including a spell on the bench, ending in a clean release to free agency.

Core Evidence: Where the Numbers Agree

Three Majors, zero playoffs — that single line is the sharpest sentence in the report. Liquid's map record at Majors was 5-11, a 31 percent win rate, which sits at the bottom edge of what a tier-one roster should produce. Their best result in the window was a top-four finish at FISSURE Playground #2, a lower-tier third-party event — a good outcome that does not compensate for Major failure.

I have a working rule: I trust a trend only after it survives a pivot table and a press box. The 5-11 Major record is a pivot-table result; it also survived the press box, because nobody has overturned the zero-playoff count. Sixteen months with nothing beyond a single top-four means the team is standing exactly where it stood before.

Dust2.us reported that there were “several strong pieces around siuhy.” That one sentence relocates the blame. If the problem were a talent deficit, the fix would be a purchase. When the problem is integration, a purchase is not a fix. A 0.87 rating is an individual figure, but the way the team broke apart was collective.

On the rating scale, 1.00 is the neutral line. A 0.87 across 185 maps is below average, sustained for sixteen months. In-game leaders usually post slightly lower individual numbers because they call, buy flashes, and create frags for others rather than taking them. But an IGL earns forgiveness on one condition: winning. In Szkaradek's case neither side matched — low individual output and low team output.

Contrarian Angle: What Rating Does Not Measure

Here is my strongest reservation. 0.87 is a valid number, but it is not a valid measure of an IGL's work. What a caller does — reading economy mid-round, anticipating setups, deciding which rounds to concede and which to fully invest — none of it enters the rating. Rating measures frags, and frags come from rounds the caller created but did not personally play.

Second reservation: the IGL churn predates Szkaradek. cadiaN, Twistzz, Szkaradek, JT. In that list he is one link, not the cause. When the cause is structural, changing the individual does not change the structure. If the list was already four names long, then before adding a fifth you have to ask whether the chair is unstable because of the player, or because the team does not know what it wants to play.

Third reservation is a caution. The report contains no patch, map-pool, or meta context. Valve ships Counter-Strike updates irregularly and at long intervals — the biweekly MOBA patch cycle does not exist here. So any meta-based explanation for the underperformance has no data behind it. Where there is no data, building a story out of inference is forbidden in my method.

A fourth counter-intuitive fact rarely makes headlines: he is a free agent at no cost. No buyout, no transfer fee. For a club that is cheap; for the player it is a chance to prove himself at a discount, or the beginning of a career slide. Which one depends on the tier he lands in.

Verification Note: A Date Inconsistency

One matter of news discipline belongs here. The summary dates the benching to July 2026, yet the player joined in April 2026 and the narrative describes a sixteen-month tenure. That date needs verification before it is treated as settled, because a wrong date bends the entire timeline. Every promise should carry a deadline, otherwise it cannot be checked later — the same logic applies here.

Empty Chair, Silence as Box Score

Empty stadiums taught me that silence has a box score. When the Bundesliga restarted in 2026, I hand-logged all 81 remaining matches and found the home win rate fell from 43.4 percent to 32.1 percent. The same logic applies here: Liquid's empty chair is not a “player leaves” story, it is a measurable deficit. The team will now take the server with a slot nobody has been named to fill.

Sitting in a small LAN venue in Rajshahi, I have seen many times that in Bangladesh an in-game leader's real value is measured in the Discord call, not on the scoreboard. Who assigns the caller who schedules five people's scrims through load-shedding, who holds a roster together through a month of delayed payments? Our market leaves the IGL chair empty often, because the chair itself is exhausting work — less visible glory, more responsibility. Liquid is no different; it is just buying the same problem at a higher price.

Every fan chant leaves a timestamp, even when the stadium is empty. 0.87 is that timestamp. But what sits in the thirteenth column — sixteen months of fatigue, a language gap, the cost of relearning a new system every week — never appears on a rating table.

The Market: One Exit, Another's Opportunity

Szkaradek becoming a free agent is not an isolated event. Read alongside the discussion of s1mple's move to BC.Game, 100 Thieves rebuilding a roster, and Liquid's vacant Dota 2 mid lane, the picture is an active market in which even top clubs are reshuffling their names.

In that market Szkaradek is an awkward product: experience, Major exposure, no buyout — but a poor recent rating. Budget-conscious teams may see him as a cheap experiment; top teams will likely wait, because putting the wrong person in the IGL chair shows up in results very quickly.

Liquid's risk runs the other way. JT took over calling mid-cycle, when the structure was already weak. A new caller gets a grace period at the start — everyone adjusts to a new voice, and opponents are unprepared. If that window produces results, the question gets buried; if it does not, it will confirm the problem was never which caller, but how the calling role was managed.

Signal for the Next Round

I am not calling Liquid weak right now. I am calling them incomplete. An empty chair does not win a Major, and after three Majors without a playoff, leaving it empty is not courage — it is indecision. Whether Szkaradek's exit was correct will be settled by his next destination and by Liquid's next fifth player. Neither is written yet.

My notebook still has twelve columns. But after watching every round of the last sixteen months, I know the thirteenth has to be written by hand — and writing it means waiting for the next contract announcement.