Twistzz

Twistzz — Russel Van Dulken

A documentary biography of the Canadian rifler who won everything on two continents, from Liquid's Grand Slam summer to FaZe's Antwerp Major, and became an in-game leader at 26, built from HLTV profile data, HLTV news records and verified tournament reports.

1. Ontario Beginnings and the North American Ladder

Russel Van Dulken plays under the name Twistzz. He was 26 at the time of the profile record, Canadian, and listed as a member of FaZe, with career prize money of $1,484,728, the highest in this assignment, and a three-month Rating 3.0 of 1.18 across his recent sample. The team history runs to ten organisations, beginning with Tectonic in late 2015, when he was 16, and continuing through SKDC, Agg, kKona, TSM and Misfits from January to April 2017. The FACEIT record shows 1,244 matches at a 63.0 percent win rate with a 1.54 average KDR, and his FPL history includes a standout season 41 in the CS:GO era, 65 matches won at a 60 percent rate with 1,832 points and an eleventh-place finish.

The North American ladder of 2015 and 2016 was the sport's most open development system: ESEA leagues, open qualifiers and mix-teams with minimal gatekeeping, where a mechanically gifted teenager could climb from obscurity to professional attention in months. No academy structure filtered the talent; results did. Van Dulken climbed it in just over a year. TSM signed him in March 2016, giving him his first genuine organisation, and Misfits took him in January 2017. By April 2017, at 17, he was signed by Team Liquid, the biggest organisation in North American Counter-Strike. The ascent from Tectonic to Liquid took eighteen months.

The Liquid signing closed the apprenticeship and opened one of the most decorated careers in the sport. He would stay until December 2020, three years and eight months, win ten trophies including an Intel Grand Slam, and establish himself as a perennial Top 20 player with a reputation for playoff reliability. The teenager who had played for five organisations in sixteen months found a home, and the home found a star who would define its identity for the next four years.

2. Liquid's Grand Slam Summer and the 2019 Peak

The first Liquid spell, from April 2017 to December 2020, contains the most dominant team run in North American history. The 2017 and 2018 seasons were the apprenticeship: the teenager learning tier-one protocols alongside established stars, finishing number 12 in the 2018 Top 20 as the first individual marker. Then came the summer of 2019, when Liquid won IEM Sydney, DreamHack Dallas, the Pro League Season 9 Finals, Cologne, Chicago and the Los Angeles BLAST event in a single streak, claiming the Grand Slam Season 2 million-dollar prize as the seal. The trophy list sequences it: cs_summit 2, SuperNova Malta, iBUYPOWER Masters, IEM Sydney 2019, DreamHack Masters Dallas 2019, the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals, ESL One Cologne 2019, BLAST Pro Series Los Angeles 2019, IEM Chicago 2019, and the ESL Pro League Season 11 North America title, with the Intel Grand Slam Season 2 million-dollar prize binding the 2019 summer together.

Van Dulken's individual recognition tracked the team success. The Top 20 placements show number 12 in 2018, before the peak, and number 9 in 2019, at its centre. The 2019 number 9 finish, achieved at 20, placed him among the ten best players on the planet during the most competitive year of his career to that point, ahead of established stars on rival rosters and behind only the game's short list of superstars. His game in this era was the complete rifle package: entry-capable, trade-reliable, clutch-steady, with the utility usage that would later become his statistical signature.

The Major record of the spell shows the one gap. The quarter-final at StarLadder Major Berlin 2019 was the deepest run, achieved against the Astralis dynasty at its peak, which means the greatest North American team ever assembled never reached a Major final. That fact has followed the roster's legacy ever since, and it is the standard explanation for why the 2019 Liquid is remembered as a great team rather than the greatest: the summer streak has no final-day validation at a Valve event. That fact has followed the roster's legacy ever since, and it followed Van Dulken personally into his next chapter: a player with every trophy except the one that defines careers. The Grand Slam million and the Cologne title answered most questions. The Major question remained open.

3. FaZe Glory: Antwerp, Cologne and the Grand Slam

In January 2021 Van Dulken joined FaZe, and the spell lasted until December 2023, three full years. The trophy list from this era is the strongest of any player in the assignment: IEM Katowice 2022, ESL Pro League Season 15, the PGL Major Antwerp 2022 title, IEM Cologne 2022, ESL Pro League Season 17, IEM Sydney 2023, the Thunderpick World Championship 2023, the CS Asia Championships 2023, and the Intel Grand Slam Season 4 prize. Nine trophies in three years, including the Major that had eluded him at Liquid.

Antwerp in May 2022 is the career's centrepiece. FaZe won the PGL Major, beating NAVI in the final, and Van Dulken became a Major champion at 22, six years after his first professional match. The victory closed the narrative opened at Berlin 2019: the star of the best team to never win a Major had won one, and he had done it against the s1mple-era NAVI that owned the sport. The Cologne 2022 title two months later, at the sport's cathedral event in the LANXESS arena, confirmed the roster as the best in the world, and the Pro League Season 17 title in 2023 plus the Grand Slam Season 4 prize extended the dominance across the full three-year arc. The IEM Katowice 2022 title that opened the year and the Pro League Season 15 title that preceded Antwerp complete a trophy cabinet most players would trade their careers for, all won within eighteen months.

The individual honours of the spell, number 17 in 2021 and number 11 in 2022, understate his importance to those teams relative to the Liquid peaks, which reflects the roster's distribution of stardom rather than any decline. FaZe's best lineups spread peak performances across five players, with ropz arriving in 2022 to add another star to the mix, and his role within them emphasised completeness over highlights. The 2023 number 20 placement, achieved in a year of IEM Sydney, Thunderpick and CAC titles, shows the consistency outlasting the peak: even as FaZe's dominance softened, he remained one of the twenty best players in the world. The Legends finishes at Stockholm 2021 and Rio 2022, plus the quarter-final at Paris 2023, show the Major consistency surrounding the Antwerp title, with playoff-stage Counter-Strike as the baseline expectation every single cycle. By December 2023, when he returned to Liquid, he had won everything the sport offers at team level.

4. Return to Liquid and the Second Spell

The return to Liquid, from December 2023 to September 2025, lasted twenty-one months and produced no trophies in the profile's trophy section. The Major record shows a quarter-final at Shanghai 2024, where Liquid lost to the eventual champion Spirit in the bracket, and Stage 3 at Austin 2025, respectable outcomes that confirmed the roster's place in the world's second tier without threatening the first. The Liquid teams of those years cycled through AWPers, with Roland "ultimate" Tomkowiak holding the position at the end, and through coaching setups, with Viktor "flashie" Tamás on the bench, but the core instability was structural: the organisation could not assemble five players whose peaks coincided, and the results plateaued at quarter-finals and group exits. The Top 20 placement for the period's end, number 11 in 2025, is the most interesting datum of the spell: at 25 and 26, in a team winning nothing, he was ranked higher than in either of his FaZe title years.

That paradox describes the player's evolution. The 2025 number 11 finish, his sixth Top 20 placement across eight years, was built on individual consistency rather than team success, which inverted the pattern of his career to that point. The Liquid teams of 2024 and 2025 changed pieces around him, cycled through AWPers and support players, and never found the formula, but his own game held at a level the rankings could not ignore. The spell ended in September 2025 with his return to FaZe, closing the circle: Liquid to FaZe to Liquid to FaZe, with the second FaZe spell beginning under completely different circumstances from the first.

The Austin Major with Liquid in June 2025, Stage 3, deserves noting as the bridge between the spells. It was his last Major with the organisation that raised him, played weeks before his departure, and it ended in the middle stages rather than the deep run the farewell might have deserved. The roster's supporting pieces had been cycling for months, and the result reflected a team in transition rather than a player in decline, as his number 11 ranking that year confirmed. The narrative symmetry of returning to FaZe two months later gave the transfer its emotional logic: the 26-year-old going home to the club where he won his Major, to attempt the hardest transition of his career.

5. The IGL Transition: "The Best Leader I Can Be"

The second FaZe spell began with the most consequential decision of his career: taking the in-game lead. In an interview published on 29 July 2026, Van Dulken addressed the transition directly: "Until FaZe says otherwise, I will give everything I have and become the best leader I can be." The sentence is a pledge of total commitment wrapped in an acknowledgement of contingency. Until FaZe says otherwise: the role is the organisation's to give and take. I will give everything: the effort is his to guarantee. The best leader I can be: the ceiling is effort-defined rather than talent-promised.

"Until FaZe says otherwise, I will give everything I have and become the best leader I can be."

The context made the pledge necessary. FaZe's 2026 rebuild removed karrigan, the sport's most experienced caller, benched broky in June, loaned JBOEN for the AWP, signed Neityu permanently in August, and installed enkay J as coach. The roster that resulted had frozen as its star, two prospects in JBOEN and Neityu, jcobbb as the volatile opener, and a 26-year-old former star rifler being asked to call for the first time at tier-one level. The community reaction questioned every part of it, with commentators calling his mid-round decisions Gold Nova level and demanding a real IGL. The EWC Legacy series answered with the strongest available rebuttal: a 1.76 rating with a 2.28 Mirage while calling, the caller fragging like a star and the stars fragging freely around him.

The transition's difficulty should not be understated. In-game leading at tier one is a separate profession from rifling, requiring years of accumulated map knowledge, opponent tendencies and timeout management. The attribute page hints at why the organisation believed he could do it: Utility at 81, the highest support score of any star in this assignment, describes a player who has always understood the grenade game at a caller's level, setting up teammates' executes as well as his own. That utility brain, combined with a decade of playing in English-language systems under the sport's best coaches, gave him the raw materials of calling before he ever took the role. Van Dulken began learning it at 26, against opponents who had been calling for a decade, while maintaining the 1.15 to 1.21 ratings his profile shows across the summer. That he held his individual level while adding the calling burden is the season's most impressive individual fact, whichever way the team results are judged.

6. Summer 2026: Semis, Playoffs and the EWC Statement

The summer results gave the rebuild its shape: semi-finals at XSE Pro League Guangzhou and BLAST Bounty Season 2, playoffs at the Esports World Cup, with series defeats only to PARIVISION, Spirit and Vitality. The XSE semi-final against PARIVISION on 11 July, the double-overtime marathon, Cache 9-13, Dust2 19-17, Ancient 19-17, saw him post 1.01 with the calling under fire and jcobbb carrying at 1.30. The Bounty semi-final against Spirit on 1 August, 1-2, ended the Malta run. The Bounty round of 16 against DENDELE on 25 July, 2-1, saw him post 1.19 with 40 kills in support of jcobbb's 1.43 and JBOEN's 19-1 Nuke.

The EWC Legacy series on 14 August was his statement performance as caller-fragger. The 2-0 win, Cache 13-6 and Mirage 13-8, featured his 1.76 series with 36 kills to 18 deaths and the 2.28 Mirage, described in the match report as excellent calling driven forwards by powerful fragging, with a clinical offense on Mirage ensuring smooth sailing. The report's framing, strong series both as a caller and as an individual, is the exact combination the transition required. The playoff loss to Vitality, 0-2, ended the run at ninth to sixteenth, but the Legacy series remains the proof of concept: the team can win complete performances with him calling.

The XSE EVPs article graded his event honestly: closer after a couple of decent playoff maps, but a poor start in the BO1s and less impact in the quarter-final than the scoreline suggested, with the Cache and Ancient opens showing a 7-5 record in a 10-2 start and a 1.03 rating in the same scoreline. That assessment, fair rather than flattering, is the right lens for the whole summer: a new caller learning the role in public, with peaks that show the ceiling and valleys that show the cost. The rest of his attribute page supports the same reading: Firepower 71, Entrying 70, Opening 60 and Trading 59 describe the complete rifler he was for a decade, while Clutching 32 reflects a career spent deciding rounds early rather than surviving them late.

7. FISSURE Collapse and the Qualification Battle

September's FISSURE Playground 3 reversed five months of work in five days. The 0-2 loss to Alliance on 8 September and the 1-2 loss to magic on 9 September, with overtime defeats on Ancient and Cache, left FaZe in joint-last place, thirteenth to sixteenth. Van Dulken was the team's best player in the exit, posting 1.27 with 72 kills to 55 deaths across the magic series, the caller fragging while the system collapsed around him. frozen posted 1.02, jcobbb 1.14, JBOEN 0.95, Neityu 0.82.

The structural consequence was the season's defining turn. FaZe's Singapore Major invite probability fell from roughly 87 percent to roughly 63 percent, with only Stake Ranked Episode 4 left before the November deadline, and the club that had missed Cologne by the skin of its teeth faced missing again. The community verdict blamed the calling, the prospects and the project in varying proportions, but the statistical record shows the caller was the team's best player in its worst defeat. That paradox, best performer in the worst result, captures the limits of what calling can do when four teammates slump simultaneously.

The autumn therefore became a qualification battle rather than a trophy hunt, and the caller's burden doubled: win the matches that secure the Major, while continuing to learn the role in public. His three-month ratings through the period, 1.18 to 1.21 over 42 to 43 maps, show the individual game intact. Whether the team follows depends on the supporting cast recovering the levels they showed in July and August.

8. Legacy, Earnings and the Leader's Horizon

The aggregate record: $1,484,728 in career prize money, nineteen team trophies across Liquid and FaZe, two Intel Grand Slams, one Major title at Antwerp 2022, six Top 20 placements from number 12 in 2018 to number 11 in 2025, and ten Major appearances with a title, a quarter-final at Berlin, Legends finishes and the full range of deep runs. He is 26, in his fourth FaZe spell-year, holding a 1.18 recent rating while calling.

The comparative framing is historical. He is the most decorated North American player ever by trophies and prize money, the only player from the region with two Grand Slams and a Major across two organisations, and his six Top 20 finishes span eight years, the longest relevance arc of any player in this assignment. The circuit he outlasted includes entire generations: the SK Brazilians, the Astralis dynasty, the NAVI s1mple era, the Vitality ZywOo years. He won titles in all of them. The IGL transition adds the final dimension: if it succeeds, he becomes one of the rare stars to remake himself as a caller and extend his career by half a decade; if it fails, the rifle prime remains one of the sport's great careers on its own terms.

What comes next is defined by the two timescales running together. The short one is Singapore: qualify, and the rebuild survives to play a home Major cycle with its young core intact; miss, and the project faces the questions that missed Majors always bring, with the caller's position first among them. The long one is the calling itself, which improves on a timescale of years rather than months. His own words set the terms: until FaZe says otherwise, everything he has, the best leader he can be. At 26, with the trophies already won and the money already banked, the pledge reads as the competitive statement of a player who refused the comfortable end of his career in favour of its hardest beginning.

Sources

• https://www.hltv.org/news/43533/top-20-players-of-2025-twistzz-11 — Top 20 profile for 2025 (No. 11).
• https://www.hltv.org/news/45196/twistzz-until-faze-says-otherwise-i-will-give-everything-i-have-and-become-the-best-leader-i-can-be — IGL interview, July 2026.
• https://www.hltv.org/news/45297/faze-ease-past-legacy-into-ewc-playoffs — EWC win over Legacy.
• https://www.hltv.org/news/45279/faze-sign-neityu-in-permanent-deal — Neityu signing and roster context.
• https://www.hltv.org/news/45180/faze-clinch-first-bounty-finals-spot-over-dendele — Bounty win over DENDELE.
• https://www.hltv.org/news/45112/parivision-outlast-faze-to-make-xse-pro-league-grand-final-in-debut-with-hobbit-and-slaxejezzz — XSE semi-final marathon.
• https://www.hltv.org/news/45486/faze-out-in-last-place-at-fpg — FISSURE Playground 3 elimination.
• https://www.hltv.org/news/45136/the-evps-and-all-stars-of-xse-pro-league-guangzhou-2026 — XSE awards assessment.
• https://www.hltv.org/events/8042/starladder-budapest-major-2025 — Budapest Major event record.
• HLTV player profile record (player ID 10394) — attributes, prize money, team tenure, Major and LAN placements, trophy inventory, FACEIT statistics.

Data source: HLTV player profile record. Generated: 2026-10-10.