Faker-The Legend of Esport

Adam Čapek

Lee Sang-hyeok was born on 7th May 1996 in South Korean capital city Seoul. He is better known as Faker, considered as the best player of League of Legends of all time. Since his childhood he was an introverted and extremely intelligent guy. When he played puzzles he wanted to solve it faster and to be more efficient. When he was 10 years old he discovered computer games. Because of his intelligence, he had a huge potential in strategy games. So he started to play Starcraft II. which had already at that time a big fan base and a famous e-sport league. When the popularity of Starcraft declined, he gave a chance to a new title League of Legends by Riot Games. To have the biggest impact on the game, he chose to be at the middle lane, where much of the game takes place. He experimented in different areas of the game to invent new strategies to outperform other players in the enemy team.

In 2013 he stopped studying at a high school to fully focus on playing the game professionally. The same year a well known organisation SK Telecom decided to make a new team to compete in the Korean LCK league. The team was missing a midlaner so they chose Faker according to his placing in the leaderboard. Even though he was new to e-sport and had no experience he managed to carry the team to victory and qualify for the 2013 World Championship. In the Championship he faced European team Fnatic and Chinese team Royal Club. Faker won to the fullest with three points and brought the Summoner's cup to South Korea.

The next year wasn't a blessing for his team. The results were good but it wasn't enough to qualify for the 2014 World Championship. The 2015 World Championship was insane. Lee and his team won while only dropping one game in the finals (against the Koo Tigers) for a record of 15-1 throughout the tournament. SKT became the only team to be the winner more than once.

In 2016 SKT placed third in the summer split, but still qualified for the championship. In the semifinals they defeated the ROX Tigers in a close and very intense 3:2 series, winning their third world championship title. Lee was honored as the most valuable player of the tournament. In the next seasons they weren't very successful, but still they did pretty well.

I consider him to be the best League of Legends player although his results aren't as good as they used to be. And I learned a lot of strategies watching him.