Cypher (gamer)


Alexey Yanushevsky , who also goes by the pseudonym "Cypher", resides in Minsk, and is a Belarusian professional player of the first person shooter series Quake. He has been actively competing in international Quake competitions since February 24, 2006. Cypher was most notably the first one to win the QuakeCon 1v1 tournament four times. He has been a champion of many other tournaments, including Electronic Sports World Cup, Intel Extreme Masters, Dreamhack and Asus Cups.

Career

Originally a Quake III Arena player, Yanushevsky gained prominence with successes in Eastern European competitions in Quake IV shortly after the game's release. At the age of 16 he successfully qualified for the Electronic Sports World Cup in his native Belarus and defeated twofold world champion Russian Anton "Cooller" Singov in Moscow competitions. He subsequently entered the Electronic Sports World Cup and was considered a dark horse contestant at the world championship, Yanushevsky eventually reached the finals of the event, where he was defeated, taking second place at the event at an age at which he was too young to enter Cyberathlete Professional League or World Series of Video Games competitions.
Afterwards, Cypher was signed to professional video gaming team Fnatic. He made top five finishes at QuakeCon as well as the World Cyber Games. The following year he was one of the more successful players in international competition, taking 2nd and 3rd at two World Series of Video Games stops.
After the World Series of Video Games disbanded mid-season, Yanushevsky started focusing primarily on Quake III again, which eventually culminated in victory at the Electronic Sports World Cup Masters in July, 2008. He was then signed to the team Serious Gaming. On August 3, 2008, Yanushevsky won the Quake Live 1v1 Championship at QuakeCon 2008 his second major title. On August 27 he won the Electronic Sports World Cup 2008.
Cypher left Serious Gaming in December 2012. During this time he tried out the game Shootmania in Team Millenium, placing 3rd at the Cyberathlete Summit in Paris.
In December 2013, Cypher beat Shane "Rapha" Hendrixson to win DreamHack Winter 2013.
In July 2014 Cypher won his fourth QuakeCon, QuakeCon 2014, without losing a single map in the play-offs stage.
During 2015, Cypher tried out Counter Strike: Global Offensive and achieved a good level, but as he was looking for a team, Overwatch came out in beta and he decided to play that instead. During 2016 he played Overwatch and also achieved a good level, but again he had to switch games as he was starting to find his form, this time because of the announcement of Quake Champions, due to come out in 2017.

Notable achievements

2017