Alexey Yanushevsky (Алексе́й Анато́льевич Януше́вский) (born May 17, 1990),[1] who also goes by thepseudonym "Cypher", resides inMinsk, and is aBelarusian professional player of the first person shooter seriesQuake. He has been actively competing in internationalQuake competitions since February 24, 2006. Cypher was most notably the first one to win theQuakeCon 1v1 tournament four times (in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014). He has been a champion of many other tournaments, including Electronic Sports World Cup,Intel Extreme Masters, Dreamhack and Asus Cups.[2]
Originally aQuake III Arena player, Yanushevsky gained prominence with successes in Eastern European competitions inQuake IV shortly after the game's release. At the age of 16 he successfully qualified for theElectronic Sports World Cup in his native Belarus and defeated twofold world champion Russian Anton "Cooller" Singov inMoscow competitions.[3] He subsequently entered the Electronic Sports World Cup and was considered adark 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 enterCyberathlete Professional League orWorld Series of Video Games competitions.
Afterwards, Cypher was signed to professional video gaming teamFnatic.[when?] He made top five finishes atQuakeCon as well as theWorld 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 onQuake III again, which eventually culminated in victory at the Electronic Sports World Cup Masters in July, 2008. He was then signed to the teamSerious Gaming.[4] On August 3, 2008, Yanushevsky won the Quake Live 1v1 Championship at QuakeCon 2008[5] his second major title.[6] On August 27 he won theElectronic Sports World Cup 2008.
Cypher left Serious Gaming in December 2012.[7] During this time he tried out the gameShootmania in Team Millenium, placing 3rd at the Cyberathlete Summit in Paris.
In July 2014 Cypher won his fourth QuakeCon,QuakeCon 2014, without losing a single map in the play-offs stage.[9]
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 playedOverwatch and also achieved a good level (his team ANOX was top 6 in Europe during the ESL Overwatch Atlantic Showdown, and top 16 in the world during the Overwatch Open), but again he had to switch games as he was starting to find his form, this time because of the announcement ofQuake Champions, due to come out in 2017.[citation needed]