Recently, one of the most controversial, but in the same time one of the best players of Russia and the world for years - Andrey Sobolev, better known as Deadman, left cybersport. One people love him, another hate: he appeared often in the center of scandals, was often subjected to criticism by the gaming community. His nature became the talk of the town. And all these things on the background of high level gaming, first victories in Russia and on the world arena and total domination at home. It's not an exact biography. Everything below is just a story from the point of view of an ordinary warcrafter without any pretensions to documentary. The main aim of this so to say obituary was to save from oblivion one of our best players and try to brush up his bygone days (good and bad). Anyway Deadman was a great phenomenon in Russian and not only Russian cybersport.

apm 70
An old, a very old Deadman's nickname is used in the beginning of my creative not without purpose. Let's try to revise the very beginning of his career, which started not the best way, to say truly with a maphacker reputation. Yes, that is true; Andrey was known since RoC as a cheater more than a skilled elf. And everyone knew that. Don't you remember an account of a famous orc apm70maphacks?

But the publishing of TFT changed a lot of things, the game was balanced, it changed for the better. New players and teams appeared. Apparently trying to get rid of his ill fame, Deadman started fighting for the first place in the ladder fairly, training his skills rather well. Andrey's achievements in subdual of the stair was so great that he joined French armaTeam in march 2004, one of the main rival of the 4K and mTw.

Gosu games on the BNet were apprehended seriously by everyone as a real level of their skill that time (None even thought about such popular today GGC). One could say "n-leveled elf" and the majority could understand a lot about this player.

The best Russian fighter for the ladder rating was Deadman. His demos appeared on the Russian wc3-sites often and were the subject of a wide speculation. The most discussed games were versus 4K.Grubby. He fought versus the orc with variable success, by the way for the Northrend top 1 also.  Though Andrey managed to climb on the top of the European server and didn't want to let somebody have it, was the first to reach the 50th level by all means a bit later, played successfully in aT, it was not enough for the generally recognition as gosu.

Progamer.ru, that was on the edge that time, organized a show-match series of Russian warcrafers and foreign proplayers. The first to try to win 200 dollars was the new WCG champion, one of the best European humans SK.Insomnia. Deadman was decided to fight with him. The result exceeded all expectations: 4-1 Russian elf won! That was the first time in Russian warcraft: a Russian player could defeat a recognized gosu, even a world champion.

Euphoria took over our wc3 community, someone even wrote an ode in honor of Deadman's game on LT, where he managed to defeat his enemy within record 7 minutes. But the happiness of such a great victory became darkened by a loss of our player to Grubby with 2-3 final score. The game on the same LT was estimated most, when only some seconds saved Farsear for Grubby while he was defending his base.

Deadman was quite successful while playing for aT for WC3L. The team's visit to the LAN-final was in a great deal his merit. But unfortunately he didn't manage to take part in it. Some time after a lot of people named the absence of the French key player the main reason of the team's loss in match with the Kings. In Russian championships usually none could rival him. He was the first National champion, the winner of many other tournaments, for example ASUS Open.

ACON4 in Shanghai was the first international tournament where Deadman took the prize place. Such proplayers as Grubby, Sweet, Tak3r, HeMaN, FaTC and others, 16 players in total, passed the national preliminaries took part in it. Deadman, reached the final, lost to mTw-Wizard with score 3-2. Though he hadn't take the main prize - a new car - but it was Andrey's first heavy success on the international scene.

Another opportunity to show up our elf had in Paris on the ESWC, but he didn't succeed a lot with only top16 result. His teammate aT FoV became the champion that year in a match with Madfrog in the final. Despite of such failure in France, in Russia the elf dominated.

We should say separately about Andrey's victory on the autumn Vik@Web tournament. He fall into the lower net from the beginning, took over all the rivals and won the final versus Armor. 1stFame made a movie about this tournament (by the way I recommend to watch it), where Deadman argued with Kara and on the last seconds won almost lost game.
Andrey's results were so impressive that he was named the best Russian player unanimously, though he was not even 16. It was his age that didn't allow Andrey to fight for the WCG Quota, so that Preliminaries were won by Caravaggio. He and Ranger flew to San-Francisco.

It took less than half a year from Andrey to make a name in cybersport. He, by the way, possibly appeared to be the only Russian warcrafter who was able to play on a level with the Koreans and even win. Sweet suffered a lot from him. He is one of the strongest undeads even now. Pertinacious trainings were amazing in 2004. Someone called Deadman "Korean". We can remember his famous jacket in which he played. Someone on pg.ru forum made a funny threat in which advertised a sell of Andrey's device "Deadman's jacket" with description: + 50 to apm, improving your micro and macro, improving all the matchups and so on.

Zyrano: Fear my imba!
apm70: No imba in wc3 all balanced.

Progamer
We should speak more about Kara and Deadman's confrontation in Russia. The best human versus the best elf. Their duels always attracted attention of the Russian warcraft community. In the autumn 2004 they became teammates. armaTeam because of some disagreements between managers and gamers fall apart. And the players went to other teams. Wizard, FaTC, ToD, FoV, Deadman, Blatty - all of them found new teams. The powerful clan, the 4K's rival didn't exist anymore.

64AMD managed to get one of the strongest elfs of Europe in their lines. Having taken only 6th place in the season, this clan with its Russian impact force Deadman - Kara surprisingly could reach the final. The Match versus MYM gave 64AMD the champion title. It was Deadman who had won the decisive two points for the team in his duel versus Ciara and then in pair with Caravaggio smashed GoStop and Susuria. They had also won the first place on MCL2, another prestige clan league.

Now we are in the front of WEG2005, one of the breaking tournaments in warcraft history. Possibly none of the tournaments of such level had given so many new strats and influenced the game itself. Talons, mass casters, Blademaster - all of these were used with great success on WEG. Deadman was also a part of it, as he was invited to Korea. The spectators were waiting for a good game from him, but his group was really hard…

Yes he trained a lot as he arrived to the country of the morning freshness. He quickly entered the top20 on the Asian server (account Artificial). His enemies in the group were EAT, YolinY.Sky and SK.Zacard. Sky was to show himself to everyone on this tourney, Eat was a famous Chinese elf and only few people could play on the level with  Zacard.

The first match versus EAT Andrey had won fast on the Nighthaven, punishing him for early going on tear2 without archers. Our player just had no luck in the game with Sky, who is well-known today. Andrey had caught the human while creeping near the shop, but the Chinese had received The Dead Book in the battle, only with the help of it Sky managed to win. Unfortunately our elf couldn't bet with Zacard, he was in an unbelievable form and defeated Deadman without any problems on Maelstrom. The Tournament ended for our hero.

The first scandal with Deadman took place on this WEG, that spoiled his reputation seriously. Andrey fought with ToD from France. The reason was vain: human came to the elf, who was playing on Battlenet and started giving him advices. Word by word a fight started. Finally the players were parted. A lot was said about it, trying to find the real guilty, but still the majority agreed in the opinion that the main initiator was unfortunately our player.

Come back from Korea, Deadman continued playing in WC3L. 64AMD had reached the LAN-finals one more time, where it took the second place this time. And one more time the key to its regular wins was Russian players. But the team could not go through its own success. It fell apart in spring, just like aT. Enrique, the manager accepted the Schroet Kommando's invitation. Deadman and ElakeDuck a bit later followed him. Kara went to fnatic, a new-organized project, SaSe joined mouz, Winner was invited to mTw. The German  subdivision was stripped by teams of a lower level. Deadman had signed his contract with SK in march 2005 and become its basis player. Thus Kommandos managed to make a "dream-team", in which our elf took not the last place.

Another result Andrey showed on ACON5, where he went after the preliminaries. He started on a merry note by defeating Sky. The next rival was Remind, who managed to defeat our player in a strained struggle. The Russian had to play once more with the Chinese human, but this time he appeared to be stronger. Having lost 1-2, Deadman took 3rd place and $2000 as prize.

Unfortunately the elf could not take part in LAN-finals WC3L, which SK had lost one more time, having a star-gosu team. To prove that he can play not worse than the Koreans do, Deadman could win once more the quota for ESWC 2005.

He showed everyone what he can do in Paris, putting all his rivals one by one on his way to the final. He was the first Russian warcrafter who managed to play in the final of such a great tournament. One can imagine the joy of our fans! Only Grubby, who was on the edge of his form, could stop Andrey. The silver medal on the World Championship put Deadman in one line with the best gosu. Since that time he was recognized as one of the favorites of the forthcoming WCG Singapore.
 
In 2005, at last Deadman was 16 and was able to take part in the WCG Preliminaries. He had no problems with it and became the champion smashing Flash in the final game. At the first time a player not from the center region took the 3rd place - Neutron from Vladivostok. These three guys went to represent Russian in Asia. Of cause we pinned our hopes on Deadman first of all.

Unfortunately the 2nd and 3rd places of our preliminaries played unsuccessfully. And Andrey had to play alone in the play off. It is interesting that already in that time he played a lot for orcs versus elfs. He managed to reach the ? final where he met his old and principal rival - 4K.Grubby. The fans hoped to see a replay of the WCG final and everybody were pity. Andrey couldn't beat the famous Dutch. He lost 1-2in a stubborn struggle and was placed in top8.

Andrey, after Singapore, couldn't take part in the WC3L final one more time. By the way this time it was won by 4K. In its weakened condition (Insomnia and Madfrog were not in a good form) Kommandos appeared to be only the 3rd. Still all these team failures could not influence on the Deadman's high place in the best world's players rating. Andrey was in top10 confidently.  And with the 2006 coming he was in fact to bear the best elf of the world status.

- cmon baby I want to see you dance on the dance floor
- maphacker.
In the game versus 4K.Grubby, orc vs orc.

On the edge
Yes, this is the name for the last part of my creative, as in 2006, when the great and horrible Moon was in a regular crisis, he was pushed from the green throne by brazen Russian elf, who was not fastidious to become orc.

Still, showing nice results abroad, Deadman missed an appearance of such a skilled opponent at home as Titan. Underestimation of the rival seemed to prevent him winning the ESWC Preliminaries with the final score 1-4. Such a surprising loss disappointed the majority of fans, as must be admitted Titan didn't shine in France. After such an annoying loss Deadman decided to take what was his on the WCG Russia and managed it. He defeated Xyligan in the final and become the winner of this tournament once more.

The WCG itself was to take place in Monza. Our warcrafers thought that Deadman had to take some of the medals this time, for example a gold one. Many of the foreign journalists agreed with them, speaking about Deadman as one of the favorite of the coming event. Two of three Russians managed to overcome the group stage and started their games in play off. Though Deadman was to fight with orc and the Dutch MYM]Ciara appeared an insuperable wall for Andrey. He lost 1-2. That kind of loss was not the thing our fans were waiting for. What was happening! Deadman was accused in all mortal sins, he was named a snob, who can see nothing but games.  Andrey didn't estimate the rival's skill in common, people said. But still Xyligan was not the one who could let us down, defeating his enemies methodically and had taken the 4th place as the result.

But I've forgot another great event - KODE5. That was unordinary tourney because its online preliminaries. Still the decisive games were still taken in LAN. Andrey defeated all his rivals confidently, having smashed, by the way, his offender during the ESWC Titan. He was to flight to China to the Grand Final.

The world elite of warcraft took part in this championship and our elf hadn't got lost. It was KODE5 where Deadman was to go through his hour of triumph. No one could oppose Andrey during this tourney. He had a hard net, but he managed to go through it with honor killing everyone on his way. He'd lost only one map during the whole tournament and smashed top2 WCG ToD in the final, who defeated the undefeatable Grubby 2-0.

There is no meaning to speak about that triumph. We had only emotions. That was the victory that our community was waiting for such a long time. That was not the 2nd or 3rf place, but a victory, that put Deadman on the elf top1. That was the edge of Andrea's carrier.

He was forgiven for all his scandals, bad words towards his rivals, unmannered behavior, bad relations with some of his teammates. We decided not without a purpose to finish with the Deadman's victory on KODE5, as it called out later on in his career.   And all those scandals with ownitch about not-paid prizes, an unmannered behavior after the scandal on ESWC, aggressive expressions, all of this would be forgotten. But his victories under the Russian flag, those feelings, that caused his success in cybersport would be with us forever.

Conclusion
What can we say about Deadman? Everyone has his own opinion and may value the player's career. The author doesn't want to impose his point of view. This is the case when the only opinion may prevent the right understanding of the progamer's achievements and failes. Gg wp Deadman.