Dota 2 fans who checked the game’s ranked leaderboards on Jan. 22 witnessed the end of an era. After over a year in the number one slot, Alimzhan “Watson” Islambekov was finally dethroned as Quinn Callahan claimed the top spot.
Quinn isn’t a stranger to the top of the leaderboard. The North American star has been consistently ranked in the top 10. Still, he could never make that final push—possibly due to his toxic attitude in ranked matches. Toward the end of 2023, Quinn apologized for his abhorrent actions in Dota 2 pubs, and it looks like a positive mental attitude was the missing piece for his rank-one push.
This paradigm shift caught the attention of both fans and other professional players, with some claiming Watson owed much of his leaderboard success to his Smurf account. Janne “Gorgc” Stefanovski told his viewers that Watson would switch over to his smurf whenever he was tilted to avoid losing MMR on his main account.
While it may sound trivial, a few MMR points make huge differences at the top of Dota 2’s leaderboard. In the last months, Valve banned StingeR in the middle of DreamLeague qualifiers due to account sharing while banning the smurfs of almost all players. Following the ban wave, Dota 2 pros complained about how they were unable to play ranked due to long queue times.
Watson also lost his smurf account during the ban wave, meaning he can now only play on his main account. Watson’s reign might be over, but he achieved notable accomplishments that are unlikely to be forgotten anytime soon. In November 2023, he broke the leaderboard, claiming the number one and two spots with his two accounts. A month before that, Watson claimed the number-one spot in a second region during TI 2023, having two rank-one accounts simultaneously.
