There are two questions I get more than any others.

How do I get into esports as a career?

How do I get into esports as a progamer?

In this article I want to cover the second one. I’ll start off by noting that I haven’t played professionally. I’ve run operations for two e-sports teams, lived with professional players, and coached in the LCS among other things.

I don’t know how qualified that makes me, but I haven’t found a good article by anyone else on this yet, so hopefully this provides value.

Let’s start with the selection process for pro players. We usually scout talent out of ranked modes. These players are always Challenger, Global Elite, or equivalent in their game.

Once selected we look at LAN experience, attitude, compatibility, and skill. After a brief tryout phase, players are invited to participate on a team, and move into a gaming house to compete on the team.

So what does it take for that player to get to that point before we notice them?

Having recruited and administered dozens of players, I’ve noticed a few patterns that always show up.

Without exception, every player has at least 5,000 hours on their game of focus. That’s about two and a half years of time at a standard work week pace. I’d count 5,000 on the low end, with many players have 10,000 or more.

Every player pays attention to why they fail. They pick out 1–2 things from a match that they can learn from. This is a subconscious mental process for most of them. If you don’t do it automatically, then writing your mistakes down is the number one thing you can do if you want to improve at your game.

Every player takes losing as a learning experience. This doesn’t mean they don’t get emotional. It means they won’t quit when they’re down 12 matches, or die to blue buff in League of Legends and go 0–10 for the rest of the game. They’ll obsessively keep learning. For months and years.

After thousands of hours of this, a player may be selected for an e-sports team. Let’s cover what happens then.

As a professional player, they’ll practice at least 10 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. Offline time is spent mostly in competitive matchmaking. They’ll discuss tactics, scrim with their team, and work to get better at the game.

Competitions happen weekly for major e-sports, and often involve travel. Red eye flights overseas are common. Matches are intense. Players might be sick, on little sleep, hungry, or all three. They’re expected to play at maximum focus.

I can’t comment on the thrill of victory, since I don’t know it. I stood on stage at Madison Square Garden after CLG’s 3–0 victory and had a glimpse. From what I’ve been told, that moment makes it all worth it.

But I know defeat. I’ve shared it. A professional player will lose. Often. In many cases it’ll be a crushing defeat. Many times thousands of fans will flock to Reddit to comment on how bad the player is. Almost every professional player obsessively reads Reddit even if we tell them not to.

They read a downpour of thousands of negative comments about them. Then they pick themselves up and go practice again the next day and never complain.

If they’re lucky and driven, a pro player joins a great team environment. They’ll laugh, meme, and work as a team for something bigger than what they can do individually. The daily difficulty is made bearable by the person next to you. I often see pro players work through their most difficult times because they want someone else on their team to succeed, not themselves.

If they’re unlucky and lazy, the team environment will be toxic. Every day will be a chore. A pro player sometimes has few options in this scenario. They rely on management and staff to help. The staff isn’t always driven and it doesn’t always improve. Sometimes the organization itself collapses.

Even after all of the above, many teams don’t make it. They break up, go bankrupt, give up, or fall out of the rankings. I’ve seen many players go back to school. Retire after posting a dozen pages about a painful past. Some just fade away and stop updating their social media.

The few that make it after all that are left to hold the trophy. The 1% of the .001%. The best of the best.

Those few who make it don’t usually have grandiose visions of fame, fortune, and success. They don’t set out to make it big. I’ve never met a pro player where that was at the front of their mind. I also don’t think anyone will succeed ultimately with that mindset.

They’re the type that climb a mountain to test themselves. They’re the type that has a total obsession with mastery of their chosen game. They play to win. Everything else is secondary.

I wrote this article so I never have to answer this question again. That is what it takes to become a professional gamer. So if this is your mission, know what you’re getting into. Know what you’re asking of yourself.

Do you have what it takes?