Jacky "Jake" Yip, better known as Stewie2K, is an American professional player for Team Liquid. He became the first North American to win a Valve–sponsored major in CS:GO.
Life
Yip was born in 1998 and raised in San Francisco. He picked up Counter-Strike 1.6 from his older brother, Jason. Yip grew up with his brother and sister. His parents were often on business trips in China. Yip described his parents as the stereotypical Asian parents who disapproved of video games. His draw towards video games created a rift between him and his parents. Yip even recalls his mother saying he was going to be a failure since she lacked the understanding of the professional gaming scene. Her disdain for gaming made Yip feel that his mother had failed him and ultimately drove him out of his own home. Yip picked up and flew to LA to pursue his own interests in gaming. Yip stopped playing Counter-Strike 1.6 for a time in favor of other games such as RuneScape, MapleStory, League of Legends and . He eventually picked up Counter-Strike 1.6 again, but would only play surf maps and mods. Yip began playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensivein the summer of 2014 after a friend gifted him a copy. He was inspired by videos of Cloud9 and would play many hours of the day. He played matchmaking for 5 months before making the switch to ESEA. During this time, Yip was falsely accused of cheating by several players further motivating him to pursue a professional CS:GO career.
Career
Spontaneously flying to Los Angeles at the age of seventeen kicked off the competitive career of a young "Stewie2K." Yip had garnered attention for his competitive PUG performances and heard rumors of a certain player's professional career soon coming to an end opening the door for Yip. He bided his time and waited for said player to relinquish his spot on the team. After Sean Gares announced he was leaving Cloud9, the team decided to pick up Yip with Gares' personal recommendation. Yip joined Cloud9 on January 11, 2016 as an In-Game Leader. He signed the Cloud9 contract a few hours after his 18th birthday. His addition was met with criticism from some veteran players. Esports journalist, Duncan "Thorin" Shields, questioned Yip's addition to the Cloud9 roster as well as Yip's abilities. Yip played for 2 years with Cloud9 and won several tournaments with the team including ESL Pro League Season 4, DreamHack Open Denver 2017 and iBUYPOWER Masters 2017. Yip won his first major with Cloud9 in January 2018 at the. At the end of March, Yip left Cloud9 for SK Gaming. He tried out to replace Epitacio "TACO" de Melo's spot on SK Gaming's active lineup. After a three month period, Made in Brazil signed the SK Gaming roster to play under MIBR's name. MIBR traded Yip to Team Liquid for Epitácio "TACO" de Melo and head coach Wilton "zews" Prado in December 2018. In December 2019, Yip became the first North American CS:GO player to earn over $1,000,000 in tournament prize money after finishing runner up to Astralis in the ECS Season 8 Finals. Team Liquid's CS:GO team earned $2.31 million in 2019.
