Valorant Player of the Month, November 2021: xeta

Remember when TenZ left Cloud9's competitive roster to focus on content creation, and shortly before the NSG Winter Championship, the Valorant team was left with only three players? This made the organization to turn to xeta for help, and today it turns out that it was one of the best things they could have done for the team.

Xeta
Son "xeta" Seon-ho | © StarLadder

Son "xeta" Seon-ho is a Korean player who, like many Valorant pros, has his background in the competitive CS:GO scene. He is mainly known from his career in MVP PK and winning big events like WESG and eXTREMESLAND. He spent the end of his career with TYLOO, a renowned esports organization with multiple major tournament wins under its belt. However, in June 2020, xeta decided he wanted to dedicate his aim skills to a different game, and as you know, that game turned out to be Valorant. A year after that decision, he and his team have secured a slot at the most important and stacked tournament in the history of the game, Valorant Champions.

xeta's Valorant Career

xeta started his Valorant career on the Korean scene, but without much tournament success. His team at the time couldn't handle Vision Strikers, who are undoubtedly the best team in the APAC region (known for their 104-0 record). However, his extraordinary skills and amazing reaction time have not gone unnoticed! After half a year of playing in the Korean scene, Cloud9 decided to take xeta to their Korean division, which consisted of really talented players like "Munchkin" from the current Crazy Raccoon Valorant roster.

Xeta at First Strike Korea 1
Xeta playing at the First Strike tournament | © Riot Games

However, the biggest event of his career was the roster changes for Cloud9 Blue. By the end of 2020, the team only had 3 players there, yet was still signed up for major tournaments and leagues. The organization decided to throw xeta in as a stand-in for Cloud9 Blue, which was a pretty unusual change; after all, xeta is a player from the Korean scene, which works on completely different principles than the American one. However, xeta proved that no matter the circumstances or meta, he knows what the game is all about. Ever since he joined Cloud9 Blue, the team has taken on a whole different meaning in the NA scene, until they finally made it to the Champions. And that's not an easy task. After all, this is a region with teams like Sentinels, Envy, and 100 Thieves.

Why is xeta our Player of the Month?

Until recently, we only knew the 15 teams qualified for Champions, and we were still waiting for the winner of the NA Last Chance Qualifier, which was clearly the most stacked qualifier of all the regions. As we now know, the winner was Cloud9 Blue, and we have to be honest — xeta was the clear MVP of the entire tournament. He helped his team win the qualifier despite being in the lower bracket and facing teams like 100 Thieves and XSET. xeta's KDA of 1.8 was the highest of any player in the tournament. And he scored all those frags in amazing fashion; take a look for yourself:

So yes, this all actually happened at the NA LCQ and led xeta's team to the World Championships. And that's the main reason he's our player of the month!

Szymon Bielawski

I've been into competitive gaming and eSports since I was a kid. I started out in the local CS:GO scene and ended up performing at the international major tournaments like Hearthstone Masters Tour. The competitive gaming world discovered a new...