To understand how Denis ‘electronic’ Sharipov went from living in the shadow of one of the greatest players CS:GO has ever seen to a bona fide superstar in his own right, we need to go back in time a little bit.

The year is 2015, and this scrappy, stoic, stern-faced teenager is trying to make a name for himself in the mother of all Counter-Strike-obsessed regions: Russia.

The problem is that it’s a lot more difficult than you might think.