Get to Know: Clement “Puppey“ Ivanov

Clement “Puppey“ Ivanov is a famous and well known e-Sports player and is currently the captain of Team Secret. He is  also one of the most well known and functional captains in the e-Sports community up to date.

Puppey was born on the 6th of March, 1990 in Tartu, Estonia. He started his professional career in e-Sports gaming in 2007, at the young age of 17.

His professional and most well known endeavors are in Dota 2, a game that he claims changed his life.

He is also a very skilled musician, as he is a multi-instrumentalist. Puppey has achieved this title achieved by playing the violin, guitar, sax, clarinet. He has been singing in a choir since he was 5 years old.

Previous Teams and Early Career

Puppey’s team career started in the summer of 2007, when he joined XsK team (“Xero Skill“). This was a relatively unknown team at that time and did not have many victories or successes thus far.

That being said, they did not manage to win their first major tournament – ClanBase – EuropCup XVI – WC3 DotA by losing ti MYM. However he did manage to end up 3rd on the ESL Major Series.  This was great success since they were a relatively unknown team.

That came as a surprise to skilled team members and participants on that tournament. The word has started to spread about Puppy, the prime man responsible for actually leading that team to that success. At that time he was the team captain.

During that event where they ended up 3rd, Puppey steadily started to become recognized by the professional e-Sports community and thus a better insight and knowledge of him started to arise.

His first team however completely disbanded and fell apart after yet another loss at the MYM PriDe #8

Puppey has eventually managed to find yet another team. This team was Kingsurf.international (later re-named to ks.int), hailing from Europe. They invited Puppey to participate as a stand-in for the German multi-gaming organization Mouz.

The newly formed team managed to get second place on the ASUS Summer Open in 2008. Further KS.int and WG merged together. After the merger, the newly formed team consist of old and new members. The team managed to win the East Europe Dota Championship.

A new sponsorship came. They re-named KS.int team into Razer.CGC.

Nirvana.International – Puppey‘s First Foundation

The first team Puppey actually managed to found was the “Bens Friendly Buddies“ team that was able to be victorious over MYM in the Farm4Fame tournament, and after that they changed its name to Nirvana.Int.

It all started happening when Puppey’s activities started to catch the attention of the „Blight“ organization who later on took on the roles of the management and sponsorship department of the the Bens Friend Buddies team and thus changed their name to Nirvana.Int.

Yet another change in the roster had to happen in Nirvana.int, thus changing the name again to Nirvana.ru because the previous roster consisted of team members scattered all across the globe which created time difference problems.

Puppey did not manage to get a visa to the United States and had to join up with Nirvana.ru.

As if things were not turbulent enough already, inner complications within the team Nirvana.ru started happening.  Puppey embarked on some problems. Nirvana.ru started to break from the initial organization and they have steadily started gaining independence.

They have eventually completely broke off the initial organization and re-named the team again to TeamHome. This was only a temporary change and new problems and complication started to emerge yet again.

It actually ended up in Puppey returning to Nirvana.int, but shortly after left the team due to some unsettled debts and unpaid salaries he claimed happen after the ESWC of 2010.

Dota 2 and Team Secret

Puppey managed to briefly join the Natus Vincere team in 2011. The primary goal was to try to do their utmost bend on The International 2011 competition. They finished flawlessly and managed to earn their first million dollar prize.

Another important mention to make is that they placed second on The International 2012 and the International 2013.

Unfortunately they did not manage to gain such high results in the International 2014. They finished on the 7th place and this was the first and final sign for Puppey that it is time to pack his bags and start searching again.

In 2014, he joins the team for which he is most famous for – Team Secret, and he has immediately joined the team in the role of captain. The next year already started with its fair share of victories and high achievements.

Puppey as Team Captain

Most notably, their first victory with Puppey leading the team as captain happened at The Summit 3 LAN tournament. This being said, it seems as if where Puppy enters – changes happen.

Unfortunately they did not manage to win The International 2015 competition. Ending on 7th place (which is a major loss for a team so esteemed) and the team was greatly disbanded. The only remaining member left was, in fact – Puppy.

Puppy saw this as an advantage and invited a completely new team. He formed the team to roaster Team Secret.

They immediately won MLG World Finals and Nanyang Dota Championship. However yet again close to the end of the year they have experienced a loss. This made Team Secret a bit unstable yet again.  It continued to happened by the start of the new year (2016).

They have nonetheless returned yet another time, with winning the Shanghai Major. However it eventually did not prove useful. They have experienced a devastating loss at the Dota Pit, where they actually finished last.

As in the past, after such bad achievements, team Secret decided to made roster changes yet again. They have kicked out a few members and invited new ones, eventually getting a new coach – Aui 2000.

Even though they have steadily started returning to their former, good, state – they have experienced another bad loss at the International 2016 competition. The competition eventually resulted in yet another team crumbling.

With only Puppey and Pieliedie staying they have managed to invite more new players. They were able to achieve being in the top 4 in the MarsTV. The team also gained first place at the Faceit Invitational.
They have managed to win first place at the Rog Masters tournament later on, as well.

Total Earnings and Overall Success

Puppey represents the definition of a successful e-Sports team member. He is also a  captain and gaming wizard. This is due to his highly skilled gaming tactics. Puppey also has the ability to play with any class or character.

As he participated in over 78 tournaments and managed to win $ 1.363,676.36 in prize money alone. This is pretty impressive for a 10 year professional career.

He is also known to be of a very social nature and likes to engage in a range of activities with current team mates. Social interaction is making a connection and very possibly increasing the functionality of the team while in a competition.

He also calls gamers who only stick to one class and who cant or don’t know how to use another – crybabies and thinks that every gamer should be very functional in the use of all classes/characters.

Puppey is a very serious e-Sports gamer and has proven to function in a wide array of teams. He had different functions in many teams.

People mostly know Puppey by his important role of captain in team Secret.