Out of all the students that go to Mount Michael, the most qualified to join a discussion of mobile games is the junior Timur Guliev, known online as TimIsPancake.
Guliev’s start as a Clash Royale player was just as sudden and shocking to him as his journey to Mount Michael, as freshmen year he was not planning to go to Mount Michael until he was dropped off the first day. By the time his boarding career started, he needed a fun but quick game to pass the freshmen phone hour every night, which quickly became Clash Royale.
Almost instantly he understood the ins and outs of the game and its complicated community, which pushed him to start streaming on occasion to show off his skills. Guliev climbed the ranks to become one of the top twenty in the United States in less than two months. Hejohn even started making some money from his success. “Yeah, sometimes I’d join a tournament, talk big game, and win the whole pot all during phone hour,” he said.
Guliev was very known in the freshmen dorms to always ‘Indiana-Jones’ it, meaning every night he would sprint to the phone box, so he did not miss announcements, frequently saying things like, “No! I only had one game left!’” and “Please Mr. Struckman just let me finish this game!” Surprisingly, his line of reasoning never won over the dean.
Guliev’s rampant success was not slowing down either, as when the summer after freshmen year hit, he “finally had time to play the game more than one hour a day, which let me obliterate the tournaments.” Guliev made over five hundred dollars that summer alone. This rivals the pay of some part-time jobs, leading many to question the stigma around doing e-sports. Often he would even be played by individuals who wanted to get advice from him and to stream with him, by either paying him or just buying him in game items. “It was nice side money; it kept building up too because I’d get a sponsor that would buy me stuff in game, and when I won, they’d pay me more.”
Guliev even had a short-lived e-sports experience at The Mount, playing for Mr. Dave Cormier’s e-sports team. Guliev beat every team he faced and gained a reputation at Mount Michael as the “Clash Royale Guy” because by then he was among the ten best players in the nation.
Although sometimes the staff were not fans of his apparent disinterest in school, he did not struggle to balance this impressive performance with his school life, even attending challenging courses like Academic Decathlon and earning medals at state. “It was kind of really funny, they called my name for a medal, and I had to stop playing a game of Clash. I got two golds and a silver, and I still won that game.” Guliev got into discussions online about the game where popular influencers challenged him to a game, which he rarely lost. “One time I was sitting in my dorm room and this YouTuber trash-talked me and we played against each other, and he raged out on his stream when I beat him.”
But when the second semester of sophomore year came around, Guliev pivoted to Chess.com and World of Tanks where he also had staggering success, being a competitive chess player, and one of the top fifty best World of Tanks players in the world. As Timur’s roommate John Chen said, “He was always playing Clash or some other game; he is so good at them.” Even a year later, Guliev is still ranked as one of the best Clash Royale players in the world, one of the top chess players in the state, and a nationally ranked World of Tanks gamer.
Clash Royale, one of the most popular mobile games in the United States, is another victim of Guliev’s mobile game rampage. His mastery of “terrible games” knows no bounds, and it’s only a matter of time before he conquers your favorite game.
