Self-proclaimed for-fun players Imaqtpie and Shiphtur didn’t make Challenger for the first time

It’s a sad, sad day to be a player on the NA League of Legends server, because it’s the end of an era. Both Michael “Imaqtpie” Santana and Danny “Shiphtur” Le failed to make Challenger by the end of the ranked season yesterday. Talk about a tragedy.

Both of these for-fun NA big-brained players spent a lot of time on the Rift this year, each reaching over 3,000 games played. Still, all of that time clearly wasn’t enough, because for the first time in each player’s professional and streaming careers, they failed to make the cut. Instead, they sit depressingly in Master tier, with Shiphtur at 308 LP and Imaqtpie at 306. 

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to skim over the year in solo queue for both players. On paper, Shiphtur’s 2018 solo queue looks a little better, and not just because he finished with two more LP than QT.

His main champions—Ekko, Kassadin, and LeBlanc—all had higher winrates than 50 percent, according to his OP.gg profile. His Kassadin was mostly impressive with a winrate of 59 percent after nearly 300 games. That means when Shiphtur was on the champs he was most comfortable with, he won more often than not. Imaqtpie, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky.

His most-played champion, Kai’Sa, had a sub-50 percent winratre, which meant he lost more than he won on her despite that being his most-played ranked champion. Out of his five most-played champions, he only broke the 50 percent barrier on one, Lucian. The rest were either below 50 percent or even. Don’t worry, QT, we’ve all been there.

The problem with Shiphtur’s record, however, was that when he failed on a champion, he really failed on a champion. Both his Zoe and Jhin, two champions still in his top-10 most-played, had abysmal winrates of 41 and 38 percent. Yikes. Imaqtpie’s top 10 mostly hovered around the 50 percent mark.

Still, even though they’re not the best players in the world, far from it in fact, at least they had fun. And don’t worry, guys, next year when you can’t make it into Challenger, at least you might be able to say you’re Grandmaster, which, let’s be honest, sounds way cooler.