Becoming the starter of an LCK team at 17 years of age, quickly recognized as one of the best in LCK and now, he is the crown jewel of Gen.G’s super team. Korean prodigy Chovy is our focus now, starting from his spell at Griffin to his current situation, let’s get to know him and find out how he became the future of LCK.

Quick trivia: his nickname comes from “anchovy”. He first played professionally at KeSPA Cup 2017, and found a place at Griffin’s CK 2018 Spring roster. The mid lane was split between him and Rather when they made it to LCK. Get more details below.

Journey starts at Griffin

After he became 17, Chovy joined Griffin and started playing for the team at CK, LCK’s secondary league. Together with Rather, they were playing in the mid lane, and carried the team to LCK, where Chovy eventually proved himself as one of the best players. At Summer Playoffs, Rather couldn’t find a chance to play, while Chovy started all five games against Afreeca Freecs and KT Rolster. They ended up second place and missed Worlds, but it was an unforgettable year for GRF.

Next year, Griffin found a place as one of the championship contenders at LCK. Together with Chovy, they created many superstars like Tarzan, Viper, Lehends, and even Doran. They won KeSPA Cup 2018, finished LCK 2019 Spring Season first place, even though they were bested by T1 at playoffs, went through the same during the Summer Season and found their first Worlds ticket.

As a young and inexperienced team, Griffin were quickly eliminated at Worlds 2019 by Invictus Gaming, a far more stable and successful team, last year’s Worlds champion and LPL’s runner-up.

However, their performance was also affected by the drama surrounding the team, concerning their coach cvMax who’s been impressing everyone. In short, cvMax was abusing some players, and Griffin management had been involved in some illegal activities. These investigations messed with players’ heads, and thus they were unable to give their best at Worlds. The fact that they took one game away from IG is impressive even.

A year at DRX and one at Hanwha Life

Next year, Griffin broke down and stars left the team, including Chovy. He joined Pyosik and Deft at DRX together with Doran, where they started by taking 3rd-4th place at KeSPA Cup. With their promising roster, DRX managed to show up at Spring Playoffs too, and after getting the second place at 2020 Summer Playoffs, managed to get a Worlds slot.

Chovy once again got eliminated in the quarterfinals, when his team was defeated by DAMWON Gaming 3-0, similar to how they lost the Summer Playoffs. DRX was considered to be the weakest LCK team, and the draw wasn’t kind enough to help them get a better result.

Chovy left DRX together with Deft this time, joining LCK’s “rich” Hanwha Life Esports. Although HLE was rich enough to get Chovy, they didn’t put quite the strongest parts around him. Still, Chovy Life Esports managed to get a third place at LCK 2021 Spring Playoffs. Their performance got even worse next season, stuck at 8th place.

CHOOOOOOOOOVYYYYY!

HLE Chovy grabs two solo kills! #LCK pic.twitter.com/8vtHAkyyqF
— LCK Global (@LCK_Global) January 24, 2021

Thanks to their success in Spring, HLE managed to make it to Regional Finals, where they found a Worlds slot coming from the bottom. Making it through Play-In, HLE had the same score as RNG at group stage and lost the tiebreaker, getting T1 as their opponent. Chovy’s curse remained against T1, losing the quarterfinals 3-0 and taking the plane ride early.

Super team at Gen.G

Congratulations to @GenG Chovy for earning his 1100th LCK kill! 👏👏 He is 14th place on the #LCK All-Time Kill Leaderboard! pic.twitter.com/5WYnARkO2y
— LCK Global (@LCK_Global) January 14, 2022

Because of his poor team choices, Chovy was criticized for the last two years, and when the news flashed that he is looking for a team together with Deft for the second time, the fans were upset. However, Gen.G played the offseason aggressively, knowing that DWG KIA would break and the LCK championship would be up for grabs. Keeping Ruler only, they started by replacing Bdd with Chovy, then put Doran, Peanut and Lehends around him.

With this new roster, Chovy and Gen.G started very well in 2022. Losing only against KT Rolster very recently, Gen.G is a clear favourite for the championship, together with T1. Chovy still holds the best mid laner title, because Faker’s performance declined and while ShowMaker is a close second, Chovy is still better.

Stats of Chovy

Starting his career in 2018, Chovy has never won a single LCK title. His most played champion is the Korean treat Zoe with 42 games, on which he has 64.3% win rate and 8.55 KDA. Best KDA he has on a champion that he has played more than two times is Akali with 10.72 KDA. He has played different champions from Urgot to Fiora, but his worst win rates with champions he played more than a few was Viktor (36.4% WR in 11 games) and Vel’Koz (25% in four games).

This year, Chovy has shown great performances with Corki, a champion that is ruling the mid lane meta. He has 100% win rate with corki in four games, with 6.63 KDA. Chovy reached 1000 kills in LCK on July 1st, 2021, becoming the 15th player to reach 1000 kills and the fastest to do that at the time. ShowMaker then broke his record of course.

He is known for his dominance in the lane, solo killing many great names even with objectively worse teammates. He became the first player to reach 100 overall KDA in a professional league in January 2019, when he defeated SKT T1 in LCK 2019 Spring and made his KDA 44/1/60.

If you are interested in Chovy, Gen.G, or LCK in general as it’s one of the best League of Legends competitions in the world, you can watch the games and place your bets on Luckbox.

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