Hiko

From Liquipedia Counter-Strike Wiki
[e][h] Hiko
Player Information
Name:
Spencer Martin
Birth:
March 6, 1990 (1990-03-06) (age 28)
Country:
USA United States
Status:
Active
Years Active (Player):
2008 – Present
Team:
Rogue
Approx. Total Winnings:
$157,805
Links
History
Counter-Strike 1.6
20??-??-?? – 2011-10-11
2011-10-11 – 2012-07-30

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

2012-08-07 – 2012-12-15
2012-12-15 – 2013-02-02
2013-02-02 – 2013-04-29
2013-04-29 – 2013-05-06
2013-05-06 – 2013-08-05
2013-08-05 – 2014-08-01
2014-08-01 – 2014-12-15
2014-12-15 – 2015-01-05
2015-01-05 – 2015-01-XX
2015-04-30 – 2015-07-27
2015-07-27 - 2015-08-16
2015-09-03 - 2017-02-07
2017-07-23 – Present

Spencer "Hiko" Martin (born March 6, 1990) is an American professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player who is currently playing for Rogue. He rose into prominence when his team finished third place in the first major CS:GO tournament at ESWC 2012 with the former Area 51. He is mostly known for his lurking, solo site play, and clutching ability. On the side, Hiko was a staff member at Twitch from April 2015 until November 2018.[1][2]

History[edit]

Early Life[edit]

When he was young, he was an avid football, hockey and baseball player but due to a hockey injury he was unable to play sports for a summer allowing him to dedicate significant time to gaming. Starting off with the Nintendo 64, he eventually moved over to games for PC playing anything he could get his hands on. Hiko has mostly funnelled his competitive gaming into Counter-Strike with 1.5, 1.6 and CS:GO. He got into Counter-Strike through one of his friends brothers which ended up making his whole group of friends play this game.

Counter-Strike 1.6[edit]

Hiko began playing Counter-Strike 1.6 at a competitive level in 2011 when he was first sighted playing for a team called Temporary including two of three of the famous North American trio being Danny "fRoD" Montaner and Tyler "Storm" Wood along with Dustin "dizzaman" Dilyerd and Frenchman David "Xp3" Garrido. Hiko and the rest of his teammates were acquired by CheckSix Gaming at the end of 2011 where they attended IEM VI Global Challenge New York.

After failing to impress with CheckSix, Hiko found his way out of the team in favor of Matt "Warden" Dickens who emerged out of retirement to reunite with fRoD and Storm whom he played with on compLexity Gaming and Evil Geniuses in the past.

Early CS:GO[edit]

In 2012, Hiko moved straight over to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive during the beta stages of the game and would eventually join Area51 Gaming weeks before the game officially released. Hiko was joined by former Counter-Strike 1.6 members Sean "sgares" Gares and Canadian Kory "Semphis" Friesen along with former Counter-Strike: Source players Sam "DaZeD" Marine and Trey "tck" Martin. There were no notable achievements other than winning the inaugural season of ESEA Invite to be played on the new version over Team Dynamic, one of the best Counter-Strike: Source teams which chose to merge with former Counter-Strike 1.6 players to rival against Area51 Gaming in Global Offensive. The players would leave Area51 Gaming and later joined Quantic Gaming where they would enjoy a 5th-6th placing at Copenhagen Games 2013 and a loss to the utmost best team at the time, Ninjas in Pyjamas in the grand finals of ESEA Season 13 - Global Invite Finals. Following these results, Quantic Gaming split up but would acquire Hiko and Semphis' newly formed team not long after also featuring sgares, Braxton "swag" Pierce and Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert. Three months after, compLexity Gaming would acquire the team entering the new title since last competing in Counter-Strike 1.6.

compLexity and up in the Clouds[edit]

compLexity Gaming would live up to its name not long after acquiring the players formerly of Quantic Gaming including Hiko, the team captain. The team would enjoy a variety of consistent top 4's and beyond even in international events, where the team made the semifinals of DreamHack Winter 2013 where they'd upset CIS superteam Astana Dragons in the quarterfinals before falling to eventual champions Fnatic. Their second major run at EMS One: Katowice 2014 was the worst result under compLexity Gaming but would still outperform compared to iBUYPOWER who had failed to make it out of the group stage at both majors. Following the major in Poland, swag was swapped out for iBUYPOWER's Todd "anger" Williams and later replaced by Michael "shroud" Grzesiek before Cloud9 would acquire the team.

Cloud9 picked up compLexity Gaming prior to ESL One: Cologne 2014 but Cloud9 would not fail to impress for their debut into Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Hiko & co. would upset Titan in their opening match closing out the game in overtime before upsetting Team Dignitas in a close Mirage game following a 2v5 with seang@res at 14-14 where caster Anders Blume would yell "Oh my god Hiko! Are you kidding me?!" following the successful clutch. Cloud9 would face eventual champions Ninjas in Pyjamas in their quarterfinal match which ended in close fashion but still remains with memories. Most notably, Hiko's flickshot where Hiko would rotate 180 degrees at Mid Doors on Dust II with just a P2000. The first bullet shot would go straight into Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund's head in the blink of an eye. Anders Blume's reaction on the broadcast would be "WHAT?! Oh my god, INHUMAN REACTIONS!". Cloud9 would unfortunately lose the map 16-14 and later Cobblestone 16-14, ending the Americans' major run with another quarterfinal finish.

Then came DreamHack Winter 2014 following a string of poor results. Cloud9 would fail to impress on this occasion as the team would lose to CIS challengers, HellRaisers. They would recover and eliminate Bravado Gaming from South Africa with a 16-1 blowout before falling to Fnatic in the group stage decider where they would fail to make playoffs for the first time. Following an upset defeat from Denial eSports at ESEA Season 17: Global Invite Division, Hiko elected to leave Cloud9 and join rival team iBUYPOWER with Shahzeeb "ShahZaM" Khan replacing him on Cloud9.

The North American Match Fixing Scandal[edit]

In December of 2014, Hiko would join iBUYPOWER - the rival team of Cloud9. The team of the red chimera were delivering better results at the time compared to the blue clouds up in the sky but at this point the players would leave iBUYPOWER and were awaiting an offer to join Evil Geniuses who were planning on entering Counter-Strike: Global Offensive after previously closing their Counter-Strike division in 2012 including the likes of n0thing in the past. Most ultimately, this did not happen in the end as Valve had caught DaZeD, swag and Keven "AZK" Lariviere in a match fixing scandal against NetcodeGuides.com. More information on the match fixing scandal can be found here.

Following the scandal, Hiko remained a free agent while he was working for Twitch and streaming CS:GO on their website. During this time, he stood in for eLevate at CEVO Season 6: Professional along former GX teammate Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham. The American duo at the time were also in talks with Mikail "Maikelele" Bill, Adil "ScreaM" and Håvard "rain" Nygaard about forming an international European team which would go on to join Team Kinguin.[3] The team including Hiko and Skadoodle did not go to fruition since the Americans would need to move to Europe to play and Skadoodle would go on to join Cloud9 to replace ShahZaM additionally.[4]

Hiko would go on to join Nihilum Gaming, reuniting with Semphis whom was also kicked from Cloud9 at the time Skadoodle joined. His new team were unable to live up to their name and were unable to gain good results causing Hiko to later leave the team. Not too long before, Hiko would get an offer to stand in for FlipSid3 Tactics from Ukraine at ESWC 2015 following Georgi "WorldEdit" Yaskin's visa issues making it to Canada. His ability to stand in was highly influenced by their star player, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev because he did not trust any of the other potential candidates FlipSid3 Tactics could acquire as a stand-in but Hiko. Fortunately for the team, they were still able to land a semifinal finish falling to Natus Vincere.

Playing for the seahorse and the green wall[edit]

In September 2015, not long after leaving Nihilum Gaming, Hiko joined Team Liquid. The team was founded earlier in the year after acquiring the Denial eSports team that upset Cloud9 at the end of 2014. Since then a few roster changes were made including the addition of Hiko but this would end up being one of the team's most successful changes in the long term as the team's results would flourish after Hiko's arrival including qualifying for DreamHack Cluj-Napoca 2015 where Hiko would first be met with autographed stickers. Despite the major not going in their favor at all including a close loss to Virtus.pro and another loss to Ninjas in Pyjamas, the team would continue to improve and even further upon acquiring s1mple in place of Jacob "FugLy" Medina. The addition of s1mple would eventually lead to the team's first major success including a semifinal at MLG Columbus 2016 before choking to Luminosity Gaming and North America's first finals appearance at a major in Cologne. Following the major in Germany, s1mple transferred to Natus Vincere due to him wanting to leave Team Liquid earlier in the year to join a European team again, and he would be replaced by Jacob "Pimp" Winneche from Denmark. At this point, Hiko's last days in Team Liquid were emerging as his performance deteriorated following s1mple's departure along with him being forced to in-game lead due to Valve's coaching nerfs post-Cologne. The team's results began to get worse with time and this would be shown most at the ELEAGUE Atlanta 2018 major where Team Liquid would lose their legend status after a close group stage where they would fall to eventual champions Astralis in the last round of the group stage.

Hiko was given his marching orders in favor of former OpTic Gaming in-game leader Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz. Following the kick, Hiko would stand in for OpTic Gaming for a few events along with former Team Liquid coach Luis "peacemaker" Tadeu acting as interim coach for the team. Hiko's time with OpTic would come to end within a few weeks following poor results since stanislaw's departure to Hiko's former team. In the aftermath of Hiko's time standing in for the green wall, Hiko would host a livestream on Twitch talking about his experiences on Team Liquid and OpTic Gaming amongst other older events.[5].

Going Rogue[edit]

After nearly six months of being a free agent, Hiko would eventually join the ex-Enigma6 Group core under Rogue following the loss of the American organization's Danish team. The start of the team was a rough road due to the fact that Rogue only signed four players to begin their journey in North America before signing Matthew "Wardell" Bowman Yu not long after, but shortly after Wardell would return to his former team Ghost Gaming. The team would eventually sign Casper "cadiaN" Møller from Rogue's former Danish team which would improve the results Rogue were getting ever so slightly but still not good enough. The community at the time would often criticise the team, mainly at Hiko saying "from a major finalist to this" implying Hiko was on a top team and made the finals of ESL One: Cologne 2016 and then moving down to a low level ESL Pro League team. Unfortunately on the ESL Pro League of things, Rogue placed 12th which meant the team were at risk of being relegated to ESEA Premier if they failed to pass the Relegation. This would additionally be Rogue's first LAN debut for their North American team and they would go on to pass the relegation and keep their place in the Pro League. Following this, Rogue would sign Ronnie "ryx" Bylicki and Hunter "SicK" Mims before replacing the former with Anthony "gMd" Gulmond and later Ricardo "Rickeh" Mulholland from Australia.

Upon Rickeh's addition to Rogue saw an uprise in results from the North Americans and prior to this, Rogue were able to acquire some much needed experience from Copenhagen Games 2018 and despite not qualifying for the main event, they were able to win the Copenhagen Games 2018/Secondary_Tournament|Secondary Tournament over Vexed Gaming's UK team. The team has since gained consistently good results since Rickeh's addition including second places at DreamHack Open Austin 2018 and the Americas Minor ahead of FACEIT London 2018 which the team qualified for, but were unable to make it into the New Legends Stage following a triple overtime defeat to North.

Following Rogue's failure to qualify for the New Legends Stage in London, cadiaN would join North with Kevin "kRYSTAL" Amend joining, later to be replaced by former North in-game leader Mathias "MSL" Lauridsen.

Gear and settings[edit]

Mouse settings [6] (list of)
Mouse Effective DPI cm/360 in/360 DPI In-game sens. Windows sens. Raw input? Polling rate
Logitech G Pro Wireless 1640 25.3 10 800 2.05 6/11 On 1000 Hz
Last updated on 2018-09-17 (61 days ago).
Hardware [6]
Mouse Mousepad
Logitech G Pro Wireless Zowie G-SR (Hiko Edition)
Monitor Refresh rate In-game resolution Scaling
ZOWIE by BenQ XL2540 240 Hz 1920×1080 Native
Keyboard Headset
Zowie by BenQ Celeritas II Sennheiser Game Zero (Black)
Last updated on 2018-09-17 (61 days ago).
Crosshair settings [7] (list of)
Style Size Thickness Sniper Gap Outline Dot Color Alpha
4 2 1 1 -2 Yes (thickness 0.5) No (0) Custom (5) 300
Last updated on 2017-02-10 (645 days ago).
Click "Expand" for a code to copy and paste into your console.
cl_crosshairalpha 300; cl_crosshaircolor 5; cl_crosshaircolor_b 0; cl_crosshaircolor_r 0; cl_crosshaircolor_g 255;cl_crosshairdot 0; cl_crosshairgap -2; cl_crosshairsize 2; cl_crosshairstyle 4; cl_crosshairusealpha 1; cl_crosshairthickness 1; cl_crosshair_sniper_width 1; cl_crosshair_outlinethickness 0.5; cl_crosshair_drawoutline 1;

Career Achievements[edit]

Date Placement Tier Tournament Team Result Prize
2018-06-03 A22nd A2Major DreamHack Open Austin 2018 1 : 2 $20,000
2016-10-02 A33rd - 4th A1Premier ESL One: New York 2016 1 : 2 $25,000
2016-07-10 A22nd A1Premier ESL One: Cologne 2016 0 : 2 $150,000
2016-06-25 A55 - 6th A1Premier Esports Championship Series Season 1 - Finals 1 : 2 $65,000
2016-05-12 A55 - 6th A1Premier ESL Pro League Season 3 - Finals 0 : 2 $36,000
2016-04-03 A33rd - 4th A1Premier MLG Major Championship: Columbus 2016 0 : 2 $70,000
2015-11-19 A11st A1Premier ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 - North America 18/4 Grp. S. $18,000
2015-11-15 A22nd A1Premier iBUYPOWER Cup 1 : 2 $25,000
2013-11-30 A33rd - 4th A1Premier DreamHack Winter 2013 0 : 2 $22,000
2012-11-18 A11st A1Premier ESEA Global Finals Season 12 2 : 1 $10,000
About achievementsComplete Results in any Tournament

Trivia[edit]

  • He was voted as the 9th best player of 2013 by HLTV.org. [8]
  • He is colour-blind. [9]
  • While remaining teamless after the North American match fixing scandal, he and Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham were potential candidates to form the international team that would become Team Kinguin. [3]
  • He was chosen to be in the "All Star" MLG Columbus match for the American side.
  • He revealed on stream that his favorite color is green.

Highlights[edit]

HLTV Highlights[edit]

Interviews[edit]

2018[edit]

2017[edit]

2015[edit]

2014[edit]

2013[edit]

Articles[edit]

Gallery[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ MIRAA. "Twitch sign CS:GO staff". HLTV.
  2. ↑ Hiko. "No longer working for @Twitch".
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 DeKay (2018-03-15). "CS:GO Roster Moves That Never Happened: That Time Hiko and Skadoodle Almost Joined an EU Superteam". DBLTAP.
  4. ↑ Luis "MIRAA" Mira (2015-04-29). "Cloud9 sign Skadoodle, fREAKAZOiD". HLTV.org.
  5. ↑ Hiko. "HIKO REAL TALK".
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Hiko at London Major
  7. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named hiko settings
  8. ↑ Top 20 players of 2013: Hiko (9), HLTV.org
  9. ↑ Hiko's AMA answer, reddit.com


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