yellowhat

yellowhat’s parents and older brothers moved to France from Lebanon at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war. He was born in Paris and was introduced to card games by his father, who passed away when he was seven years old. His love for card games remained with his, and he also grew up playing video games with his second-oldest brother who is nine years older than him. They played on a variety of consoles, including the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. They had a preference for sport games over other genres. He also played IRL soccer for a few years when he was younger.

He and his friends discovered paper Magic: The Gathering (MTG) when he was around twelve years old during the sixth expansion set, Ice Age and started playing it together. Prior to that, he had also collected Dragon Ball and Star Wars cards. He spent much of his free time in high school going to play MTG at a local gaming store where other MTG players would always hangout to play against one another. He and his friends would also play Warcraft 2 on the computers while they were there.

He and his friends eventually began entering tournaments at local gaming stores by pooling each other’s cards to build decks. However, his mom originally wasn’t happy with his hobby, as it was negatively affected hi marks, but she eventually gave up as she realized that he would just keep playing anyway. His brother helped him to convince his mom to allow him to attend the international Pro Tours when he started qualifying for them.

In 2003, he was introduced to poker by some American MTG players who were playing online poker between matches at one of the events that he was attending. After he arrived home, he opened an account and decided to risk $500 on the account. He wound up performing well, cashed out at $500 and carried on with the help of friends. About six years later, he went on to focus on playing poker professionally online for a few years as there was more of a financial incentive to do so at the time. He later decided to put that on hold to pursue fulltime online MTG streaming.

yellowhat entered his first Pro Tour in Chicago in 2000 when he was still in high school and managed to rank in the top 64. He then came second the following year at the Pro Tour in New York. He has managed to rank with the Pro Tours’ Top 8 nine times over the years and was awarded the Hall of Fame title in 2010.

He started streaming on Twitch in April 2017 alongside his Pantheon teammates and discovered that he enjoys it and so continued doing so even though many of his teammates stopped doing so. After discussing it with his wife, they decided that he would be given until the end of the year to try to turn it into a career. Fortunately for him, it worked out, and he has continued streaming full time ever since.

He has a wife.

• Mon & Tues: 14:00 – 17:00 and 22:00 – 01:00 UTC
• Wed: 22:00 – 01:00 UTC
• Thurs & Fri: 14:00 – 17:00 and 22:00 – 01:00 UTC
• Weekend: No stream