NEW YORK: When Shiv Chopra was 10 years old, he told an Indian community paper in New York that he wants to be Zill (Zill as in zillion) Gates when he grows up. So far the Hicksville, Long Island boy is doing very well in his studies having started on his fourth year computer engineering bachelors at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta with a GPA of 3.86.
Now comes the news that while representing his Atlanta college, he has won the Hearthstone Collegiate Championship in the first-ever ESPN collegiate Esports Championship that concluded in Houston on May 11.
Shiv and his teammates, Tyler Hiu and Sean Joplin, also claimed $9,000 each in scholarship- money along with the trophy. They defeated Minnesota team 3-0 in the final match that was livstreamed on ESPN3, Twitch.tv and other platforms.
Shiv Chopra told the media that they were considered underdogs by the commentators and rightly so. The decks they brought to Houston were meant to tackle the semifinal opponents Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and they won 3-0 (in a best of 5 games format). But those decks were not good enough against Minnesota. Yet, Shiv said, “We stayed up all night before the final to study Minnesota’s all previous games and at the crunch correctly anticipated what they will bring to play. It worked, yet it felt like a miracle.”
At Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Shiv has been accepted to simultaneously start his masters program in computer engineering. He immigrated to America 11 years ago with his journalist father (who is now editor of an Indian community paper) and graduated from Hicksville High School on Long Island. He is currently doing his summer internship at Hughes, the world’s leading provider of broadband satellite services, products, and network solutions headquartered in Germantown, MD.
A gaming enthusiast since childhood, Shiv has regularly played Hearthstone (an online digital collectible card game) for the past four years and now he has started streaming it for other players, which may make him some money too.
Some 400 college teams from the US and Canada participated in the championship qualifiers starting in March this year and the semi-finals and championship match was on live LAN (local area network) in Houston, produced and staged by ESPN Events, over the May 10-12 weekend at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
