As Evil Geniuses celebrates its VALORANT Champions victory, many fans are making a particular point of celebrating the achievements of EG coach Christine “potter” Chi.
While many Valorant fans are learning about potter now for the first time, the woman behind EG’s recent successes has a long career in competitive gaming and esports behind her. It’s a career filled with success at all levels of the industry.
Staring in Counter-Strike before eventually moving to Valorant, potter’s career spans well over a decade and is worth learning more about.
EG potter got her start in Counter-Strike
Prior to becoming a championship-winning coach in Valorant, EG potter began competitive Counter-Strike nearly 20 years before.
potter’s first major result in Counter-Strike came at ESWC 2006. The ESWC events were at the time considered to be majors in Counter-Strike, and in some years hosted the biggest Counter-Strike tournament on the calendar.
While the event’s men’s competition was eventually won by Made in Brazil, the women’s competition was won by French team Beat Off the Best over Les Sueles. potter and her SK Gaming teammates placed fourth, just behind the finalists, after a semifinals loss to Les Sueles. Notable among those teammates was Stephanie “missharvey” Harvey, who like potter would go on to enjoy a long and successful career in esports.
potter and her SK Gaming teammates would be back with a vengeance the following year. At ESWC 2007, the North American SK Gaming side would defeat Sweden’s unFinished and China’s E-Honor in the semifinal and finals, respectively, to take SK’s first women’s title.
This kicked off a run of absolute dominance for SK Gaming, with additional ESWC titles coming to potter and SK in 2008 and 2010, notably defeating Fnatic in the 2010 final.
The same core team would move on from SK Gaming to compete as UBINITED beginning in 2011, leading to two more consecutive ESWC championships in 2011 and 2012 for the side. UBINITED would defeat Millenium and Team Alternate in the finals of those two events, with the latter being the first ESWC event to use Counter-Strike: Global Offensive rather than the original Counter-Strike.
CSGO success was available to potter and her teammates just as readily as CS 1.6 success had been. Playing primarily under the Counter Logic Gaming Red banner, potter won yet another ESWC title and a WESG event to further round out her list of Counter-Strike accomplishments.
potter transitions to Valorant with EG
After concluding her long and stories career in Counter-Strike, potter eventually moved to Valorant with EG. She joined Evil Geniuses’ Valorant organization at the beginning of 2021, and became the team’s head coach in August 2021.
This wasn’t potter’s first time coaching a prominent men’s team. She had most notably been listed as coach for CSGO squad Muffin Lightning during a 2016 ELEAGUE event. But her stint with EG, overseeing the team as part of the VCT Americas League, was by far her most prominent posting.
Fans had reason to expect success. potter had impressed as a broadcast analyst, both in Valorant and in Counter-Strike before that. But few fans, even those of EG, expected potter to do as well as she did.
Evil Geniuses broke through in terrific form to win the VALORANT Champions event in 2023, the biggest Valorant tournament of the year, with potter as the side’s head coach. It’s one of the most prominent achievements ever had by a woman in competitive gaming and esports, a great landmark for a competitor who has proven herself on many occasions prior.
Given potter’s success with EG, other similar opportunities may open up for qualified women in the space. There’s no doubt that other esports organizations will want to repeat EG’s success, and potter proving her capabilities at the game’s highest level may prompt teams to consider coaches and managers they otherwise might not have.
