Justsaiyan Retires From Competitive Hearthstone, Leaving Americas Grandmasters Spot Open (Update: Tincho Is a New Grandmaster)

Hearthstone pro player David “Justsaiyan” Shan has just announced his retirement from competitive Hearthstone. He started playing competitively back in 2015, with many successes, including Top 8 in Hearthstone World Championship 2019 and being a part of American Grandmasters circuit for three seasons in a row.

In fact, he qualified for the fourth season but decided to decline and pass the spot to someone else. He’ll still play Hearthstone, but he wants to shift focus from esports to “pursuit his new dreams”.

Wishing you all the best with your future projects!

As of now, we don’t know who’ll be taking the vacant Grandmasters spot. Caravaggio and Tincho are currently tied for the highest earnings from Master Tours in 2020, which is what qualifications are based on. However, there are some rumors that Blizzard offered the spot to another player, who’s just below those two – Pavelingbook. We’ll give you an update once we know more. (Read more below)

Update:

We know who will replace Justsaiyan as Americas Grandmaster – Tincho! The rumors that Pavelingbook was supposed to be next GM turned out to be true (you can find his official statement here), but it was due to an error on the side of Blizzard’s esports team. The error got fixed and Tincho got promoted instead. Congratulations!

Stonekeep

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over that time, he has achieved many high Legend climbs and infinite Arena runs. He's the current admin of Hearthstone Top Decks.

Check out Stonekeep on Twitter!

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8 Comments

  1. Solojazz
    March 30, 2021 at 9:24 PM

    Justsaiyan was world class and I always enjoyed watching him play! Excited for his new journeys and wish him the best!

  2. RoNiN2X
    March 30, 2021 at 4:37 PM

    Loved watching his matches.

  3. Pandamonium
    March 30, 2021 at 3:02 PM

    Well Blizzard’s corruption knows no bounds. Picking favorites to skip multiple people who have rightly earned the spot? That means that no matter what you do, if you’re not one of Blizzard’s chosen, that no matter who you beat or what you do in esports that it doesn’t matter whatsoever. Blizzard will still declare that you lost and their chosen has won. In ESPORTS. It’s a charade. Laughingstock of the gaming world; the company is falling apart while being in complete delusion.

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      March 30, 2021 at 7:10 PM

      It was an error, it turned out that Tincho (top earner) was rightfully picked in the end.

      • Pandamonium
        March 30, 2021 at 11:15 PM

        Ok ok it’s just something that seemed like it was up their alley. I’ll try to be more optimistic 🙂

        • Pandamonium
          March 30, 2021 at 11:20 PM

          Oh wait after reading his statement about the “error” on the esports team – haha no it seems very possible that the “error” was intentional. I’ll withhold judgment.

          • Stonekeep - Site Admin
            March 31, 2021 at 5:05 PM

            I’ve heard a theory that they’ve added Pavel’s earning from one MT to Pavelingbook’s earnings when counting them, that would put Pavelingbook at #1, and it kind of makes sense.

            If that’s true, then it’s hell of a stupid mistake, but not really “malicious” if you know what I mean. I have no idea why would they do it intentionally, like they have no gain in picking the wrong person at all.

            • Pandamonium
              March 31, 2021 at 11:12 PM

              I hope they can fix the hiccups that are going on right now. Tomorrow I can summarize the things that are bugged right now. Couple of gold card bugs in collection manager and the rewards chest bug, not to mention a couple others.