Anathan «ana» Pham is a descendant of a big Australian city Melbourne. At first, the guys got interested in Dota 2, when he was 12 years old — the period of the absolute supremacy of Natus Vincere and Dendi in particular. Several years were enough for Anathan to realize that in Australia he would not be able to unlock his potential — the region was unknown on the professional stage and even usual pub games slowed down due to the fact that the servers were located far. As a result, a difficult decision was made — to move to Shanghai.
Invictus Gaming — the beginning of the way
The first serious test for the young player was entering CDEC League, where the newbies had a chance to show their potential on the real competitive stage. At that period the Australian was working not only on improving his game but started to make contacts with Chinese managers as he hoped to get a place in a serious organization.
The long-expected debut of Anathan happened in 2016 when the player had to substitute for Ferrari_430 at Invictus Gaming at the LAN final. Then IG’s roster was celebrating the victory at the tournament defeating Newbie at the decisive map and people started to forebode ana’s successful career. However, after a couple of minor local tournaments, Pham was sent to the reserve which led to the huge scandal including mutual accusations of the player and the organization on Reddit. The result of the conflict was that Anathan left the team and moved to Europe which was unexpected even for him…
First playing for OG
After TI 2016, Anathan Pham became a mid player in OG, replacing the best, according to the majority of experts, the best player in the world at that moment — «Miracle». By a twist of fate, ana had to oppose to IG Vitality at the debut match for the new team. The performance of the player was characterized as a rather contradictory — Pham looked not very confident at the first minutes of the meeting but got in momentum on the map and synchronized his actions with the team successfully.
Such a tendency of the game got fixed for him for the whole period of his performance. At one of his interviews, Anathan’s partner «Fly» marked with a laugh that his mid player hadn’t known for a long time how to draw enemy creeps’ attention which led to big problems at the initial stages of the game. In the first season, he managed to win two majors out of three which made OG one of the favorites at TI 2017, where the team’s performance turned out to be a failure — the 7-8 place. The esportsman himself got criticized and decided to end up his DotA performances.
Return, beginning of the Australian fairytale
A little time after ana’s leave had passed and OG’s fans understood that their criticism about the Australian was not deserved. Without Anathan, the European roster was not able to show any impressive result during the whole following season making a mark only with one win at Minor MDL Macau. n0tail’s team approached the main tournament of the year being disassembled — «Resolution», «Fly», and «s4» had left the team.
The way out of the situation was signing unknown «Topson» as a mid player while the offlaner’s role was taken by the coach of the team, and Anathan got the first position. Nobody expected OG to have great results. Their every win at the upper bracket was considered to be pure luck even though neutral spectators were delighted with OG’s pub game style. Incredible final and the win over PSG.LGD was the cherry on the top — it was ana who became the main luck creator for the team having flawless games on Phantom Lancer and Ember Spirit at two last maps.
The following year was an absolute repeat of the previous one — Phan went on vacation again and OG spent the biggest part of the season in agony. This time Anathan had to return to the roster a bit earlier to help the team to earn the necessary DPC points for the access to TI. That time OG’s advantage at the decisive tournament was indisputable — only the final at the upper bracket against PSG.LGD made the current world champions work hard and on the next day, ana raised Aegis of Champions over his head for the second time.
Main achievements
Anathan Pham is one of five players in the world to win Dota 2 TI. As for the earned in a career prize money, «ana» became the most successful esportsman in Australia and now he holds the third position in the world rating leaving only N0tail and JerAx behind, having played not so many tournaments as his OG partners. Anathan became the 17th player in the world who managed to gain the mark 9000 MMR in his personal rating. In 2018, Esports Awards nominated Pham for an honored award «PC Player of the Year», which was gained by only twelve people.