Saintvicious at the Bottom of the Ladder: The 2011 Elo Hell Experiment

In 2011 a professional jungler's account allegedly ended up at zero rating. The footage of what the very bottom of the ladder actually looked like is still one of the most-cited answers to the elo hell argument.

League of Legends Archive

Saintvicious at the Bottom of the Ladder

2012 Video Archive

The story goes that during the summer of 2011, someone got into Riot's servers and set the professional jungler Saintvicious's rating to zero. Whether that's exactly what happened has never been firmly established, but the consequence was real: a genuinely high level player found himself playing games at a rating almost nobody ever sees.

Some people on Reddit tracked down footage. He recorded on Own3d.TV, which no longer exists, so we converted and re-uploaded both games here years ago. As far as we know these are the only copies still playable.

Why anyone still cares. This is the closest thing the community has to a controlled experiment on elo hell. If a strong player really were trapped by their teammates, this is where it would show. What the footage actually shows is a player winning comfortably, which is why it gets linked in the argument to this day.

Jax, around 166 rating

Saintvicious playing Jax. Gameplay begins around 23:00.

Twitch, around 172 rating

Saintvicious playing Twitch. Gameplay begins around 5:30.

Reading It Now

Two things to keep in mind while watching. The ranked system in 2011 was a raw numerical rating rather than the tiered ladder that exists now, so "166 ELO" has no direct modern equivalent and shouldn't be read as an Iron game. And the game itself is unrecognisable in places, with items, masteries and a map that have all been rebuilt several times since.

What holds up is the decision making, which is the whole point of watching it.

Where the ladder actually sits today

We counted the current distribution directly from Riot's own API rather than estimating it. See What Rank Is Actually Good.

How matchmaking really works

The modern answer to the same underlying question, covering MMR, smurfs and why games feel unfair. Read it here.

Lucker dog, sucker dog

Saintvicious also gave the community one of its more durable phrases. We wrote up the origin story.

What pros say about solo queue

A running collection of professional players explaining the ladder in their own words, from 2012 to the present. Read it here.

For any term used here, the League of Legends Terms Glossary covers it.