“Trump” has been part of Hearthstone since 2013. With streams with over 20,000 viewers, he was Hearthstone’s first teacher. Learn why he is one of the Top 10 most influential Hearthstone personalities in this profile.
Esports.gg and Frodan are collaborating to reveal the Top 8 Most Influential Hearthstone players of all time!! We will be revealing a new player every day in the run-up until Christmas. Our first entry into our top 8 is one of the OGs of Hearthstone, Jeffrey "Trump" Shih. Read on to find out about his incredible career and his legacy.
Top 8 Most Influential Players of All Time
At number #8 it's Jeffrey "Trump" Shih
Jeffrey “Trump” Shih has been in the Hearthstone scene since 2013 when the game was in the closed beta. With a StarCraft II background, where he first rose to fame as a popular streamer and pro-player, Trump gathered over 20,000 viewers in his Hearthstone streams. This early success made people refer to him as “the world's most famous Hearthstone player".
His educational content is legendary and a brand of its own. If you are a Hearthstone player and watch YouTube content, most likely you learned Hearthstone’s basics with the “Trump Basic Teachings“ YouTube series.
On top of his content, he can brag about being the world’s first professional Hearthstone player after signing in October 2013 with Team Razer.
Trump’s beginnings in Hearthstone
The Mayor of Value Town
Trump’s playstyle of obtaining the most value from every card to grind his opponents out of the games earned him the title of “Mayor of Value Town”. In the old days, there was no card discovery or generation, so your 30 cards were all the resources you had to play a game. You had to make them count and get the best value out of each of them.
This nickname was also in line with the educational content he specialized in. “Trump Basic Teachings” is everything a new player needs to know about Hearthstone, at least at that time. Blizzard consecrated Trump as the “Most Educational Stream” and “Second Favorite Hearthstone Stream” during BlizzCon 2013’s Stream awards.
One of Trump’s most influential content sections was his free-to-play legend runs. In this series of videos, he would start from zero with a new account and manage his resources to create decks able to make it to Legend ranks. This not only proved to new players that they didn’t need to spend money to play and win but also helped reinforce Blizzard’s views about the game’s monetization model.
The Competitive Origins
Being present in Hearthstone since 2013 during the closed beta, he is a cornerstone alongside Kripparrian of the very first competitive scene. Trump was one of the players invited to compete in the Innkeeper’s Invitational at BlizzCon in 2013. Trump only lost to the eventual champion Artosis in the semifinals.
The friendly rivalry with Kripparrian, the two most prominent streamers of the time, helped to shape and legitimize the competitive scene. This escalated when Trump signed for TSM in 2015, the year in which he reached the Top 8 of the HWC Americas Championship.
In 2017 Trump joined Reynad’s Tempo Storm as Hearthstone competitor and streamer. During that year, he made Top 4 in DreamHack Austin, Top 4 in the ONOG PAX Major, and participated in the HCT Americas Winter Playoffs.
“Be one of the most skilled at the game and/or be one of the greatest entertainers around”
His competitive career faded away after 2017, and Trump focused more on content creation, both on Twitch and YouTube. However, he was a true inspiration for many competitive players of the era.
“Trump is the definition of a legendary player in the world of Hearthstone. I wouldn’t have started my career on Twitch had I not seen him find success streaming at the end of 2013. Trump is a world-class competitor and content creator.”
A footnote in this section, Trump was indeed one of Hearthstone’s classic competitive players. Even though he is not involved in the competitive circuit at the present, that does not mean that he is rusty. In September 2021, GFE invited him to play in the GEF Hearthstone Classic LAN event, facing other Hearthstone legends. There, he conducted his team of “new-bloods” with his old-school-wisdom to the throne!
Trump Hearthstone Card Reviews
Trump’s streaming career started in 2010, way before Hearthstone, when he got his first paycheck for the lump sum of $2.88 as he mentioned to RollingStone magazine. During his content creation history, Trump adapted many times to reinvent himself. Trump’s analytical skills were praised both by his audience and by Hearthstone’s Design Team.
“He talks a lot about the design stuff, which is really useful to someone like me.”
It seemed only natural that when rotations and expansions arrived, he became a reference for Hearthstone Card Reviews. But a great mind does not rest at ease with a good idea. Trump took it to the next level and started making reviews of his reviews to judge how accurate his predictions were.
This meme-content idea shows us how self-critical and ever-improving Trump is. Always exploring new ways of turning his passions into something the audience would appreciate. As we will soon learn, this was not limited to Hearthstone.
A career full of unexpected twists
Trump’s career had some unexpected twists. No, I’m not talking about when people thought he was the president of the USA. But now that we mention this, Trump took Hearthstone to a different level when the media caught on to the story.
Back to Trump’s (the Hearthstone player) career, he has once again reinvented himself. Making use of the NYU degree in Management and Finance he got in 2009, he has now started a YouTube section about the stock market and financial advice.
“I have a soft spot for business and Tycoon games as well. It was these games that made me interested in business which is what I got my degree in”
Many skills are transferable, and as we see, motivation is transferable too. Turning his love for strategic games into a professional esports and streaming career. Discovering his interest for business in Tycoon games, getting a degree, and later content out of it. Trump keeps teaching us lessons.
We'll be revealing the next entry in our Top 8 Most Influential Hearthstone Players of All-time tomorrow!