kiyotaka

Gleb "kiyotaka" Zyryanov (born August 19, 2004) is a Russian professional Dota 2 midlaner currently playing for Rune Eaters. At 21 years old, kiyotaka is one of the most mechanically gifted mids in the CIS scene — a player the community calls "booster" not as an insult, but out of a kind of grudging respect, because he plays heroes on stage that most people can only make work by literally boosting accounts. Tinker. Broodmother. Arc Warden. OD. He picks them, and he wins with them, and the killer instinct is the whole point.

Early Career

kiyotaka started in the second half of 2020 under the nickname "depressed kid" — playing dash-3 and dash-4 mixes, grinding META'20 Open for a bronze medal, doing the thing every young CIS mid does before anyone knows their name. He moved through Team Unique, Team Empire, CIS Rejects, and Pari Parni across 2021 and 2022, refining his mechanics against increasingly serious competition. He hit 11,000 MMR in January 2023, then 12,000 a month later. The individual ceiling was showing early.

His breakthrough came with 9Pandas. He qualified for The International 2023, where the team reached the upper bracket and finished a respectable run — DkPhobos called him "one of the best mids" during that TI. He had the highest average kills per game at the Lima Major 2023 (9.80) and again in the EEU Upper Division that year (11.12). Those numbers aren't accidents. That's a player who plays to kill, not to farm.

The BetBoom and Aurora Years

In September 2024, BetBoom Team signed him. The stint was strong — 2nd at DreamLeague Season 24, 3rd at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade, 3rd at ESL One Bangkok 2024. But he missed BLAST Slam I due to visa issues, gpk returned to the roster, and by January 2025 kiyotaka was out. Aurora Gaming picked him up in February 2025. Visa problems struck again — he missed PGL Wallachia Season 3, replaced by lorenof, who then went on his famous stand-in run. Aurora qualified for TI 2025 but couldn't get out of the group stage, finishing 12th. kiyotaka left in October 2025.

He's now with Rune Eaters — a Kazakhstan-based org — and qualified for the Esports World Cup 2026 and grinded the TI 2026 Europe qualifier.

Playstyle & Identity

The "booster" reputation exists for a reason. kiyotaka plays the highest-execution mid heroes in the game — Tinker, Broodmother, Arc Warden, Outworld Destroyer, Invoker — heroes that require constant micro, perfect positioning, and split-second decision-making, and he plays them at a level that makes them look easy. His whole game is built around lane dominance and translating it into kills before the enemy team can stabilize. He doesn't sit back. He hunts. The high kills-per-game stats across multiple tournaments aren't a byproduct — they're the entire identity.

Fun Facts

His old nickname was "depressed kid." He also played under aliases like "classic 100 rank mid," "joga bonito," and "vyebal igru." The man does not take pub account names seriously.

At PGL Wallachia Season 4 in April 2025, kiyotaka mysteriously "disappeared" — Aurora's vlog described it as "the police, the local FBI, the whole city was on edge." Whatever happened, he turned up, and the team kept playing. Classic CIS Dota chaos.

Visa issues have cost this man two tournaments with two different tier-1 orgs — BLAST Slam I with BetBoom and PGL Wallachia Season 3 with Aurora. In the second case, his replacement lorenof went on a legendary stand-in run that basically launched lorenof's career.