[citation needed] Despite garnering much respect from both fans and players alike for his abilities, IdrA has gained considerable notoriety for his displays of poor etiquette both during ladder and online tournament matches.

[5] He chose to pursue a professional StarCraft career over attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on scholarship to study theoretical physics.

[6] IdrA lived in Korea for three years and achieved considerable success in Brood War's foreign scene, winning numerous international tournaments.

Following his success in beta, IdrA was among the 10 invitees to the IEM Season V - Global Challenge Cologne, the first major live StarCraft II event in Europe.

In that tournament, he beat all his opponents in the group stages and advanced to the finals, only to fall against the heavily aggressive style of play from MorroW, which featured heavy Reaper usage.

In September 2010, departing from CJ Entus on good terms, IdrA began talks with most foreign organizations but ultimately it came down to choosing between Team Liquid or Evil Geniuses.

This allowed him to secure a code S spot for the first GOMTV Sponsorship League in January in which he would have his most successful run to date; IdrA managed to defeat Ensnare and Check in the group stage and made a surprising run, eliminating Clide, Genius and NaDa, going 3–0 in his group stage, but ultimately losing 1–3 against fellow foreigner Jinro in the Round of 8.

[14] IdrA subsequently relinquished his Code S status as EG would announce on February 16, his indefinite return to the United States at the beginning of March after playing in Korea for 3 years.

[15] Now turning his efforts into the steadily growing international scene, IdrA met decent results in spring 2011 with five important tournament event podiums in three months, convincingly winning the first season of the IGN ProLeague and the WCG USA 2011 Qualifier #1, but also placing 4th in MLG Columbus 2011, 2nd in the 2011 DreamHack Stockholm Invitational and 7th in the MLG Dallas 2011, in which IdrA played the infamous hallucination match with HuK : after substantial back and forth, he seemed to have taken a lead that would allow him to win, but left the game, not realizing HuK's Void Rays were hallucinated.

IdrA would often be the last foreigner or Zerg player left in a tournament, especially with the influx of South Korean players in international tournaments through the GSL/MLG exchange program but drew harsh criticism by sometimes seceding matches with a notable advantage and displaying a culture of defeat in the Protoss vs Zerg match-up that he judged unbalanced and thus unwinnable.

Later on in June, IdrA participated in DreamHack Summer 2011 and saw a disappointing result with a 3–2 score in the group stages, although he was allegedly ill throughout most of the weekend.

After his performance in this tournament, many casters have noted that IdrA had improved significantly in his mental state, and had started to heavily employ counter-attacks, aggressive openings, and upgrades along with his usual macro style [citation needed].

Less than a week later, he participated in the Electronic Sports World Cup 2011 in Paris, dominating the group play, but surprisingly losing to the Russian Zerg player LiveZerg in the first round of the playoffs.

November would continue the trend with the ASUS ROG Stars Invite in Finland where IdrA convincingly knocked out SjoW, White-Ra [ru] and SeleCT to win the tournament, followed by MLG Providence and DreamHack Winter 2011 in Sweden.

IdrA participated in the North American Star League Season 2 in Division 3 with MorroW, HwangSin [ko], KiWiKaKi, Jinro, SjoW, Socke [de] and Chinese Terran SoftBall.

At the Grand Finals in Ontario, he demolished his first opponent Strelok 3-0 and advanced to play PuMa, but fell 0–3 to his teammate and was eliminated with a RO8 finish and a $3,000 prize.

IdrA was one of the participants of the IEM Season VI World Championship, where he was placed into Group D with Kas, ReaL, DarKFoRcE, SuperNova, and Feast.

IdrA would face a brutally quick elimination from the tournament, placing last in his group with a total score of 0–4, taking only two games off of Bomber and jjakji respectively.

IdrA and teammates HuK, PuMa and DeMusliM would head to Korea, staying in the SlayerS team house with the likes of Cella, MMA, and BoxeR himself.

On December 14, 2011, it was announced that IdrA had attained a Code S spot along with fellow Zerg player Sen for the 2012 Global StarCraft II League Season 1.

Qualifying for the WCS North America Finals from his fourth-place finish, IdrA defeated Stalife and Maker before losing to State in round 3.

[21] On May 7, IdrA partook in a discussion thread on Teamliquid.net about his then team, Evil Geniuses, where he replied to another poster in the following manner: [...] you're all a bunch of fucks it just so happens i get paid to treat you like it.

[citation needed] On the following day, May 9, while EG's team captain iNcontroL was live on air on State of the Game and giving his thoughts on the situation, Alex Garfield released an official press statement where he said the following: There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to say it.

He said that although he was shocked when the news first reached him due to being a long-running team member, he was not particularly outraged at the decision and felt that EG handled it in a professional manner.

IdrA then stated his intent to focus on content creation, analytical commentary, and more fan interaction, much like his erstwhile teammate iNcontroL (but "less funny").

He also discussed his situation with EG before he was released, saying he had considered not signing again due to his lack of results but reaching an agreement with Alex Garfield that he "could not refuse", the alternatives being flat-out retirement or going independent and focusing on content creation.

[26][27] However, after much speculation surrounding his return for Heroes of the Storm, Evil Geniuses confirmed that they were re-signing him as part of their HotS team to compete at BlizzCon 2014 alongside LzGaMeR and newcomers John "Chillatech" Peacock, Guillaume "Keylax" Ouellet, and Kayla "Faye" Murray.