LOS ANGELES (PRWEB) February 22, 2020
A 13-year old kid from Northern California took home the Valentine’s Day Fortnite prize in Las Vegas on Friday night. The Friday Night Frags Fortnite tournament at the Hyper X Esports Arena (https://www.hyperxesportsarenalasvegas.com/) is a weekly event with a prize pool of several thousand dollars. In the exploding world of esports events where prize pools are growing dramatically, this event is not a major event by any means. However, due to the weekly nature of the event and the popularity of Las Vegas as a destination, lots of professional players use this event to keep their skills sharp on a weekly basis.
For this reason, the fact that a little known 13-year old walked away with the top prize is amazing. Playing under the gamer tag westonfn, the seventh grader dominated the tournament from the early rounds. The field included more than 100 players and a handful of well known professional players. According to the final prize rankings in Las Vegas westonfn’s actual name is Weston Sockwell.
According to an assistant manager at the Las Vegas Hyper X Arena, “The kid is all business. This was his second time in one of our events and the second time finishing in the top 3. Weston doesn’t socialize with the other players and he doesn’t ask to play on the main stage where all of the pros are. He comes in with his own keyboard and mouse, sits down and wins. Waits for his paycheck, says thank you and leaves.”
One of the professional players in the tournament said, “The kid is dope, what can I say. He has like barely 120 subs under westonfn on YouTube and he is destroying pros with contracts and thousands of subscribers.”
The sudden emergence of Weston is most likely tied to his age since Epic games, the owner of Fortnite, does not allow kids to enter professional tournaments until they turn 13. Kyle Giersdorf from Pennsylvania won $3 million last summer in the Fortnite World Cup at the age of 16.
According to several of the players at the HyperX arena, Weston was heading from Vegas to Anaheim, California to play for $250,000 in DreamHack Anaheim 2020 (https://dreamhack.com/anaheim/). More than 1,000 professional players from all over the world are expected at this event.
If he performs well in this event, westonfn will not be able to stay under the radar for long.