Tradeoffs

The best StarCraft II players are handfuls among handfuls, chimerical blends of tactical genius, preternatural reaction time, and the virtuosic ability to work the game’s complex interface like a saxophone. Replays of their matches, overlaid with commentary by enthusiastic amateurs, rack up hundreds of thousands of views online, and their wildly original strategies proliferate, Zerg-like, through the ravenous corridors of Battle.net. If Kim Jong Il ever does invade South Korea, and his military units so much as resemble Siege Tanks, the Great Leader is in for one swift ass-kicking.

Karim Hakimzadeh, ranked at the top of his highest-tier Diamond League ladder and in the top 0.3 percent of players in the world, is not a known quantity in the StarCraft II community—but then, StarCraft isn’t his full-time job, either. Karim is an analyst at a London hedge fund, a young member of an ultra-competitive industry that prizes chess prodigies and poker sharks as recruits. Certainly both pursuits require an analytical mind, but how far do the similarities go?

Tell me a little bit about what you do for a living.

Most recently, I worked as an equity analyst at a fund in London called Zan Partners.

Can you give me a ballpark figure on the size?

Of the fund? I’d better not.