A few days ago, the VALORANT community saw the Malaysian team, Singapore, Paper Rex, crowned champion of the VCT Pacific. The grand final saw the team leave one of its best players on the bench.
Even though one of the best players was left out of the final, the team could take home the championship title. On the other hand, the title of the tournament’s best player went to the team’s new player, Ilia “Something” Petrov.
One of Paper Rex’s favorite players is left on the bench for the VCT Masters Tokyo
By winning the Pacific VCT, Paper Rex has earned a spot in the Tokyo VCT Masters, which will take place in a few days. Paper Rex has moved Benedict “Benkai” Tan to the bench for Tokyo.
The official announcement was made yesterday through their Twitter account, where they informed the change of player position and the reasons for the change.
🇰🇷 SEOUL, South Korea — In its continued effort to stabilize its VALORANT roster, Paper Rex has made the difficult decision to move Benedict ‘Benkai’ Tan from the starting roster to bench status.
Benedict has been with the team throughout the VCT Pacific season and contributed… pic.twitter.com/1V8gHk8og6
— Paper Rex (@pprxteam) June 4, 2023
About Benkai
Benedict “Benkai” Tan managed to captivate VALORANT fans worldwide at the VCT Masters in Berlin; this was Paper Rex’s first international competition. Then in 2022, the player continued to connect with fans through his important team leadership and fun sense of humor.
Benkai has a hilarious way of livening up the atmosphere at competitions, from pranking his teammates to arriving on stage dressed as a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Then in 2023, Paper Rex named Benkai as a starting player to participate in the first international competition of the year, the LOCK//at. After that, however, the team made a big move when it signed Russian player “something” before the VCT Pacific started. The Russian player had previously demonstrated his potential in the Japanese league.
Both players had shown their excellent potential, so it is unclear which would be Paper Rex’s starter in all competitions.
Remember that all VALORANT teams must have six players; the sixth player always plays the substitute role. So, Paper Rex spent the first few weeks of the season determining how it would change its squad accordingly.
On April 15, Benkai participated in his last game with the group. On that day, the team suffered a 13-5 loss in the Ascendancy to DRX. After that loss, the team’s management decided to replace Benkai for the next map, which the team managed to win.
Paper Rex starting line-up
After the defeat on April 15, the team made a change in the squad, leaving the following players as starters:
- f0rsakeN
- mindfreak
- Jingg
- d4v41
- something
Due to the changes, Benkai became the substitute player. However, the changes worked out very well for the team; on two subsequent occasions, they had to face DXRX, and in both cases, they were victorious, and the team was crowned champion of the Pacific VCT.
However, for the Tokyo Masters, things changed a bit for Benkai as the player is now not listed as a substitute but as a bench player. Due to this change, Benkai will not travel to Tokyo. Paper Rex’s substitute player is now Patiphan “CGRS” Porsi; the player has been with the team since October 2022 and since then has only played with Paper Rex officially twice.