Dictionary Definition
thresh
Verb
1 move or stir about violently; "The feverish
patient thrashed around in his bed" [syn: convulse, thresh
about, thrash,
thrash
about, slash, toss, jactitate]
2 move like a flail; thresh about; "Her arms were
flailing" [syn: flail]
3 beat the seeds out of a grain [syn: thrash]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
Old English þrescanPronunciation
-
- Rhymes: -ɛʃ
Verb
Translations
Extensive Definition
Dennis Fong (方鏞欽 born 1977), also known
under the pseudonym Thresh, is a successful serial entrepreneur and
celebrity in the gaming world. Dennis, deemed the "Michael Jordan
of video games", a "Top 20 Entrepreneur Under 35" by Red
Herring magazine, and voted as the "Top North American E-Sports
Figure of All Time" by the
E-Sports Entertainment Association, is best known for
co-founding Xfire, an instant
messenger and social networking site for gamers which was acquired
by Viacom
for US$102
million in April 2006, and winning John
Carmack's Ferrari 328
in a 1997 Quake
tournament.
Fong initially chose the pseudonym "Threshold of
Pain", which meant being able to withstand enemy fire and
suffering. However, as many games had an eight-character limit and
the truncated "Threshol" did not sound cool, he went with "Thresh"
and liked the meaning of it which was to strike repeatedly. Today,
Fong never uses his psedonym for casual online gaming, as it has
been adopted by a large number of impostors.
A key to Thresh's success in gaming tournaments
is not only due to his reflexes, but also because he made use of
far sight, counter-intuition and tactics. His opponents called his
intuitive ability "Thresh ESP" for his skill in anticipating what
they were doing. For instance, he would not necessarily pick the
most popular or strongest characters, but rather lesser known ones
from which he would practice how to defeat the popular ones. In 1
on 1 Quake
deathmatch,
keys to his success include making effective use of weapons and
powerups, particularly the rocket launcher, to never aim at the
enemy directly and target the nearby wall instead. He also paid
attention to sounds and used them to deceive his opponent. Also
crucial to his success was his understanding the level so he could
"control" vital items, using timed runs to repeatedly hoard it from
opponents, such as the rocket launcher and armors.http://www.quaketerminus.com/quakebible/1on1-strat.htmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3iS3k-e-Pc
The crowning highlight of his gaming career was
at the Microsoft-sponsored
Red
Annihilation tournament in 1997. He and "Entropy" (pseudonym,
real name unknown) emerged from a crowded field to face off in the
Quake level
E1M2 "Castle of the Damned", where Thresh defeated Entropy 14:-1.
In the post-game interview, Fong said that the score was not an
adequate reflection of their skills, acknowledging that once he had
the Yellow Armor controlled, this made it very difficult for
Entropy to fight back. (The Yellow Armor, which has 150 armor
points and absorbs 60% of damage, gives an immense advantage in
survivability especially in rocket duels.)
In his gaming career, Thresh went almost
undefeated and won many tournaments he entered over a five-year
span, and did it in a variety of games including Doom
I and II, Quake I, II, and III,
and StarCraft.
Using his prize winnings and endorsement money
which was rumored to be in the six figures, Fong and his brother
Lyle started GX Media, the
parent company of Gamers.com,
FiringSquad,
and Lithium
Technologies. Dennis was the CEO of the company
while Lyle was the CTO; together they grew
the company organically and profitably to a 100-person
company.
In 1999, Fong, as the CEO of GX Media, raised
over US$11 million dollars in financing from CMGI and led the
company to the position as the leading web portal for
games. Fong's Ferrari was parked in the lobby of the GX Media
offices and the company threw a party at the Playboy
Mansion during E3. In 2001, Gamers.com
was bought by Ziff-Davis, and
various other parts were spun off into separate entities. One of
the entities, Lithium Technologies, is now run by Dennis' brother,
Lyle, and is a leading CRM company based on social
technologies.
Dennis also worked for a time as editor-in-chief
at the video gaming
site FiringSquad,
wrote a monthly column in the popular PC Gamer
magazine, and co-authored the official Quake II
strategy guide.
In 2007, Fong, together with Xfire, founded
Raptr, a software client that
keeps track of what games you play, keeps them up to date and gives
gaming suggestions based on you and your friends' gaming
history.
See also
References
External links
thresh in Swedish: Dennis Fong
thresh in Chinese: 丹尼斯·方
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
bang,
baste, batter, beat, bolt, buffet, cordon, cordon off, cull out,
divide, drub, flail, flap, ghettoize, gin, hammer, insulate, isolate, keep apart, keep aside,
knock, lambaste, larrup, lay aside, maul, paste, patter, pelt, pick out, pommel, pound, pulverize, pummel, put aside, quarantine, rap, riddle, screen, seclude, segregate, separate, set apart, set aside,
sieve, sift, sledgehammer, sort out,
spank, thrash, thump, wallop, whip, winnow