In video gaming, Haag is No 1 with a bullet

Los Angeles

MATT Haag, a professional video game player, makes close to a million dollars a year sitting in a soft chair smashing buttons. It is a fantastically sweet gig, and he will do just about anything to keep it.

That is why, on a recent morning, he was in a bungalow in Venice Beach, California, making pancakes. Not just regular pancakes, but high-protein pancakes with ingredients like flax oil and chia seeds, whose balance of carbohydrates, fat and protein was created by a dietitian hired to teach him how to eat more healthily.

The pancakes were just the beginning of a monthlong training session that Red Bull, one of Haag's sponsors, organised for him and his team, OpTic Gaming. Over the next several days, he and his fellow players gave blood while riding stationary bicycles, had their brains mapped by a computer and attended an hour-long yoga class where they le…