Rak (crayfish): Russian Dota slang for a bad player

"Rak (krab)" in a 2012 slang glossary

In August 2012 the portal dota2.ru published a guide to Dota 2 abbreviations and slang. One of its entries reads: "Rak (krab) — slang term for a noob in the Russian community." So by the time Dota 2 launched, the word was already well established in the Russian-speaking community.

The year 2012 on the card is the year it was first written down, not the year the word was born. No earlier dated uses in a Dota context have been found. The popular theory that "raks" were invented on iCCup or Garena is not supported by any source.

How a rak differs from a noob

Esports blogs describe rak as the Dota equivalent of "noob," with one important caveat. As Cybersport.ru wrote in 2020, a noob is simply a beginner who is still learning, and there is no shame in that. A rak, on the other hand, considers himself experienced, ignores advice, and never admits mistakes.

That explains the difference in tone: being a noob is no shame, while being a rak is considered embarrassing in the community. The word was in constant use all the same: in 2021 the cyber.sports.ru blog post "How did the old-timers talk?" recalled that calling someone a rak in a match used to be "everyone's duty."

Four theories about the word's origin

Nobody knows for sure where the word came from: there are several theories and none of them is proven. The first links rak to the English word cancer, which foreign imageboards used for anything that ruins a community's atmosphere. The Cybersport.ru author considers this the most plausible version, and commenters on esports blogs cite it too.

The second theory is a joke said to come from World of Warcraft players: crayfish have "claws instead of hands," so they can't press buttons properly. The third is about "the bottom": players with poor stats supposedly live at the bottom of the rankings, like crayfish on a riverbed.

The fourth comes from World of Tanks, where a player's poor stats are highlighted in red, the color of boiled crayfish.

"Gaben keeps giving me raks" and the "Rak Cup"

The word outlived the original Dota. In comments on cyber.sports.ru blogs in 2020, players joked that "Gaben keeps giving me raks," meaning matchmaking supposedly puts weak teammates on their team on purpose. Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, appears in the joke as a stand-in for matchmaking itself.

In 2021 cyber.sports.ru mentioned a "Rak Cup," apparently a show tournament, although its organizer has not been confirmed. Accounts of how alive the word is differ, though: that same 2021 blog post, "How did the old-timers talk?", put rak on its list of words Dota players no longer say and wrote that it now comes up rarely. Derivatives like rachyo ("rak rabble") or rakovaya katka ("a rak game") are not separately documented in glossaries or articles.

A crayfish with raised claws in the picture

In the catalog the meme is illustrated with a plain photo: a river crayfish on a white background with both claws raised and its antennae stretched forward. The picture can be used as a reaction or as a base for your own caption.

The raised claws echo the joke about "claws instead of hands." The photo fits moments when a teammate misses a skill, buys the wrong item, or confidently runs into a fight alone against five.

Example captions for the crayfish

These examples are made up for illustration: "When your teammate types 'I know how to play this hero' at minute ten while going 0/7," "Me after missing Meat Hook for the fifth time and blaming my ping," "Gaben, why do I get four raks again."

Captions like these can mock someone else's blunder or work as self-irony, when a player admits he played like a rak himself.