Hello, my dear friends.
Today is the 2nd day of our stay here in Seattle.
I'm here with Vanya from our hotel lobby.
Vanya, how do you find it here?
Excellent, everything is super comfortable, Valve are as always godlike.
It turned out so that you didn't attend the International for 2 years, and now you are here.
I don't know...
In general what do you feel, what emotion do you have?
Maybe you have some nervousness?
No, to be honest the whole team is completely lacking it.
Even Akbar says that he feels confident.
Valve creates the most comfortable environment,
and as I know it's the latest International and it's better than the previous ones.
I mean we are in the hotel now, gaming rooms are in the neighborhood.
We walk 10m and we are already playing at our PCs.
Who do you practice with here?
We were playing pubs so far, setting everything up.
We had only 1 day.
Now we arranged pracs with LGD and some other teams, I don't remember them well.
How do you like American pubs?
American pubs are splendid. I already gained some MMR.
We haven't lost a single time yet.
So do the players play worse here?
Maybe we just didn't meet anyone higher, but all of the players are 4-5k MMR.
We didn't meet anyone higher.
Regardless of our 6-7k we didn't meet anyone with higher MMR.
So yes, it's easy.
Okay, let's talk about the bootcamp.
Everyone wonders about it, because you didn't have a lot of time to prepare.
Akbar was constantly flying there and back.
How was your bootcamp in general and what did you do when Akbar was away?
To be honest we mostly prepared not in in-game terms.
We had to, we couldn't play, because Akbar was either in Moscow
or he couldn't reach PC, he had lags and so on.
We mostly prepared in terms of morale.
Five of us, we socialized together as friends, getting ready to...
There were 4 of you.
Akbar was also there before. He went away for just four days.
Something like that.
Well, okay. Now everyone plays at higher level.
Not higher than yours but higher in general.
Do you think this morale practice would be enough?
No, right now we will get used to the game, to the PCs.
It would be nice to pass acclimatization,
so we would have a good regime and nothing would go wrong.
That's it, we'd just have to prepare for the game,
because everyone would play differently, everyone would be nervous, everyone would worry.
We just have to prepare mentally.
From one hand you have a huge advantage,
because no one knows what to expect from you.
To be honest we don't know ourselves what to expect from us.
Theoretically we do have some options of how to act and how to perform in-game.
In fact we prepared solidly, well.
In general what is your and the guys' mood? What place did you come here for?
We are in a very good mood. What place did we come for?
What place?
No one says that.
Well, you do estimate your strength for sure.
I think we will fight for the top at minimum.
Everything is fine for us. Everything is super.
Who did you practice with during the bootcamp?
During the bootcamp we practiced with Fnatic, Virtus Pro, with EG...
With very good teams, but there were no Secret, no Cloud9.
They went straight to the America, so we couldn't practice with them.
Also we practiced with Vega, they play very well nowadays.
Is there any special selection of the teams you would play with?
For example do you play with everyone or it's better to choose 2-3 opponents?
No, of course not. It's better to choose different playstyles...
I mean each playstyle is represented by 5 or so teams.
Someone split-pushes someone does something else.
We chose 1 team for each playstyle and now we just want to play the Chinese,
to evaluate what they can and what they know.
During those games we would rofl and do a complete nonsense.
We just want to know a bit more about the opponents.
So who is the captain in the team right now?
Do you control every action, bear responsibility for everything?
Or is it mostly team cooperation?
No, all the calls come from the team.
When we have a good morale... It's our weakest point,
because people shut off, stop communicating and everything goes wrong.
When all five of us communicate, everyone has a good morale and is focused,
no one would stand a chance. (against us)
But then again it's unlikely for everything to be perfect,
so no one would get disturbed in-game by some mistakes.
How is it possible to control the morale in-game?
There is no way. We were just socializing together, getting more confident.
We need to trust each other, I don't know how to explain it.
It's hard.
Is you trust on a high level now inside the team?
Yes, right now it's quite high but then again it can be easily lost.
After a couple of unfortunate events everything can disappear.
It would be not our game anymore, we will lose to everyone.
That's why our morale is good so far,
we communicate well and everyone takes part in it.
You still have a few days to prepare better.
How will you spend those 4-5 days?
4 days... We play all the time.
The PCs are working 24\7 so we will play day and night.
When the person wakes up he goes to play.
Do you have any plans to go for a walk or is it better not to do that before the tournament?
No, you can go for a walk from time to time.
In general we don't have much to rehears,
we already practiced a lot and we have the idea of how it would be.
There is a drawback that we can overthink it,
make up something new and we will fail with it.
There are few days left and we have to do what we can do.
Now we just have to figure out our opponents.
Well, you already know that you can make up something during the game.
You might want to test something crazy new but you are already expecting that.
Maybe you can prevent it completely?
No, you can't prevent that.
I'm serious.
For example we would play some carry Veno now,
and we would beat LGD three times in a row.
We'll think that it's something strong.
We'll bring that to the tournament and we'll be overrun by everyone.
You can't prepare for this.
That's why it's better not to invent anything now, not to look for anything.
We just have to face it with what we already can play.
Do you think some dark horse can show an amazing performance similar to NewBee last year?
Well, NewBee were favorites last year from the beginning, before the groupstage.
They lost to everyone.
They were favorites before the groupstage, they beat everyone in China.
They were the champions for 3 tournaments in a row in China.
They came to TI and had a bad performance during groupstage.
But anyway they won the International after all. They rallied their force.
It doesn't answer my question however. Are there any teams now...?
No, I think everything would go more or less stable, as we expect.
We are probably the only dark horse that is placed at the bottom,
but we would advance much further.
Everyone else is more or less at their place.
I mean who is at the top and who isn't.
Okay, we will probably finish this interview.
It was more of a pre-match one; we will talk with Vanya later about the games.
So, thank you for watching,
Good bye!
Wish us luck.