TaZ: "I see huge pressure on myself"

After top two finishes at EMS One Katowice and Copenhagen Games, Wojtas' Virtus.pro struggled at SLTV StarSeries IX Finals, finishing in a measly fourth place after two defeats.

Find out what Wojtas feels was the reason, how they're dealing with their narrow losses and what cause them, and much more by reading the interview here below.

How have you prepared for DreamHack Summer; do you feel ready for the event? Have you only practiced online or also bootcamped? How do you plan on spending the remaining time before the event kicks off?

TaZ: We will mostly prepare online, only five days before the event we plan to have a small bootcamp in Warsaw, at Buddaplay cafe, to focus on the missing parts in our preparations. I think that what we need mostly, is to focus on our anti-eco rounds, so we don't lose 80% of enemy eco rounds :D, other than that we need to work on our dust2 and mirage, feels like we have tons of space to improve on these maps.

Do you believe the lengthy break from LAN competition since Copenhagen Games will affect the results at DreamHack in any way, or does constantly playing official matches online make up for it? Are you afraid of giving up your game plan too much online?

TaZ: I feel like online tournaments are great way of keeping your motivation high. Constant competition keeps us pumped, and also gives us the needed experience in high pressure games. Teams prepare in a way to play against us, and then put their plan in place, lose or win, in the end I feel like we are getting on top because of that, I prefer to get abused online rather than at a LAN event!

What is great at the moment is that most of the time we are making our plans during the game, we don't play like we used to, it's more about game time decisions now than prepared plans. When you play for $10,000 online, there is no thinking about giving too much online... It is worth giving all you got, and making new stuff for LAN events.

Who do you think will be your toughest opponents at DreamHack? Any potential dark horses who have seemed particularly strong lately that you think might surpass everyone’s expectations in Jönköping? Anyone who might disappoint?

TaZ: Current skill level in CS:GO is so high, that it is very hard to pin point one or two teams who are the strongest opposition. Still I think that NiP will be well prepared, Na`Vi seems improved greatly, and I would not count out Titan. As for dark horses, HellRaisers, Team Global and fnatic are in my mind, only because of lackluster results from these teams lately, they have the potential to win events, but somehow they end up short. We are not afraid of any team, but we respect each of them.

Player	Age	Rating
Jarosław "pasha" Jarząbkowski	26	1.14
Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas	28	1.09
Filip "Neo" Kubski	26	1.08
Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski	20	1.08
Paweł "byali" Bieliński	20	1.07

What do you make of your chances at DreamHack? What would be a realistic goal for your team, and what would you be ok settling at? Is there any extra pressure for you to perform well at this particular event?

TaZ: I would love to play on the DreamHack main stage for once... Perfect scenario would be to win the event, but as I said the minimum plan is to reach the finals, so we could experience that great audience. I don't see extra pressure for our team to perform, but I see huge pressure on myself to perform, it feels like a great moment to come back and step it up.

Placing second in Copenhagen cemented you as a legitimate top two team in the world. Are you at all afraid of becoming slightly complacent with your success? Have you noticed a change in your team’s motivation since the last event?

TaZ: I feel like we were lacking bootcamps before the last two events (Copenhagen Games and SLTV). I was very happy with a 2nd place at CPH games, even if we felt that we should've finished the job on dust2, but the SLTV performance was terrible and that's where we stand now, we are not thinking that we are the best team in the world, we are aiming to become one, that is our current mentality.

Small break would be great, but we couldn't get one because of FACEIT Spring League. It is hard to play tons of hours from home each day (not only team practice but also individual training), and have the same level of self perseverance since our last bootcamp before EMS One Katowice, that's why bootcamp is looking to be the perfect cure for our bad performance.

Your recent success has often come with big margins, and you’ve struggled to close out narrow matches. Have you noticed the same trend? It seems whenever you take down the best teams, it’s often after running up a huge lead in the first half. Any reason why that may be?

TaZ: I have no idea honestly. I feel like in these narrow matches we tend to make really silly mistakes that cost us the games. I think that matches we had in FACEIT League can help us, we had problems with closing out the games, also we know where we made mistakes in the games we lost.

Soon we shall see if we can fix these issues... It also feels like we are capable of getting these big leads because of the "no pressure" factor, but when we lose a couple of rounds, the individual decisions start to cost us more. That is the process which we are learning how to handle now.

It remains to be seen whether the Poles can figure out their issues in close games and return to the grand final at DreamHack Summer 2014, set to begin on Saturday, June 14.