hooch: "wayLander [surprised me]"

PiTER had to change two players only days before the tournament, but they still managed to surprise many by taking Titan to a quadruple overtime on de_cache and by beating Gamers2 in an overtime on de_mirage.

They still didn't manage to qualify for the major though, as they lost to Flipsid3 in the end, which ended the team's journey in the angelo Hotel in Katowice. Dmitry "⁠hooch⁠" Bogdanov talked to us about a lot of different topics, which you can go through below:

The team changed two players only a few days ago, they brought you and ub1que in because of visa problems, how much practice have you got with the lineup? Did you at least feel like it clicked within the team?

"We had played like four maps, that's it. The first pracc we were playing was against HR, we decided to play like a good, solid opponent and they asked us if we want to play. We played them and lost 16-14 on mirage, so we felt like we could be good. But the next day we got owned by some medium teams, but we didn't take it too seriously because it's mix games. We just knew that we can make it good. I didn't expect such good play from our team, especially from wayLander, but they proved me wrong and I kinda enjoyed the tournament with the guys."

So what do you think about wayLander, he's racked up a lot of kills in all the games you played, but he's basically really new to the scene and nobody really knows who he is. 

"This guy played Source before, he's not known in Europe at all, but to be honest he's not so respected in Russia, because people think he's too aggressive and random. But this guy is just very self-confident, his confidence sometimes makes it bad for him, but he's a very good player and a good fragger. I didn't expect him to play so good, but he was playing his positions and doing what he knows how to do."

People have been wondering, does he speak Finnish at all?

"He was born in Finland and lived here ever since he was five. His father is Finnish and his mother Russian. He lives in Saint Petersburg, which is close to Finland, so not such a big difference. But no, he doesn't speak Finnish, only a little bit."

Let's get to the matches here then, first you played against Titan in a quadruple overtime, just talk us through the game, why weren't you able to close the match after such a lead?

"This match was really intense, we started really good. We kind of know how they play, because I practiced with them before and we were watching their games. But this is a team that doesn't change much, they play what they practice. The game started, we kind of knew how they play in the first round, we went A and they played passive, so it was easy for us. We got to around 7-1 with a good hype, but then they started to push us very aggressively, and we are a mix team and we didn't know what to do. It was like 8-7, but in the second pistol wayLander made a good call that they were going B, we just pre-naded them and I got easy kills. We took an important anti-eco, but after that we made some mistakes and the game went to like 12-12. After that they went up 15-13, we were 2v5 and facecrack and ub1que made a sick round, we made it 15-14, 15-15. We were in the lead in the first two overtimes, but we couldn't close it. The closest overtime was when it was 2-0 as T, but I lost an important 1v1, I still feel bad for that. Two rounds as T was really good, but we couldn't close it. And in the last overtime, we just felt like we did everything we could and we didn't have resources to close it. It's just our fault that we didn't make it, but it was still a good result against a big team as Titan, even though they were not so good recently."

What about the other game against Gamers2, that also went into an overtime, this time only one, what did you do well, what did you do wrong? 

"We knew nobody was going to play cache with us this tournament, so we expected to play mirage. To be honest, it was a really hard match for me, because I'm changing a guy, so I was playing positions I don't play and I'm not used to. It was kinda hard for me, we weren't playing very good, but wayLander just scored around 40 frags and made important frags. We were again down 15-13 and made it back to 15-15, then we were down 2-1 as CT and the first gunround on the second side we were again down 3v5, and we closed it 3-0. It was an amazing feeling, because we really wanted to beat these guys, because to be honest we don't like they use SCARs so much. We don't like them as players because they use SCARs and we don't like the style they play, so we were literally hyped to win against them. We gave a lot of power out, so I guess it was too much for one day to play one more match to qualify for the main event."

The last match with Flipsid3, you couldn't get too much done, what was the problem there?

"Well, we started quite good, we won pistols but we lost the anti-eco. We didn't care about that, it was 2-2 and we started losing rounds because WorldEdit was playing really good with his AWP on middle and we couldn't do our standard rounds. They really play good mirage and everyone from us made some stupid mistakes, and we lost some rounds we could've won. In fact, they were just better this match."

How satisfied are you with those results, seeing as you had two stand-ins?

"wayLander is really disappointed right now, and I can imagine, he played really good and he expected more, but what I can say that it was like the first international event for the guys, they had the experience. Nobody expected us to play like that, everyone saw us losing 16-5, 16-7 and go home. We made a really nice match against Titan and Gamers2, we couldn't make it nice with Flipsid3, but still we did our best and I feel satisfied with our appearance here. I understand that it would be a really, really, really big wonder if we made it to Katowice. But still, I can say that I enjoyed playing this tournament, I enjoyed playing with these guys. But I am a little bit sad anyway."

How do you feel about the BO1 system of the qualifier?

"First of all, I want to say thank you to ESL for hosting this, for making this tournament for us. But in fact, BO1 is random. I know that BO1 is better for us as a mixteam, but everyone likes BO3. Everyone, viewers, casters, players, everyone likes it and BO1 for getting to the main event, for getting $50,000 from the stickers is like a coin toss sometimes. Also, I didn't like some teams have to make a break and some teams can play in a row. It's different conditions for the teams, some have an advantage and some disadvantage. Also, I didn't understand how it's possible, the lower seed always had an advantage in vetoing. And this tournament, it wasn't us choosing the map. But also, I want to say thank you ESL for hosting it and I want to say good luck to every team on the main event, especially to the CIS teams like Na`Vi, HR and Flipsid3."

Anything else to add?

"Yeah, I would like to thank the whole CIS/Russian community, Andrey Ermakov who made our appearance here possible, because if we couldn't make it, we would lose the quota for CIS teams. I would like to thank all my teammates for having a good time here."

This was the last interview of day one at the main qualifier for ESL One Katowice, you can expect to see more of these from tomorrow's teams, as well as at least Titan from day one.