SmithZz: "Format good for big teams"

Much like many of the favourites, G2 were able to win their first match against TYLOO and grab an important win.

We caught up with Edouard "⁠SmithZz⁠" Dubourdeaux right after the match to talk about their comeback from 1-7, the preparation overall, the system and more:

Let's kick it off with the usual, how was your preparation before this event seeing as you just came back from the US?

We didn't play so much. We were at ELEAGUE just before this tournament, so we basically came back and pracced about two days on the internet, and that's it.

How much were you able to look into the specific match-ups in those two days? You obviously played TyLoo, what did you think about the match-up?

We didn't look at anything, I just read an article, I don't remember when. They were playing stacks, and that's all we knew about them. That's why we had a really rough start, because we needed to analyze them, but when we knew approximately how they played, we countered them.

It was 7-1 and then you took the timeout, what did you talk about during it and how did you fix what you weren't able to do before?

We just basically said that we are playing really bad. Our communication was not good, but yeah, it's what I said, they react really fast, I think they really hate fakes or something. They are quickly 4-5 in zones we are attacking, it was quite obvious, but normally it's not in the meta. We just said OK, let's play a bit slower, a bit unexpected and it was easy.

Everyone I asked said you were likely the best team at the event, who do you see as your potentially biggest opponents?

I think there's a lot of teams who can beat us if we are not on a good day. We showed good results, but we still have the same problem, if we don't enter the match, we can lose to anyone. It can be really hard against any team here.

The format is very new, hasn't really been used in CS before, what are your thoughts on it? How is it going to change the qualifier?

I think it's really good for big teams, you have to lose three times instead of two, so it's a huge advantage. After that, the randomizer depends partially on luck, you can face mousesports, EnVy, or lower teams. There is still a random part and I don't really like it, but for anti-stratting and stuff like this, it's really nice, because you don't know who you play, only the first round. It's really good.