Zero: "CS is getting more even"

On the first two of EPICENTER, HellRaisers surprised by taking a map off fnatic as well as Virtus.pro, leaving Group B's outcome up in the air.

We sat down with Patrik "⁠Zero⁠" Žúdel after the two aforementioned matches to talk about their success so far in Moscow and Bence "⁠DeadFox⁠" Böröcz's performance. He also gave us his thoughts on the current state of the top-tier scene in light of the even results at EPICENTER.

Let's begin with the matches you've played up to now, splitting series against fnatic and Virtus.pro. How happy are you with the results so far?

We are in a group with the two best teams in the world at the moment, but we expected to do pretty well against fnatic. We thought we could win Overpass, because it was our map, we just made some very big mistakes on T side and didn't manage to come back. We lost a 1v3 and then just kinda crumbled. Against VP, we again won their pick and lost our pick, we got crushed on Nuke. We had macro mistakes, we just got crushed, there was nothing we could do about that pretty much. The match taught us a lot of things, we just need to learn from it, because we didn't play Nuke that much before the event. At the moment it's going alright, but we should win at least something against SK.

This will be your first encounter with the Brazilians, what do you think about the match-up and their level after they took the three-month long break?

I didn't see them play that much, because I don't watch too much NA CS at the moment and didn't see the events they played, so I don't know what to expect. I just saw them play Virtus.pro, and they got pretty destroyed. So I think we could win, it depends on the maps and how confident we'll play. Since we never played against them before, we're not sure what to expect. 

Like you, almost everyone split the series and won each other's picks. What do you account that to? Is the competition at this event that even?

I think CS is getting more even across the board. In the top 20, everyone can beat everyone at lesser events, but I don't think this is a lesser event, this is a pretty major event, so that was the most surprising thing for everyone. But that just shows how close the teams are.

A lot of the teams changed lineups during the off-season, SK had the long break, could that be in part the reason for the unpredictability?

I don't really know, because almost everyone except for VP changed their lineups. We did, SK had to play with SHOOWTiME, Maikelele is playing for NiP, dignitas changed lineups pretty recently too. Everyone has fairly new lineups, so I don't really account it to that.

Everyone has been prasing EPICENTER for the hotel and how they're treating the players, how are you enjoying the event?

I think this is the best event we've ever been to, this is by far the best hotel than at events any of my teammates have been to. It's amazing, we're really happy that we qualified and we hope we can go further.

If you do go further, are you looking forward to the stage matches? EPICENTER should have something special prepared...

Yeah, we heard it's going to be amazing, so I hope we can do it.

Lastly, I want to ask about DeadFox since this is your first event with the Hungarian. I already talked to STYKO about him prior to the event, how has he been playing here at his first big LAN?

DeadFox as an AWPer fits our team much better, because he can adapt. He can stuff for us that some people can't do. He just does whatever he is asked to do and he can sacrifice himself for the teammates, so that's a big difference. He also fits us well as a person. However, I think we didn't have enough time with him to figure everything out, our map pool is still quite small and we need to fix it, especially roles because a lot has changed since we had smike. 

I especially wanted to ask about Cobblestone, where you used him quite aggressively, he went in first very often on plateau or from A long, while on other maps he wasn't as aggressive. Is that how you want to use him? How much initiative does he take himself?

We don't know him that well yet, so I'm not able to tell, but overall we didn't quite figure out how to use him on the other maps. He doesn't have the same space as he used to have in other teams, so he can't do certain things because that's where other players play. We are trying to use him as well as possible, he's doing very well on Cobble but we need to figure out the other maps, where we didn't really find our playstyle yet.