stanislaw: Just need to break C9 curse

The televised semi-final between FaZe and OpTic went in the way of the North American team in the end, with Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik and co. starting the series with a dominant 16-3 Train win before closing it out with a 16-12 scoreline on Overpass.

To learn more about the series and OpTic in general, we talked to the team's in-game leader Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz.

There was only a day since you knew who you were going to play today - how did you use the time, did you focus more on your game or what FaZe were going to do?

Like you said, we didn't have much time to prepare so we talked about our game. That's what we are trying to do a lot lately, just focus on ourselves and talk about our game plan and not worry so much about the other team. Because, the thing about worrying about other teams is you are just going to start getting in your own head - if they change their own playstyle then you have no backup plan so it's better to just focus on your own game.

You picked Train - how were you feeling coming into the first map, and especially after the rain 4k in the pistol - were you expecting it to go so smooth?

After the rain 4k we knew that that's a miracle round so we immediately forgot about it. We had an eco round and then got guns straight after that and started rolling all over them.

Can you talk to me about the game plan on Train, on the T side? You were hitting them with very fast rounds and then slowing down, was there anything special you were trying to exploit?

I know they probably watched a lot our Train because they knew we'd play it for sure. So I just wanted to catch them off guard and surprise them pretty much. I started calling a lot of aggressive stuff and fast paced stuff, and right when they think we are going to do it again I changed up the pace and slowed down. I'm sure they had no idea what was going on.

On Overpass you had a nice start and then they started coming back a bit. It seemed like you couldn't get a round if mixwell didn't get an AWP opening - is that something you're worried about at all?

In terms of late rounds it seems we still have a bit of trouble, like, when things are stressful we can really just breakdown. But it's good to have players like mixwell and tarik - and honestly everyone can open up rounds. So I think we have skill and the talent so that when things get tough and it's a really stressful situation, someone can step up and help us out.

Mostly the talk has been about tarik and mixwell on your team, but lately it's been RUSH also who we see stepping up greatly. What do you think, is there anything you changed to push him up a bit?

I don't think we've changed anything, it's just that RUSH has been playing insane. I don't know what is going on, he's been playing really well.

Moving on to tomorrow when you'll be playing Astralis, considering both semi-finals had the same maps and similar veto's, what are you expecting from that matchup, are we going to see another Train?

I'm not really sure what the maps are going to be yet, we have to go back and do our homework and see what they like to play and all that. We might see Train because we both like to play it, they just beat SK who are unstoppable on it. In terms of preparation we are just going to again just focus on ourselves and talk a little bit about what they do and go from there.

In general, how do you feel about the team right now? You've been having some good results, winning Northern Arena before, do you think that it NA at least, that you're getting to the top now?

I think that we are on the top of NA we just need to break that Cloud9 curse, whatever it is. I think that we are heading in the right direction - we are only a few months old with tarik, we are still ironing a lot of stuff out and improving a lot, but I think we can get there.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.