Karsa: "Learned from our mistakes"

The second day of the ELEAGUE Major Main Qualifier brought us a lot of upset, with TYLOO beating Cloud9 being one of them.

To hear how the Chinese team managed to beat Cloud9 despite their recent underwhelming performances, we talked to the team's coach QiFang "⁠Karsa⁠" Su.

Let's start with one of your recent tournament that you didn't have a good showing on - IEM Oakland. What did you think the problem was there and what did you gather from that tournament?

The main reason we didn't have a good result at IEM Oakland was a mentality thing. The first two games were very close and after those games we lost some confidence and it seemed that whoever we played we can't win. After that tournament we reviewed the games and there was much to learn so we spent a lot of time in preparation for this tournament.

After that was WCA where you lost to iGame.com in the end. With them being a lower tier European team, how were you feeling after that defeat?

Our goal at WCA was to win the tournament but after we lost to Epsilon in the semi-final we kinda felt like we didn't care about the match anymore because we lost the most important game. When facing iGame we were not mature enough, players were like "whatever, we will just play and we will fun" but after that we were like "we can't win in this form". So in the end of the game we started to get nervous and I think that's why we lost this game.

Regionally, do you think like ViCi Gaming has been stepping up and catching up to you guys?

We feel that ViCi has been improving continually, we can still win against them but we've seen their improvement and it's harder and harder to win.

Against OpTic, it seemed like a pretty easy game for them in the end, what do you think went wrong?

We lost the game because of the understanding of the map, they understand the map better than us and we feel like they control the game, the pace and everything. That is the main reason, but because of that we made many low level, stupid mistakes and got punished for that. That's why we lost the game. From that, we reviewed the video last night and learned from our mistakes to avoid them today.

The last match you played was against Cloud9. What were you expecting and how did you manage to get the upset?

We learned from yesterday and we paid a lot of attention on every little thing during the game. After the veto ended, we knew the map and we started to do the research on Cloud9 and what they do. So we knew their playing style and we know the map - if you look at the results it's our best map. That are the reasons the players had more confidence in this game.

What is your role as a coach in the team? Do you study international, local or your own team more when trying to incorporate new things? 

Normally, I make the time for everyday practice, tell players what they are doing wrong and on what they need to improve. At tournaments like this I help the players in the game, tell them if they do something wrong and what they should do. In terms of learning and watching the teams I watch many teams and tournaments, watch demos every day to get more knowledge of the game and the maps, so we can try to make it in practice and in game.

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