Stewie2k: A few tricks up our sleeves

After defeats from FaZe and TYLOO, Cloud9 were in risk of being eliminated going into the third day of competition. Facing Renegades for their tournament life, the North American team was able to get a win, with Timothy "⁠autimatic⁠" Ta once again doing a lot of work for his team.

Talking to Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip we learned about their losses, his AWPing and the technical issues that plagued their last match.

We can start with the first match that was against FaZe, again. You had a good lead but you blew it in the end - what happened there?

To be honest I think we played really well and throughout the whole game I never thought like we were going to let go of the gas pedal. We had a few B executes against them because we knew B was kind of weak. We ran it the first time but we ran it too quick so we messed up and the timing was wrong. That's why our go-to strat didn't work and we ran out of plans in the end. In the whole game I don't think we lost to them, I don't want to take anything away from them, but I think we lost to ourselves.

What do you think were your biggest problems, especially on your T side?

I think on our T side we have our go-to strat and it worked out well but we had some individual mistakes that cost us the game.

After that you played against TyLoo, one of the weaker opponents you could get. In the end, they ended up winning on Mirage. In an interview they said that after the veto they went back and watched some of your demos on the map. What do you think about the veto part and the match itself?

I think it's fair for both sides because both can go back and watch VoD's so it wouldn't be a disadvantage for any team. For the game, I think we just didn't have the motivation and that we were just going through the motions instead of finding the motivation and playing the game.

You played Mirage in your third match again, why do you think you are playing it all the time, how does it come down to it?

Right now, I think Mirage is one of our comfortable maps. It kinda went down to Cache or Mirage and I think Renegades would rather play Cache. I don't know why, but in the tournament almost no one ever played it. At this point, Mirage is pretty good for us. I think we will play Mirage again and teams might start countering us but I think we will have a few tricks up our sleeves.

In the match against Renegades you had a lead like in the match against FaZe, what was going on for you in that map?

In the first half we had our energy up and everyone kept our hype up and we kept going. I think the only round we actually lost was when two of us disconnected and that round n0thing actually got two kills. I think if we didn't disconnect that we would've won that round also. In the end we were glad we could pull through.

It seemed that you had like 5 disconnects during the match in live rounds, what was going on?

I have no idea, we were just getting "no steam logon". We weren't really tilted, it's just disturbing to have those interruptions and we can't have match medic because someone already took damage. After that round on the CT side we kept our heads up and told ourselves it's a free round for them but we can still win the half.

Looking at your own game, using the AWP is not something that you do that often, but when you do it's pretty good. In this team it probably doesn't make sense to take the AWP over skadoodle, but do you see yourself using the AWP more in the future? How do you feel about the weapon?

I'm the type of AWPer that likes to secure rounds, I would make a play, hopefully get some picks and secure a 5v3. I think the AWP is something you can pull out when things are not working out and hope for the best.

Thinking about using using it more in the future?

It really depends, because right now on Mirage we don't have anything coordinated if I do AWP. And if I'm using it, it's going to be on a map like Train or Dust2.

You have your first win finally, looking forward, how are you feeling?

We are still down, we don't have much room to make mistakes so hopefully we will pull through. I think we can still grind it to 3-2. We just need to find some motivation inside of us. Last night we had a big talk, kind of talking to ourselves and figuring out what we need to do to win.

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