k0nfig: "I think [ave] uses almost all of his day anti-stratting for us"

The Danish squad North finished the ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals in second place, losing to G2 in the finals. After a period of absence from LAN events, North is competing at ESL One Cologne where they are currently 1-2, with a win against TYLOO and defeats to OpTic and SK.

k0nfig feels like SK's loss to Space Soldiers shows that the skill gap in CS is small

Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke talked about the difference between the elite and the lower tier teams, communication issues and Alexander "⁠ave⁠" Holdt's impact as an analyst.

You are ranked fifth in our rankings, but how do you feel about your team at the moment? Do you feel closer to the top four?

I think it's really different because sometimes we feel like beat everyone and sometimes we feel like we can lose to everyone. I think the skill gap between teams right now is really small, because we saw SK losing to Space Soldiers and us losing to OpTic, so I think there is the good comparison to the lower ranked teams, the tier two, three can probably reach the same level as us. So we have to do something new and find something special.

What do you think then separates the top few from the rest?

I think it's dedication, some of it. Because, some players, they dedicate their whole lives to playing Counter-Strike all the time, their team dedicates to doing anti-strats and watching demos and stuff like that. That's the main part that is changing.

Talking about the preparation for your team coming here, what did you do, what did you focus on?

We have ave at home who is sitting and doing anti-strats for us, he makes a google drive and puts in videos, anti-strats, we watch that and see how they usually play. He also puts up percentages, so we can see, for example, fer is always playing sandbags on Inferno, fer is always doing this and this on force buys, and on pistol round... So we are getting a really good anti-strats from him at home and I think he uses almost all of his day on anti-stratting for us.

The first match you had here was against OpTic, that was a surprise win from them, especially considering their recent form. Tell me what went wrong for you in that match?

I think we didn't get started on the T side, that was the main part, then after the T side I think everyone was a little bit shocked because we were expecting to get a minimum of 5-6-7 rounds, which we usually do. I think, just the mentality we had, in the beginning, was really bad. Because some people need to start well, and usually we have bad starters on our team, everyone is starting slow and now we are getting better and better [at that].

After that, you faced TyLoo, a Chinese team now with peacemaker in the mix. What were your takeaways from them, did you see anything different from them, I'm not sure how much you've faced Chinese teams, but what were your impressions of them as a team in this match?

We played against them almost a year ago in the Major qualifier for Cologne. I think they have changed a little bit, and they also have the new player BnTeT, I think he is really good actually, he has a sick aim. I don't know about the part with peacemaker because he is talking in English and they are talking in Chinese, so I think it's really hard communication-wise.

I think the main problem they have is, I think they get nervous when they play against better teams. And usually they don't have good practice in China, so they probably play worse teams, meaning they can do different things in practice and it still works. If you play against a better team and do that, it probably won't work, because the better teams are always better at countering what they do.

The last game you played was against SK, most of your CT side was just you playing 2-1-2 setups and either you totally locked them out or you were totally overrun. What do you think were the differences in those rounds? And tell me a bit about your A setup, it looked interesting with aizy playing on the boxes behind red.

We changed our CT positions for this tournament, we changed it at the bootcamp we had one week prior to this event. I think we have some kind of communication problems sometimes because they could be up short when I was AWPing from the other side and get shot. We have a tiny bit of miscommunication but I think the CT side we had against SK was probably one of the best [we had]. We lost the pistol round and got I think 7 buy rounds in the end.

One of the things cajun b mentioned when I talked to him in Sydney was the sports psychologist coming in, you changing your practice regiment and stuff like that. Has that been a thing you started doing, any improvements there?

We have a sports psychologist and he helps us a lot with the personal problems in the beginning. And then after the personal problems, he will start doing sports stuff, like if you feel nervous in the first match and stuff like that. We kinda need him a bit more, I feel like, so he can help us break the curse in the first match against OpTic.

You are now 1-2, one loss away from elimination. Whats the feeling going into it the third day?

I think we have the opportunity to go through the group stage and then get to the quarter-finals, because we are a team that, even if we have 0-2, we fight with all we have like we did at the Major Qualifier as well, we were 0-2 and we just kept pushing. So we will keep pushing all the way till we reach the finish line.

You can learn more about North Academy's coach and the main team's analyst, ave, by reading the interview we conducted with him last week.