AdreN: "I still need to learn a lot"

The Kazakhstani team continues their impressive form, taking down Astralis in the quarter final of DreamHack Masters Malmö after eliminating the Danes at the Major in July. However, this time around, the match was more one-sided, as Gambit took a 2-0 win, with Mirage finishing 16-6.

The FaZe win gave them confidence, AdreN says

Dauren "⁠AdreN⁠" Kystaubayev, after his team booked a place in the semi-final tomorrow, talked about the Astralis game and acquiring talent from Kazakhstan.

I'll just start with the first map you played here, Cache. It started pretty good on the T side again but ended up being a pretty tight game. What do you think were the key things in that first map?

The key was our confidence, actually, we gained a lot of confidence yesterday, when we played against FaZe. We started to feel our gamestyle, how we are supposed to play, how we played at the Major. That was the key. Actually, on Cache we played pretty default, we tried to communicate a lot, just depending on what is happening on the map, we just decided what to do.

Playing against Astralis on Mirage, their map pick, and you totally stomped them on the CT side. Tell us a bit about that, how did it go so well?

As I said, we got a lot of confidence and we just played our game. Playing against them, we just won the pistol and got some crucial rounds. After that we started to feel everything, the full control of the map, we just knew what they were doing actually. So everything went well for us.

So tell me then, after the Major where you won against Astralis in the semi final, a lot of people were writing it off as a bit of a fluke. Do you think that this now proves that that wasn't a fluke?

Maybe somehow we proved it a little bit. Still, I feel like we are not in a good shape. We played a week of bootcamp with fitch, we still have a lot of work to do. But yeah, maybe for some critics we have just proved that we can do much more than they think, that the Major was not a fluke.

Tell me a bit about fitch, it seems like a similar story to HObbit. You picked him up, the first big event and he is playing great straight away. How does it happen? You pick up these players that have almost no experience and they play great on the big stages?

Actually, he played in a pro team, Tengri, and he did great. We knew that he was going to be one of the best players, he's got a good aim, we just need to make him feel comfortable. We just changed some positions, made some stuff, talked to him and told him to do whatever he likes, but just communicate with us. Tell us what you want to do and I'll fully adapt. That seems to be working, I'm just trying to support him as much as I can.

Tell me about you, taking over the in-game leading role. How tough of a task has it been on you, how big of a change is it, playing now and how it used to be?

I still need to learn a lot since I have the in-game leading now. It's really, really tough, because a lot of things I never thought about are on me now. I need to learn a lot and go against myself, I should do a lot of things I didn't want to do before. Right now I'm trying to keep focusing on in-game leading, trying to learn from other in-game leaders... We'll see what will happen.

You won the Major, the last big tournament, and now this is a very big tournament as well. In case you win this, how do you think this would rank you among other teams? Would you be the worlds best team if you would win this?

I don't know, it's a tough question. I mean, in every tournament, every team can beat each other. Today, we've been lucky maybe, or they have maybe been not so lucky. Tomorrow they can beat us. So it's a game, you should focus on your game and do what you have to do.