stanislaw: "There's a really good balance between me and nitr0"

Liquid opened the tournament with a win over BIG before dropping the winners' match to Virtus.pro. In a rematch with the Germans, Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz & co. prevailed once more, that time in a best-of-three, advancing to the semi-finals.

There, the North American squad opened their series against SK with a narrow victory on Inferno and punished the Brazilians for picking Cobblestone, clinching their spot in tomorrow's best-of-five grand final. 

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stanislaw talks post-off-season changes in Liquid

After the semi-finals day came to an end, we grabbed stanislaw and quizzed him about the team's decision to switch up roles after the off-season, as well as Liquid's journey so far:

First off, let's start with your preparation with focus on the switch in leadership, when did nitr0 take over and why?

I think it happened after the player break, because we took an evaluation period and said okay, we had the team for six months and we're not getting the results we need, so just take a step back and realize what everyone's best roles are. Everyone knows my best role is lurking and that's just what I really like to do, and it's really hard to IGL if you're a lurker. Nick kind of stepped up and said he can take over the IGL, and that puts me in a better position and makes everyone a little more comfortable. So that's why it's flowing a lot better now.

Did you expect the changes to come to fruition this quickly?

I mean, like I said before, we did this right after the player break, so we've actually had quite a bit of practice doing it in online matches and we actually bootcamped a week before in Netherlands. So we have practice in and it's been going pretty well. Obviously, we didn't expect to make the final and beat a really top team this quickly, but before, we already knew that we have the pieces to be a top team, it's just about finding the right pieces and making everyone as comfortable as possible and putting them in their best positions.

Going into the groups, beating BIG twice and losing to Virtus.pro, was that more or less along the lines of what you expected from your group?

Yeah, I feel like we had the easier group, obviously, VP being in a slump and BIG kind of hit or miss. We all expected to beat VP, I personally played really badly that match, but the thing is, with the help of Liquid, now we even got a psychologist and all that, so shoutout to Jared, we really took that loss, learned from all the mistakes, took everything we could from it and bounced back for the next big match.

Starting with Inferno against SK, there was a point where it looked like they were going to come back, tell me about what was going on inside the team's minds when that was happening and the adjustments that you made to finally close it out.

Yeah, on Inferno, we had a pretty big lead and then they started climbing back in, but if you actually look at those rounds, they were insanely close, they had like three alive, two alive, one alive, one alive, they were winning all these clutches they never should have. So we knew in the back of our head that these rounds are really close, if we can just get one, we'll be fine, and it eventually happened and we closed it out.

What about Cobblestone, that seemed like a much more comfortable map for you, did you even expect them to pick it, considering you've been looking great on it as well?

No, Cobble is our best map, if someone wants to pick it against us, go for it (laughs). We didn't expect it at all, so we just said 'let's play our game.' I don't know, maybe they outplayed themselves in the veto, I don't know what they were thinking, really, but we're happy to play Cobble any time.

Going into the grand final against mousesports, you've probably seen a little bit of them at this event, what do you expect from the best-of-five?

mousesports has been playing really well, I don't think anyone expected like chrisJ to step up to be an IGL and then ropz to fit in so quickly and the new pick-up, suNny, they've just been playing really well. We're just going to do what we've been doing, preparing for every match, Nick and ELiGE just watch the demos and just do all the prep work and then we have the team briefing. It's just going to be another match for us.

Touching on the prep work you mentioned, what is the distribution within the team in those terms, as well as the in-game calling?

Prep work is pretty much anyone who wants to do it. My whole philosophy, even back from OpTic days, was that I don't like to anti-strat teams, but some individuals might benefit from learning other people's tendencies. So, me, I don't like to do that much prep work, but for like ELiGE, Nick, Twistzz, and jdm, all of them like to know what the other team does, so it's beneficial to them.

As for the IGL part, it just frees up both nitr0 and myself, because I can pretty much do whatever I want and then based on what's going on in the round, I can make my call or he can make his call, and it just allows for a lot more diversity and freedom.

Does the fact that you are on separate sides from each other work well in that sense?

That's the whole point of putting me as a lurker, so that I can control that one side of the map and I can give the crucial communication from that side, and then he can do his thing with the other players on the other side of the map. I think it's just a really good balance between the two of us.