tarik: "Going to keep up the hard work and keep fighting"

Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip was the highest rated player of DreamHack Open Denver, but it was a team effort for Cloud9 against BIG, with all five members going positive. tarik contributed on the server and with his calls to help secure the victory for Cloud9.

tarik led his men to victory in Denver

This is Cloud9's first LAN win since the last America's Minor, how does it feel to take home the trophy from DreamHack Open Denver?

It feels really good, it was an important tournament for us to win, in my opinion. Not only did we feel like we were prepared for it, and had a good chance of winning, but going into future tournaments it will give us a confidence boost, which I think will be beneficial moving forward.

BIG gave you some trouble on their map pick of Cache, but offered little resistance on Train —  what do you make of them as a team?

BIG are a good team, I give them props for sure. Cache was a close map, we made some mistakes that screwed us over. I don't know how many ecos we lost to, at least one. I was playing pretty poorly individually on Cache, but the rest of the team did well. Props to my team, I'm really proud of them because everyone was playing great. It could have gone either way really, Cache especially, and then after that who knows. I'm just happy we ended up closing it out.

Going back to ESL One New York, you were looking good as a team, but then ran into the wall of FaZe. What do you make of their current form?

FaZe is really scary right now for sure, they are a team that probably everyone is worried about playing against. They have so much firepower, and on top of that they are working well together, which is the scary part. You would expect a team of five superstars to kind of clash, but Finn "karrigan" Andersen seems to be doing a really good job of getting them to work together, and making sure that everyone is playing their game. I look up to him a lot, because I feel that he does a good job of providing a good system for his team, that is what I want to do for us.
 
Can you talk about how your transition to in-game leading is coming along?

In-game leading is frustrating sometimes. There are pros and cons to it for sure, it can be overwhelming. There is a lot of criticism and a lot on your shoulders. I'm starting to get better at — it has been a process, and is going to continue to be a process. I think I can do things with it as long as my teammates believe in me. At the end of the day, all I want to do is fill in the role that I have to for my team. So if I need to IGL, I will IGL. But if I need to do something else, I'll do that. I just want to win at the end of the day.

Jake "Stewie2K" Yip was really in great form this event, he has talked about his struggles since this new line-up came together. Are you doing anything to set him up, or is he just becoming more comfortable?

I think he is getting more comfortable, he is trying to understand the system we have. At first, it was me trying to work in my system, and also use [the existing Cloud9 system] at the same time. So everyone has a good understanding of what kind of game plan we have going into matches now. But once he gets comfortable and he gets into the zone, the kid is unstoppable. He is really crucial to our team, because when he goes off it is really hard to play against us.

Your coach Soham "valens" Chowdhury was unable to be here due to a prior commitment, what is the difference when he is behind you versus not?

Yeah, it sucks that he wasn't able to be here for our first LAN win. He was doing his best to help us from online, but I wish he was here, I feel like it would have helped us out a lot. I'm sure he is disappointed he wasn't able to make it as well.

Looking ahead you have iBUYPOWER Masters, IEM Oakland, and the Major Qualifier on the schedule right now. How are you going to make sure you are staying in form in the lead-up to these events?

Like I said before, this was a really important win for us for confidence reasons. I feel like once we go into iBUYPOWER, everyone is going to be really happy coming from this win. I think we are going to do a lot of damage at these tournaments, and I'm looking forward to playing them. We are just going to keep up the hard work and keep fighting.