STYKO on closing games: "It's something you can't practice, it has to come with experience"

The European mixture got their revenge on G2 today, after they dropped a massive lead in the match that the two teams played earlier in the tournament, in the group stage. This time around, MOUZ won G2's map pick Inferno to start it off, and closed it out on their comfort pick Mirage.

STYKO believes that the luck will be on their side in the rematch against Liquid

We caught up with Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk after the match, who talked about their issues in closing out matches, preparation and more.

What are your thoughts on the dennis to mousesports saga, obviously there were strong rumours about him replacing you in the team after the Major? It didn't end up happening in the end but how did it feel coming back into the team and playing after that?

There was a possibility after the Major that dennis was going to replace me in mousesports starting lineup, I would probably be benched it seems like, but in the end, the deal fell through for undisclosed reasons. Obviously, I didn't know about the change mousesports want to make. It came to me basically from the leaks, that was the first thing that I was uncomfortable with. But at the same time, I understand them, because I understand how dennis is as a player, I mean I have no hard feelings for anyone because he was probably the better player and obviously one of the best free agents available at that time.

How it affected me... it felt really bad at the beginning, but now I'm trying my best to prove to everyone that it was the right decision to keep me in the starting lineup and I kind of got over it. I feel like everything bad happens for a reason. So I even if it would've happened, it would be a new start for me, a new lesson, a new experience.

Does it feel kind of weird that this move almost happened considering where mousesports were as a team when you joined, and then after that, you made the playoffs of the Major, won Mykonos, placed second at ECS S4?

It definitely feels weird and this is something we all agreed on in this lineup, even the coach, all the five players, that it's weird for [mousesports] to want to make a change in the roster because we are the best lineup that they ever had. And we managed that in such a short period of time, half a year, we managed to rebuild everything completely.

Let's switch the focus to this tournament, you already played G2 here, did the preparation for the match involve anti-stratting, going back to the demos of matches that you played, or was it more just playing your game? What was the preparation like for this game?

We didn't watch any demos from the group stage match that we previously played, maybe our coach did just to get a groove on their game, but all in all we just prepared individually because we knew that if we prepared individually that the plan that we had before, in the groups, would work. We lost really close and we kind of threw away the Inferno game, we were leading 14-8 and then we end up losing that match.

We just kind of knew that if we stick to the plan and the maps are the same in the group stage, then we are eventually going to win. But, there was a really huge question mark which was will the maps be the same. We were thinking about different maps and I bet they were thinking about different maps as well. It's kind of expected that if you played that well on one map, like we did in the group stage on Mirage, 16-2, that it's insta-veto for them next time. But obviously they don't play Train and they can't gamble on that one. So we knew that Mirage was going to be in the pool and we knew that we played them well before, so it was a just confidence boost as soon as we won Inferno, we just realized: "Let's just repeat Mirage from the group stage and it's going to be 2-0."

Let's touch on Inferno, that you won in the end, but it all started with a good CT side, nine rounds. What were the key things that happened in that half?

I remember that we kind of experimented before the game, where someone came up with the idea to play two in pit more, with me and Robin (Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool). We realized that it might work and it actually did work, because as soon as Robin got traded in the pit, where he had a forward position, they didn't expect me, they didn't check me at all, they were spamming site - I remember that remotely during two or three rounds that we did it.

We had a good read on them, I think two times as soon as they executed A we were four on the site, ready to fight them. So it was all in all good preparation, we also know that they like to force-buy a lot, explode through the smokes a lot, but they kind of didn't do it on Inferno, so we knew something is probably off and then we realized they were doing heavy strats on A with a lot of smokes.

So that worked well for us, but they had good individual rounds on Inferno as well, which is hard to counter. When shox comes to B and one-deag's both of the players, it's hard. It's obviously a mistake by someone [to let that happen], I don't know who, we will have to rewatch the round for that, however, when someone is feeling on point it's hard to counter it with anything.

On Mirage, it was a classic mousesports thing, you go up 11-2 and then they started coming back. How does it happen all the time?

At 11-2 I think they had a Deagle round or something and won it. Then it was 11-4, we lost the pistol round, I think we missed a granade in the pistol round on short, I'm not sure but I heard it pop really early, earlier than it should've, so it's hard for me to comment before watching the game itself. But it all started from the pistol round where we failed the nade and the aim duels that we should've won, and that we usually win.

There was one round in which you put down the connector and stair smokes, but the stair smoke is deeper than usual, was that on purpose?

Yeah, it's a really hard smoke, I got an idea that was: "Why is everyone putting down the normal stairs smoke, which is kind of useless because it's helping CT's get into sandwich?" So I made up a smoke from B apps that smokes stairs deeper, but it was completely useless because the guy on short can hear it flying from B apps.

So then we found somewhere in a demo of Astralis that they are throwing this smoke, I checked their Mirage demo and I think gla1ve is throwing the smoke. Ironically, I saw s1mple throwing the smoke with exactly the same lineup as me, so he probably saw it from me as well. But the smoke is really good because you can jump onto stairs and see into the jungle. It's intentional, but you don't have to use it like that even, you can just spot it from ticket booth with an AWP, that's the easiest kill of an AWPer's life. It's kind of a good smoke but you have to be careful about what to do with it.

How do you comment all of these comebacks teams have been doing on you, losing massive leads. People say it's choking, is that how you feel it's happening?

No, not at all, we barely talk about it as choking when we are playing. When we hit 13, 14, sometimes 15 rounds, it just feels like one deciding bullet could change the match completely, and in our heads we are unlucky in those situations.

But at the same time, it's worth mentioning that opposition that we usually face is insanely good at this point, when they are really close to losing, they are playing really well. And it's hard on CT side as well, because Terrorists have nothing to lose when it's like 14-6 or whatever. Partially they are already in the second map in their brains or whatever. They are doing stupid moves that you are not expecting, pushing through the smokes, walking out of the smokes while you are holding a tight angle. It's really hard, but it's not really choking, we don't feel it like that, but it is obviously what the community loves to spam, so... (shrugs)

I guess closing games is an issue because it's something you can't practice, it has to come with experience and we feel like its getting better every tournament.

You got revenge on G2 and next is Liquid, who you also lost to in the group stage. Is another revenge coming up?

That's going to be a good matchup, I think we expect that the maps are going to be, like against G2, similar to what we had in the group stage. And we know, in our heads, that we were really off that day, for me especially and with our calls, we lost 2v5's, 3v5's continually on Inferno. So if we are going to play the same game, we are going to probably win those situations nine out of ten times. We used all of our bad luck in that match, so it's hopefully going to be all good.