seized: "It's not supposed to be like this, but I understand [flamie] and why he did it"

Russia pulled off the first big upset of the event, defeating SK in the opening match of day two 16-10 on Overpass.

seized thinks that Overpass was the best map to play against SK

While Russia was waiting for their next opponent, BIG, we sat down with Denis "⁠seized⁠" Kostin to get his thoughts on Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev not coming and hear about the struggle they had finding a fifth player.

Coming to the tournament, you obviously had issues securing five players to play at the event. Has all that stress before the event impacted how you feel coming here?

Everything was unexpected for everyone in our team, I guess. We had our flight at 9 PM, and one night before, around 5 AM, after Na`Vi lost to GODSENT, flamie wrote in our chat for the Russian team that he is not going. I didn't see that message that night, I only understood what was happening in the morning. We were trying to talk with flamie, figure out what is going on and why he doesn't want to go with us, what we can do. He wasn't replying to us before our flight at all, he just said that he wasn't going and that's it.

We decided that if we don't find a fifth player, our coach would play for us because it's not good to dodge a tournament like this 10 hours before it. When we were flying to China I was trying to talk with him, figure out what happened. He told me everything that was going on, why he is not flying and I understood his point. It's not supposed to be like this, but I understand him and why he did it.

hooch wasn't even supposed to come here as a coach, he pulled out, but he came in the end. What happened there?

He should've been our coach for this event at the beginning, but a week and a half before the tournament he said that he has some family problems and that he should stay at home, that he can't go with us. So we were trying to find a replacement and we found an old guy from 1.6, our good friend MSE (Vadim "⁠MSE⁠" Zimin). He said that he could go so we decided to pick him.

But when hooch found out that flamie can't go, he understood that for us it would be so hard, especially with our group, to play with a coach. So he sorted out his things and he came here. But it was really, really hard for him to get here, he didn't even get a visa, but we were looking for a way and we found out how to get to China as a Russian without a visa. We found out to what city he can fly, and from that city, he went here. It's not usually the way to go, but it worked.

You mentioned the group, what are your thoughts about it? It's a pretty stacked one...

For me, it's really stupid, even if we didn't place well in Barcelona and didn't get a good seed, I don't agree with drawing groups like that. Especially when so many teams decided to not go here, for me, as the organizer, I would redraw all of the groups. I don't remember which group it was, but they have two teams and to be honest they aren't good teams. For example, we have SK and BIG and they are [MAX and ORDER] and both are going to the next group stage. For me, it's just really stupid and I don't get why it is like that, but the only thing we can do is play.

WorldEdit is sitting in the middle here, is that connected to in-game leading or how do you play here?

He is just sitting in the middle because he is the sniper, we played together in Barcelona and we know how we need to sit, who needs to be close to who, who will talk, who will help someone... I'm in-game leading the team, I did it in Barcelona and everywhere when we usually play as Russia.

You ended up playing Overpass against SK. That used to be their mega-strong map and you are a mix, Overpass feels like a hard map for a mix, especially on the T side. What was the decision there?

To be honest, it's not that hard of a map for us because, for example, me, Dosia, electronic, we are really used to playing Overpass, we do it for our teams Gambit and Natus Vincere. Especially as last time in Katowice we beat SK on the map as Gambit, so I know their tendencies, how we can play against them and what we need to do to win against them.

For me, it was the best map we could get against them. I don't know why, they were trying to play in the veto with us, they kept Nuke until the last ban. It was Overpass or Nuke and we were ready to play Overpass and Nuke against them so I think it was a little bit of a bad veto by them.

How did the game go from your perspective, what were the key rounds and things that happened?

The key round was that electronic won the first pistol for us, 1v3, except that it feels like everything was working for us. I know how they are playing CT and I know how to play against them to win the rounds. We even lost some stupid rounds as T, I mean, not stupid, but we didn't do what I said, and if we would have done that we would have won them.

The first half score was good for us and I knew that if we would just win pistol and win the force after that, we can roll them on the other side, and that's what happened. We just played aggressive CT, pushed them... Our strongest thing as a mix is that we are unpredictable, we can do "stupid moves". That's our good thing and our bad thing, but against teams with structure it's good, we can surprise them and not let them play their game.