AdreN: "We really need confidence right now"

We sat down with Dauren "⁠AdreN⁠" Kystaubayev after Gambit performed the first big upset of ESL One New York, beating Natus Vincere 2-1 and advancing to the Group A winners' match where they will face MOUZ.

Gambit, who recently transfer listed Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov, were able to take out CIS rivals Natus Vincere after three maps, just a few days after their foes managed to get a second place at the FACEIT Major.

Ahead of Gambit's match against MOUZ, we talked to AdreN about the team's exit from the Major, their preparation for New York, the team's mentality issues, and playing with a roster that may not stay together as one of the players is already on the transfer list.

One of the big news concerning Gambit is Hobitt's transfer listing, does that relieve some of the pressure to perform when coming here?

Actually, I don't feel any pressure coming here. Everybody knows that he wanted to change something in the team, and it's his decision. We respect that, of course, and it doesn't affect us in the game or our relationship with him at all. Everything is good.

You went out early at the Major, which gave you some extra time between the event in London and ESL One New York. Did you take the time to prepare?

After the Major loss we just tried to relax for five days because we had a mental overload, so we needed to reset and just practice for New York and show what we worked on. At the Major we didn't play our game, so we just needed to relax and just practice a little bit before coming here... So far, so good!

Was there anything particular? Did you prepare against Natus Vincere?

We didn't focus on their game. We watched the Major games, of course, but most of what we did was just focus on our game and we tried to focus on how we're playing and how we're going to play against them. Maybe we looked a bit at their tactics and some of the positions they like to play, but we didn't prepare for them. We prepared our own game and tried to focus on ourselves.

As far as the calling goes, it seems like a lot of players are talking and giving ideas and so on, how is that working out?

Right now we have a plan before we go into the game, but during the game, depending on what happens during it, we can change the plan. Everybody can call, and we just make decisions together. So, yeah, it looks like everybody is calling but there's a plan in place at least for the first half of the game.

It seems when two teams from the same region play each other the underdog can come out on top more than normal. A good example would be North beating Astralis in Stockholm. Do you think maybe there's something to that playing in your favor in this match?

Yeah, maybe. I think that for us it's much easier to play against Natus Vincere. I mean, I wouldn't say that before the games, it's always hard to play against them, but mentally it's much easier to play them than to play European teams because we're friends in real life, not best friends, but we get along, and we played with Zeus and so on, so we felt pretty relaxed going into the match. Maybe it's similar to North and Astralis, if North wouldn't have been there maybe Astralis would have wrecked any of the other teams that would have been in the final at DreamHack... Nobody knows. At this level, it doesn't make such a big difference, but it could be a little piece of the puzzle.

The Major was pretty rough for you guys, so is it really important for you to get a good result here? Is it something you feel is very necessary? You said you weren't feeling much pressure, so are you here more to see what you can do or is it more about going really far?

Well, first of all, of course we want to show up, and show that we're still capable of winning. I know how we can play when we don't have mental problems, we can play really well, and we want to show in this tournament that we're capable of that.

What are these mental problems that you're speaking of?

You know, when you're losing too much there's a lot of thoughts going through your head and you start to lose a lot of confidence. Confidence is a big part of winning, of the process of winning, if you want to win you have to be confident. If you're not confident in your moves, you have a big chance of losing, so when you lose a lot of confidence you start to have a mental break.

Do you think maybe roster changes could help with that?

I don't know, it might work, but we changed a lot of players and it didn't work so I don't think changing players is a big deal if you want to gain confidence. It's all about winning matches at tournaments, but it seems like it's hard for us right now...

One last question on the Hobbit topic, when he does get transferred, have you already thought about what you will do?

We didn't think about it yet. How can I say this? When the problem will come, we will solve it.

Did you expect that Na`Vi would struggle so much? On Nuke they barely put up opposition, then you started both other maps way ahead early on even though they were able to bring Inferno back. Were you expecting these early leads?

We weren't expecting that the match would start off like it did on Nuke, and that I would go our way like that. It was kind of surprising, but we did know that our Nuke is good. We really practiced it a lot. I can't say Na`Vi was bad, we made some good moves in important rounds, and that was the most important thing in the match. It's not about them playing bad or not waking up, it's about how we played from the beginning.

On Nuke, if you have a good start, it's always hard for CTs to pick up rounds as the match goes on because the pressure starts to rise. When you see you're on CT side and you're losing like five rounds in a row, the struggle is real. The main thing was that we won Overpass, and I think it happened because we gained a little bit of confidence and they lost a little bit of confidence after Nuke, which I think is why we were able to finally win the match.

Talking about confidence, at the end of Overpass it looked like a comeback was happening when they won five out of six rounds to make it to double digits. Did you feel it could slip away at any point?

We didn't feel like we were going to lose the match because every round we lost on the CT side at the end of the game was close, or we knew we could win the rounds, so we didn't feel pressure and we knew we would eventually win the rounds and win the match. It was hard, because every round is a chance to lose the game, but we could feel the game, we felt our teammates' movements, and we knew it was going to be hard to lose the game.

So you won against Natus Vincere now, one of the favorites to take the whole thing. Does that give you the confidence to think you can go far?

I don't know how we're going to play tomorrow, but I do hope it will give us more confidence. We really need confidence right now. I'm just looking forward to playing the next game, and if we win the next game, then we can talk about winning the tournament. (laughs)