minixeta: "We want to qualify for the Major and get our stickers"

In a post-event interview, we spoke with MVP PK's newest addition Seon-Ho "⁠xeta⁠" Son after their win at eXTREMESLAND 2018 Asia Finals.

The 21-year-old sniper was the most valuable player at the $100,000 event. He boasted a 1.49 rating across nine maps, ahead of his comrade Hyun-Pyo "⁠XigN⁠" Lee's 1.40.

With the assistance of BenQ Korea's Ben Choi to help out with the Korean-English translations, xeta opened up about the last two series of the Chinese event, the Asia Minor qualifiers and the current state of the Korean CS:GO scene.

Coming off your first major LAN win in Asia, describe the feeling.

I am so happy for myself because I'm the newest member of MVP PK. It's good. This is actually my first big tournament on LAN, so I wanted this because we weren't afraid of any teams here. I wanted to win the trophy for the first time, so that's why I'm happy now.

Firstly, let's touch on the semi-final series against Flash, that was the toughest match-up for you from the entire tournament. Why was it so close?

So we played Dust2 first and lost 16-14. I thought we were prepared on the T-side, but we made some stupid mistakes, which were minor details like when to use a flash, who would go first and those kinds of things. That's why we are sure our T-side was a problem, where we lost many rounds and it cost us the map. If we earned some more rounds, we could have won after switching to the CT-side.

On Mirage, it felt pretty easy, we beat them on it many times before. We weren't scared of them at all.

The final map was on Cache, and it felt the same on Mirage because we've beaten Flash on it before too. We knew how to play against them. It was harder than the NASR game for sure. Even if we lost Dust2, we were mentally prepared so we weren't worried at all.

Moving on to the title decider versus NASR, you obliterated them easily. Walk me through on how Nuke was such a convincing victory?

Our strongest map is Nuke, in my opinion (not Inferno). We've beaten BOOT-d[S] before on it, which is also one of their best maps I think. I'm not sure about the other teams, but that's why Nuke was easy to win against NASR. We started on CT and won 14 rounds, which made it easier for us to close it.

We didn't know how NASR played. The way I approached them was my natural instincts to sense and read where they were pushing so I could counter-kill them.

On Train, it reached match point at 15-3, but the team struggled to close it until 15-10. What was the issue here?

There was a lot more pressure on us, as there were people standing around us to catch our winning moment. On the final round, we faked A-site and went to B. XigN and I killed one or two guys on B. We planted the bomb and the remaining CT players were stuck in Z-connector. We already had four guys on site, and finally won the tournament.

As you have already mentioned, you are the newest addition to the team after the GOSU swap with HSK. Can you elaborate on the move and why MVP picked you up?

MVP needed some changes because I think they needed a more confident AWPer like me, where I can bring in an aggressive playstyle. HSK was losing his confidence in his role and their results were getting worse.

There were many teams attending the Korean LAN qualifier for eXTREMESLAND, so how is the local domestic scene in Korea doing?

xeta: Actually we don't have much of a community in Korea. The players just say their opinions, which is all you get from the Korean community. There is only one site that has news or has info about our scene, but they are not as popular or huge as HLTV globally or 5E in China. The site belongs to Naver (a Korean web search engine). There are not many tournaments here.

Ben Choi (BenQ Korea): I think it depends on who is in charge (of the qualifiers). BenQ Korea hosted events/matches and grabbed participants, but they don't have enough people involved from the scene to help, which is the problem.

xeta: Yea, it's really sad. Back in the old days, Koreans had many tournaments like these.

Especially when you have old names like solo, termi, zeff and glow on your team. These veterans took a competitive break after 1.6, but were able to become one of the best CS:GO teams in Asia within one year of their return. What caused the scene to decline during their temporary absence?

xeta: Five or ten years ago, all the PC bangs (internet cafe) in Korea had CS 1.5 or 1.6 on the computers, so it was very popular during those days. However, nowadays the PC bangs don't have any CS series installed, especially CS:GO.

People don't play any of these CS titles, so not many people know about CS:GO. They know more about Overwatch, League of Legends, Fornite and PUBG, which is why we haven't had a lot of young blood in our scene.

Ben Choi: Since that move to other games, a lot of young players left and stopped playing Counter-Strike. At PC bangs, they don't set up Counter-Strike there so people can't experience the game. This is why there aren't enough or more Korean players in CS:GO.

xeta: I think that being a Counter-Strike pro in Korea is kind of risky because we have a lot of first-person shooter games and tournaments for other games. People who are kind of interested in playing Counter-Strike and want to be a pro, they kind of feel that it's going to be a risk because there's not enough support.

Your team was recently invited to the Asia Minor closed qualifier for East Asia, so what do you think of the Minor slot changes with East Asia obtaining the second slot over SEA?

I think it's fair because many teams in East Asia are getting better. I know SEA is just as good before and nowadays, but East Asia has more potential.

Assuming you guys qualify as the first seed, who do you think would be the second East Asian team to join you at the Minor?

I was expecting SCARZ Absolute before, but as you know their form was bad here. I think GOSU can make it through with us and qualify, so it would be good for our country to have two Korean reps.

We want to qualify for the Major and get our stickers. This is our goal after this event, along with IEM Chicago and ESL Pro League Asia.