valens: "Time will tell whether kioShiMa will be the permanent fifth or not"

We talked to Cloud9's coach and the stand-in for the illness-stricken Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim, Soham "⁠valens⁠" Chowdhury, about the team's situation at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen and their surprising form at the tournament.

Shortly before Cloud9 started their run at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen, it was announced that Golden would be unable to play during the first day of competition due to a health issue, with valens set to replace him in the first two matches of the group stage.

Despite the team fielding two stand-ins, including Fabien "⁠kioShiMa⁠" Fiey, Cloud9 were able to take Natus Vincere to a narrow result in the first match on Mirage, before defeating MIBR in another close match in the second round, on Inferno.

After the first two rounds, we talked to valens, who currently holds a 0.93 rating at BLAST:

First of all, we haven't really gotten too many details on the situation with Golden, is there a chance he'll come back tomorrow?

Yeah, he was starting to feel kind of bad last night and it got a little bit worse this morning, so he let us know, obviously. We instantly told him that he should go and get it checked out at the hospital, not worry about playing at all. Right now, I think the update is that he might be able to play tomorrow. He's doing better, but we won't know until a bit later tonight.

You obviously had to step in and frankly you've been able to hold your own, Cloud9 have been looking better than we would have expected given the situation. Have you secretly been practicing individually?

(laughs) Yeah, I think one of the best ways to be a coach, to be an analyst, or whatever, is I think you need to keep playing the game, stay up to date with the meta. So I play with my friends at home all the time, I play with some of my teammates, as well, just ESEA pugs, or whatever it is, scrims. So yeah, I play pretty often, but I think the main thing is that these guys played really well in the clutch moments, as well.

When we get in the trades really late in the site on T side, Inferno is really hard to retake. We got the trades in our favor. They [MIBR] should have probably been a little bit more aggressive in the mid-round, and if they were, I think we would have had a harder chance, but since they kind of gave us the space and we could exec into sites, it was a little bit easier for us.

As someone who usually stands behind the team, was it hard to do some of these things in the middle of the game while you're in-game leading at the same time, or is it easier in some ways?

I think, in some ways I don't say everything that's on my mind during practice, so some of that I've been thinking about for a long time, but I haven't said. So when I want to do something on-the-fly, it's very well-thought-out in my head, I just have to update the guys.

These are all very smart players, they understand what I say. Also, I think Tim did a great job mid-gaming, him and flusha are generally known as the smarter decision makers and stuff like that, so they did a great job reading the game, giving me the info, as well. So it was a team effort in that way.

Going back to the first game against Na`Vi, that slipped away from you at the end, but you did keep it very close - what do you think were the details that you were missing?

That game, we got a little bit lucky with the kioShiMa 2K Deagle at B, but, before that, we kind of messed up two or three rounds. The round where we were up 5v3 and I pushed underpass, later in that round, 10 seconds left, RUSH had a chance to kill the guy crossing from stairs to triple, but he got team flashed.

So, little mistakes like that will obviously happen when you've got two stand-ins in this case. We had chances to close it out, honestly, but even T side, I felt like we had a pretty good read when they were stacking towards the site, they hit nice shots as well. I never felt like we were out of control throughout the entire match, though.

Speaking about Cloud9's future, there hasn't been much from the official channels, is there anyone you've got in your sights as a replacement for Skadoodle, or is this still in the process?

We've been extremely impressed with kioShiMa. I think he's extremely underrated. He has a good attitude. It's one of those things where practice has gone really well. He's holding his own in these games, he's not playing any differently in matches than he his in practice, his comms are good, he's not getting nervous - these are all things that we look out for in a good player. So far so good.

As for whether in the future he'll be the permanent fifth or not, I think time will tell. He obviously has plans, we have tournaments coming up, so we're just going to try to make it work with online games, he would have to Europe to NA, there's a lot of things going on. Right now we're not sure, we really do like how he's playing, he's an amazing teammate, so we're just hoping for the best.

So there is that possibility that he could be permanent at some point?

Yeah, of course, I think anyone we're playing with right now - we're trying to play with people, even if it's trials or stand-ins, that we potentially see a future in. I feel like that's the best way, otherwise it kind of feels like you're playing an event and you're wasting time.

For us, the last few days before the event, this event, it feels like we're actually going somewhere. We're being productive, we can do things as a team a little bit more because this is a guy that we can potentially have as a fifth. So I think in that sense, it's extremely important for us to stay focused and not treat these things as just like 'ah, whatever happens in these events happens, we won't actually get better'.

In case you do end up with him, or any other rifler for that matter, are you not worried about missing a main AWPer?

No, honestly, when we had Tyler tell us he wants to take a big break, Tim actually stepped up and he said 'hey, I'm down to try AWPing, I've done it in the past'. He was AWPing in Source, he was AWPing some time in CS:GO, as well, when I used to play with him.

He's actually a really, really good AWPer and the best thing about him is that he will do a lot of research to figure out that he's AWPing in the best way possible. It reminds me a lot of device in that way, he's a student of the game. So I don't think there's any reason we need an AWPer, Tim can do that role, we're looking for someone that can fit Golden's system, basically.