t0rick: "There's a lack of experience and we need to work on our structure"

After Syman got eliminated from the CIS Minor by Gambit, we spoke to Maksim "⁠t0rick⁠" Zaikin to find out more about the team and the organization, as well as their experience in Poland.

Syman's core was created in August, when t0rick joined up with two players of the original roster, Sanzhar "⁠neaLaN⁠" Iskhakov and Sanjar "⁠SANJI⁠" Kuliev, before the current lineup got together with the addition of Artem "⁠iDISBALANCE⁠" Egorov and Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy at the beginning of October.

In a short few weeks, the lineup managed to place second to x6tence Galaxy in the EU open qualifier for DreamHack Open Winter, and less than a month later they made it to the CIS Minor after going through both qualifying stages.

In Poland, Syman got off to a great start with a win against Gambit in the opening match, but they then fell to Spirit after a close series and couldn't overcome Gambit the second time despite securing the opening map of that series.

After the team got eliminated, we quizzed t0rick about how the team works and what their organization provides for them, as well as about the CIS Minor itself and their future.

For those who aren't familiar too much with Syman, could you describe how your lineup got together a few months ago and what the roles in the team are?

Hello, our team grouped up at the start of October. SANJI came to Solar (our coach), me and neaLaN and asked to try to play with iDISBALANCE and Perfecto. Before, they played some open quals and SANJI saw the potential of these guys. Our roles in the team are as follows: SANJI is our in-game leader, neaLaN the entry fragger, iDISBALANCE the AWPer, Perfecto and me are mostly the lurkers on several maps and on some maps we are just supporting the other players.

What kind of backing do you have in your organization when it comes to finances, opportunities for boocamping, etc.?

In this regard, our organisation is doing the best they can, we have full support with bootcamps, salary, and all the stuff we need to just concentrate on our game. People know that we have some players from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, so a full-time bootcamp is necessary.

You almost managed to qualify for DreamHack Open Winter at the end of October - how did you manage to go that far in such a short time together?

Yeah, at this time we were playing together for only one week and discussed all of the goals of our team in the near future. So it was kind of our first tournament that we all played together. We were putting everything we gathered from before in the game, mixed playstyles, structured way to play, tactics, setups, etc. All of this helped us grind that far in the qualifier.

What were your goals for the CIS Minor and how do you feel about what you showed here? How would you evaluate the showing, what were you missing to go further?

Our expectation was to get out of groups, but we knew that it would be hard because of the bad timing of our bootcamp. There were problems with SANJI's visa and he only got the visa on January 10, so we had only three days of bootcamp with the full team. But I think we have still shown our game, we won against Gambit in a BO1, we did a great comeback vs Spirit in a BO3 series, but because of the lack of experience, we couldn't finish it. There's a lack of experience and we also need to work on our structure to remove the gaps in our playstyle.

What can we expect from Syman in the future?

We will play some online tournaments to which we were invited before for sure. Also, we will try our best in the IEM Sydney qualifiers. The main goal for us is to go through the next Minor to the Major!