Twistzz on cs_summit: "We felt pretty uncomfortable for the majority of the event with our setups"

Following Liquid's victory over Lucid Dream, we sat down with Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken to discuss the match, the team's performance at cs_summit 4 and confidence coming into Dallas.

Liquid kicked off their run in Dallas with a 16-7 victory on Dust2 over heavy underdogs Lucid Dream, securing a spot in the upper bracket of group A, where they are facing North in a best-of-three series.

Upon conclusion of the opening match we spoke with Twistzz who broke down the team's preparation for their initial match, spoke on Liquid's performance at cs_summit 4 and gave some insight regarding confidence levels coming into Dallas.

Touching on your opening match - how did you go about preparing for Lucid Dream?

We didn't really prepare at all - we just looked at their maps, saw what they did and didn't like to play. It was a best-of-one, so it's pretty easy to narrow down to a map that's kind of comfortable for both teams, and we had a feeling that it was going to be Dust2, just based off what we thought they'd want to go for.

If you're a really big underdog team, and you've never played against other good teams - the only good team they've played against in their region is TYLOO - so they were definitely going to try and gimmick us on one of the maps, and Dust2 is definitely a map you can do that on. Our first half was super sloppy - our comms were kind of low, there was no energy, we were kind of messing around. We noticed that it was starting to get out of control, and then we just started to shut it down.

The first half looked like you were going to breeze through the offense, but Lucid Dream gradually closed the gap to a 7-8 finish. What did you feel didn't go so well on the T side?

We just didn't do what we usually do, and we didn't do it together. Our teamwork was really off - say there was a round where we went out Long, and usually when we go Long everyone knows their roles, but for example, I was first out calling for flashes and we just weren't clicking. It was just the first game of the event, and we kind of had a pretty disappointing summit loss, so yeah, just getting back into things.

Let's touch on summit slightly - that grand final series against Vitality saw you guys get knocked 0-2. What prevented you from closing out the tournament?

Truthfully, they just outplayed us. Their teamwork was better and they were out-aiming us, to be honest. We weren't really on point and we felt pretty uncomfortable for the majority of the event with our setups, so they really just outplayed us. Hopefully, we can overcome them at this event.

Did you feel underprepared for that specific match-up?

Kind of. After losing to them the first time, they showed a lot of things that they did. I guess going into the second series, we saw what they were doing, but we didn't come up with a counter for it, so our preparation might've been off. I can't put blame on anyone - it's all of us that can put forth preparation.

Coming in straight from summit, you didn't have much time to prepare for this event. Would you say the team is confident it can contend for the title ?

Obviously making it to the finals is a pretty big goal, but for us I guess maybe take a step back and focus on getting out of groups, making sure our games are clean and focusing on the important games.