tarik: "We want to make sure that we do a better job at picking events moving forward"

Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik spoke to us about Evil Geniuses' frustrating results in China and the opening victory over AVANGAR in an interview conducted at the ECS Season 8 Finals.

Placing 5-6th at IEM Beijing and CS:GO Asia Championships left a mark on Evil Geniuses tarik admitted after defeating AVANGAR at ECS S8 Finals, noting that working on better scheduling is going to be a priority for the North American team in the future.

tarik also touched on Evil Geniuses' victory over AVANGAR, which came after a dominant 10-5 CT half, and explained his thoughts on the changes to rifle prices and how the importance of meta changes.

I want to go back to the two events your team played in China, finishing 5-6th at both despite being favorites or at least one of the favorites to win them. You lost to mousesports, FaZe, MIBR, teams that are outside of the top10. What was it like for you inside the team, was it such as bad results as it seems from the outside when you look at the placing?

It was definitely very frustrating because we had high expectations going into those LANs and the way we went out was definitely an under performance from us. It was a big hit to our confidence, we want to make sure that we do a better job at picking events moving forward, making sure we're not traveling across the world, back and forth. It is also annoying because we start questioning ourselves and how we are playing, we lose confidence in stuff that we are doing that we know is good. It really plays mind games on us.

Did you have any time to recover ahead of this event?

Really not much time to recover even leading up to this event, our schedule for this year is extremely packed, so we are just trying to prepare to the best of our abilities and try to question ourselves too much, stick to what we know works. But this opening match win is definitely an important one for us because we've been needing some confidence and I think this sparked it a little bit.

You had a pretty good start in the AVANGAR game, shutting down all of the classic T-side moves, the Long rush didn't work for them, B-splits didn't work... was it a thing of your team being prepared for AVANGAR so well? How did you see the first part of the map going?

In my opinion, it was just flowing really well, people were making plays that they normally for and there wasn't really any hesitation or confusion with how the rounds were being played. It flowed well and that is when we play our best. In terms of counter strating them I don't think we really anti-strated them or anything. There were a couple of things we wanted to watch out for, but for the most part it was just us focusing on ourselves.

The new patch came in that changed the price of the SG, Galil and Famas, most importantly. Do you think that played any importance in how this game played out?

It is hard to say for us because we really gotten to practice on this patch that much. We don't really have too much experience on it, in all honesty. But I think it is always fun and interesting to try out these new meta changes with now the Galil and Famas being a little bit buffed an lowered in price. In my opinion, it is nice to see different shifts in the meta of CS. It was pretty common for a long time that it was just the M4 and the AK, so I think it adds a bit of excitement. It definitely doesn't benefit us right now because we haven't got to practice it but I think it will be fine, we can adjust as we go.

Do you think lowering the prices of these guns is a step in the right direction for CS, making them more affordable and then presumably having more buys in the game?

I don't think we should just always have insane, crazy rounds throughout the match. I heard SPUNJ say something along the lines of "if every round is exciting, then nothing will be exciting anymore". I completely agree with that, but I think it is nice to introduce guns into the game that haven't been used as much before so that there is variety. I don't think we should only use the M4 and the AK. Even though that is how Counter-Strike has always been, I think the game has to evolve and there has to be different stuff coming in to the meta, other guns and stuff like that.