Hobbit: "You need to get experience before you can win, three tournaments boosted us a lot"

The Kazakh player remains cautious but optimistic after Gambit reached the upper bracket final over Liquid in Denmark.

Gambit have won two out of two at the BLAST Premier World Final in Copenhagen to reach the upper bracket final. The victories come with a caveat, however, as one was a team with a stand-in, HEROIC, followed by Liquid, a quintet that is all but confirmed to no longer remain together going into the break.

The next match, against Vitality or G2, will be a big test for Gambit. "They showed us that we need more experience," Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov said with a laugh of the last time they met Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and company, a team that despite also parting ways at the end of the season have been in amazing shape, and who knocked Gambit out of IEM Winter.

Not all hope is lost, though, as the 27-year-old noted that he and his teammates now have several LANs under their belts and have been boosted by the experience, which is starting to pay off and could help the team put forth a strong finish to the year at the tournament in Copenhagen.

The first two maps against Liquid had a lot of errors by both teams, were there some nerves there at first?

No, to be honest, we don't have like a... how can I say it? Pussy playstyle [laughs]. I'm sorry about that. But we have confidence, we understand what we needed to do. And don't forget about Liquid, they have four players who won everything. FalleN has huge experience, is one of the best IGLs in the world, and they have good players.

It was hard and it's always hard to play against them. From what I heard they're going to disband, which is good for us on one side because it's all about competition, it's better when a tier 1 team is doing some things, but we'll see in the future how it'll be.

You finally went into Overpass, a map Liquid has played really well and on which they have a brilliant record, particularly on LAN. How did you prepare and how did you become so dominant?

We practiced against them and then I understood how we have to play against them in the middle rounds. Also, our analyst and coach came to us and said that they're doing the same things as they do in practice.

It wasn't expected, I didn't expect us to win like this, but we knew it was our map and we understood how we needed to play it. And Ax1Le, he did a lot.

Ax1Le started well and usually when you start well you gain some confidence. He did some good damage. I remember once that I died and, with an M4, he killed FalleN who was peeking him with the AWP. He just killed him with two headshots. I understood that he was going to do a lot of damage and that he was in good shape.

Gambit had great results at the beginning of the year, and you've still had some good results in the second half of the year, but not quite as good, so how important is finishing strong here?

It's always good to finish on a high note. The best teams in the world are here, every team is dangerous for us. Liquid already beat NAVI and we understand that we have to play our best CS here, the same as we showed during the first half of the year. And of course we got some experience from the previous LANs.

How important has that experience been for you here?

It's very important. We adapted, we were playing only from bootcamp and four of our guys hadn't played any big tournaments. They didn't even know how other teams were screaming, for example, you know? It's always hard, to be honest. You need to get some experience before you can win, three tournaments boosted us a lot.

You're a bit more experienced, but can give me some examples of things you've noticed that your teammates have learned or what experience they have gained at these LANs?

First of all, even I don't have that much experience. If you're going to compare me with FalleN or EliGe, they have experience. They're really experienced players, I'm just in the middle. Not so experienced, but still more than my teammates.

First of all, they've started to play confidently, like they need to play. Second, we still have some problems taking initiative because it's LAN. There's a lot of distractions, you know? But we're upgrading, we're getting some good things from it.

Third, we understood that we don't need to do anything special or different than online. I remember in the first LAN, the team was screaming a lot, too much, and spending their energy was not always good, so we understood that we need to be more calm.

nafany, he's the guy who has a lot of energy and he's the only one who's screaming now, and we said 'it's OK, it's really helping us sometimes.'

Now that you've been on LAN a bit and gotten that experience, do you feel like you're better than at previous tournaments? Perhaps even a title contender?

It's hard to say. We played against Heroic who had a stand-in and we played Liquid today who are a dead team and are going to make a shuffle, so it's hard to say, it's too early to say something about that. Tomorrow we're going to meet G2 or Vitality, that game is going to show something. That game is going to give us the real perspective.

It'll show where you're really at now?

Yes, at IEM Winter they showed us that we needed more experience. [laughs]