TeSeS: "I think that’s the beautiful part about our team, we are able to reset whatever situation we are in"

After surviving a minor scare by Finest, René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen sat down with HLTV for an interview.

After a slow start to the Pinnacle Cup Championship, losing to a new fnatic playing with a stand-in, HEROIC recovered to dispatch MIBR and the aformentioned fnatic 2-0 in series play.

Seemingly growing into the event HEROIC suffered something of a scare in their upper bracket matchup with Finest, convincingly losing Vertigo, but they did take the other two maps with big scorelines.

After securing a spot in the consolidation final, TeSeS took some time to give an interview to HLTV touching on the series against Finest and how they feel about their remaining competition, BIG and Astralis.

Congratulations, how are you feeling after that win?

It feels great, of course they are not the opponents we usually meet at the highest levels, but it’s nice to play these lower teams, they are coming with some new stuff. It’s different to play against them, it’s tough for us because they don’t play as clever or disciplined, they are not doing what the top-tier teams do.

Do they almost play a different meta to you? I imagine there is a meta amongst the teams that attend all the big events that Finest don’t conform to.

Yeah, it’s in mid-round situations and clutches, over-peeking and all the small things where the top pros don’t do those mistakes, but they do those things with confidence so it works. It’s like that old flusha saying “do dumb things with confidence.” (laughs).

They played great, especially on Vertigo, I think PlesseN created a lot of space on A against me, he was having a good game.

What happened on Vertigo? Maybe one can understand them taking a map, especially their own pick, but it was very convincing.

Before the game we all thought we had a very sick Vertigo (laughs), but it had been some time since we had practiced it, a long time ago. They caught us off-guard many times, and they were lucky with some smoke kills but that’s Vertigo, it’s a kind of random map with spams.

They were playing well, especially PlesseN, and shokz had some big lurks coming through middle, he came behind and killed us on A two times I think. They did a lot of plays, and all those plays worked for them.

How did it feel going into Inferno, after a disappointing upset map loss is it difficult to keep the mood in the camp?

I think that’s the beautiful part about our team, we are able to reset whatever situation we are in. Losing a map like that is obviously very disappointing and really annoying, when you are expecting to close it out 2-0, but it doesn’t matter. We all know that we will look at it afterwards, it doesn’t matter right in the moment when we are playing, and our mental coach is making sure that everyone is mentally resetting and focusing on the third map. Inferno is a very confident map for us as well.

Taking a look at the veto, Overpass was an interesting pick considering Finest picked it and won it against Imperial. What was the thought process there?

I think Overpass is our best map, we are feeling so confident on it and especially when we have good preparation, as we could have on Finest, then we are always confident to pick it. When we are feeling that we are the better team, we should always win.

With BIG now missing Krimbo, does it make you more confident for the rest of the event? One of your two main rivals for the title is now maybe weakened?

Well, look at fnatic, they brought in f0rest and managed to beat us in the Bo1 (laughs).

It’s definitely very annoying for them, we had one getting COVID before Dallas and we had to cancel the tournament, so we understand how they are feeling, it’s a very sh**ty situation for everyone. We obviously want to play their full team, on even footing, it’s nicer that way, the competition is how it should be. It’s hard for them, I hope they will find a good solution for themselves, they’re a good team that has been on an uprise lately.

The other team left is Astralis, whatever happens you will have to play them, how are you feeling about that? It’s a big Danish derby, and there is some history there.

It would be amazing, and I hope that every Danish fan is travelling to Lund because then we can get a Royal Arena part two (laughs).

It’s fun when there is a Danish derby, and its always fun to play against Astralis. There’s obviously some rivalry and much history with our games, it’s always close matches and it’s very fun to play, the energy is so high. Everyone is feeling the importance of the rivalry.

Those are the kind of games you play for, right?

Exactly.