sLowi: "I know for a fact ENCE think we’re really shitty"

HAVU had something to prove against their fellow Finnish organization.

Last year at Elisa Masters, HAVU went home with a 0-5 record in groups. But, this time around, the No. 127 team have opened their account with a win — and over regional rival ENCE, no less.

We caught up with Olli "⁠sLowi⁠" Pitkänen after the upset, who didn't hold back about what it means to beat a team as highly ranked as ENCE.

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Congratulations, how does it feel to get that upset win?

Amazing! It’s been a while, well for me personally, since we’ve beaten a good team on LAN, and beating a team like ENCE which is the biggest Finnish organization, that’s an even bigger motivation.

I know for a fact they think we’re really shitty, and our previous games have shown it, but we had really great confidence going into Nuke.

So was it important for you because they are a Finnish organization? I know there are no Finnish players, so maybe it’s not quite a Finnish derby, but was it still important to you?

Yeah from the organization background, but for me personally it’s not that big of a deal. For me when sAw left, their previous coach, he used to be my longest standing teammate back in the day and one of my best friends from CS, so when he left I was like 'Fuck those guys, sAw’s not even there anymore.' Before the tournament itself was announced we knew that we were playing against ENCE, and the biggest thing was sAw was coaching, so when he left and kuben replaced him it was like 'Fuck those guys' pretty much.

You were just saying that you were confident going into Nuke, and you mentioned to me earlier you predicted the veto, so you were ready for the map?

Yeah, our IGL Airax had a prediction that was an 80% certainty it was going to be Nuke. There was some possibility for Mirage or Ancient I think, but with Mirage, they just replaced their IGL and gla1ve hasn’t really been IGLing on the map that much, so we were pretty confident about Nuke.

You had a massive CT side, that was kind of what won you the game. How and why do you think you were so dominant?

I think the biggest issue coming in, well it’s the biggest edge and also weakness, is that you are playing against a team that’s on paper way better than you. We just thought ‘Fuck it, we’re going to play the exact same way we do in practice, don’t let those things get in your head if you are facing a better team’, yeah, we were like ‘Fuck it’.

In the end it was so incredible to see, because our communication was way better than it has ever been on a practice map. And ottoNd, for example, he will admit it himself that he has been in a bit of a slump, but now on the CT side he was just insane and comming like crazy, which is not usual for him, let’s just say that.

There was a lot of aggression on that CT side, was that just part of the gameplan or were you taking advantage of the fact you were rolling over them?

I think it’s both, we thought about it at the beginning, we said ‘Let’s just keep our comms really active and play active CS, don’t let them have too much space’, because if we go into situations where we give them too much space, they are better than us and they have more experience at that. So we just thought ‘Fuck it, let’s roll over them’, and it seemed to work.

Can you carry this form now into the rest of the tournament? Does this give you confidence you can go on, get into the arena, really do something special?

I think yeah, but I mean it’s going to be the same story in every game we play, we are going to be the underdogs. We have nothing to lose pretty much, so we will at least try, but I can’t make any promises. We will try our best!

Last question: Like you said, the comms were better than usual, do you think the excitement of playing against better teams is allowing you to step up your game a bit?

There’s like… uuuh I’m not actually too sure (laughs). If we start losing it can always backfire, but when you keep the ball rolling you get into sort of a flow state, you know? It’s hard to say because throughout the whole game we were always winning, but I don’t know what is going to happen if we start a game losing 0-5. We will at least try our best, and that was the biggest thing I spoke to the guys before the game about, try to keep the hype up and even though there will always be situations where we fuck up, just try to use the freezetime to fucking mentally reset yourself.

Sorry for swearing so much…

(laughs) Don’t worry it’s HLTV, we don’t care.

Great (laughs). We’ll see, we’ll see.

Date	Matches
Elisa Masters Espoo 2023
29/11/2023	HAVU 16:00 GamerLegion	Match