KaiR0N-: "We want to destroy the dreams of people who want to win this tournament"

KaiR0N- and his BetBoom team are relishing the party pooper role in Serbia.

BetBoom began CS2 with a great performance at IEM Sydney, where they reached the playoffs after beating Vitality and GamerLegion. Since then, however, the results have dried up and forced the team into a roster change.

The Russian squad added Kirill "⁠Magnojez⁠" Rodnov in place of Danil "⁠danistzz⁠" Roslyakov and also signed Artem "⁠RAiLWAY⁠" Gradovich as the coach, and Aleksandr "⁠KaiR0N-⁠" Anashkin says he believes in this lineup's potential.

After their opening loss against MOUZ, the Russian rifler sat down with HLTV to talk about their pick of Dust2, BetBoom's recent signings, and their expectations for BetBoom Dacha.

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Commiserations on the loss. You took MOUZ very close, so are there any positives you can take from this game?

I'm not sure, because Dust2 is a new map. They probably never played it, maybe just once or twice, because they had to finish EPL and they had Overpass in the map pool, so they couldn't really practice it properly. The only thing that we can do is just take a look at the demo and then understand what our mistakes were. I felt that we had this game on both maps, and we let it slip away by making our own mistakes.

We had lots of advantages in the late rounds, we lost 3vs4s and 2vs5s. The only positive stuff that we could take out of this game is the way we played on the Vertigo T side. It was pretty decent. We need to take a look at the demo and make sure that we get better.

You guys decided to pick Dust2. Was that more because you know MOUZ didn't have time to practice it or because you enjoy playing the map?

I'm not sure yet. I know that zorte really enjoys playing it, it was his prime map back in the day when he was playing for FORZE, so it is good for him. We were definitely not the favorites in this game because our opponents had just won a tier-one tournament, so we understood that we had to shock them by picking Dust2. It didn't work out, but it was close.

So we felt the game, we had the duels, and we had two reasons to pick it. The first reason is that our players felt good when they played Dust2 back in the day, and the second was that we needed to shock MOUZ because we weren't the favorites.

Did you do a lot of practice on the map recently, or was that more of a surprise for MOUZ?

We didn't have lots of practice. We practiced it of course, but we had to work on other maps as well. We were at EPL, so we couldn't do anything with that because we were also worried about Overpass, and then we had lots of officials, so we didn't have time.

We did some work [on the map] even after officials. We played best out of three, then tried to review it, and after that, we played practices on Dust2. So yeah, we were preparing ourselves for this map. I wouldn't say it's our best map, we still need experience because I didn't play it competitively, or at least on a really low level. And Magnojez also didn't play it on a competitive level at all. So yeah, we still need time and practice. We spent some time making it work, but it didn't work out.

The team recently added Magnojez and the new coach, RAiLWAY. What has changed in the team since their additions?

The coach is bringing lots of good vibes, first of all. Second of all, he builds us a proper structure. Back in the day, we had to fix everything on our own and hope our skill level on each map [was enough]. For example, Vertigo was our worst map, we were losing to any team that picked it against us like we did at the RMR. Right now, it's a bit better because the coach brought us some structure.

Magnojez just added firepower. His voice is sometimes really helpful to us because he can see the map from the positions he plays, so he's giving the right calls sometimes. Both those additions were pretty nice for us, and we feel that we can get better with them.

Looking at the rest of this tournament, what are your expectations for the rest of BetBoom Dacha?

We came here without any expectations because we weren't really ready for that, we got invited two days ago. We are happy about that, but we didn't have proper preparation. Before EPL, we had good preparation, we were working on the maps we were bad at.

We had some good rounds on the maps that we were fine on [at EPL]. For example, on Mirage, we were fine. We won against M80, who are playing decently on Mirage. And for BetBoom Dacha, we didn't have any kind of preparation. We just want to destroy the dreams of people who really want to win this tournament. I see lots of teams really want to win it, they don't have a goal to go to the playoffs, but they want to win the whole thing. We're here to destroy their dreams.