Magnojez: "We have grown significantly despite the mediocre results"

Magnojez believes his team's hard work over the season is paying off, even if their results online don't show it.

BetBoom kicked off 2025 with a surprise qualification for BLAST Bounty Season 1 Finals, taking down MOUZ and FURIA en route. The revitalized form of Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov and strong T-side calling of Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov impressed many in the community.

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BetBoom secure Bounty Finals in scrappy fashion over FURIA*

Since that high, however, the team have endured an underwhelming season. Bar a sprinkling of top-four runs in online competition, BetBoom have largely struggled to deliver on the apparent quality of their squad, most notably failing to qualify for any significant LAN events.

The one exception to BetBoom's qualification struggles was, fortunately for them, an incredibly important one: The Russian side booked their spot at BLAST.tv Austin Major, thanks to an MRQ run that saw them take down SAW, fnatic and 9 Pandas. Their Major appearance will give the team the chance to dispel the woes of their season, and earn all-important VRS points ahead of the second half of the year.

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BetBoom, Nemiga, Metizport punch Austin tickets as Astralis fall to 2-2

"Thank God we made it to the Major," Kirill "⁠Magnojez⁠" Rodnov said to HLTV when reflecting on the team's season and struggle to climb the VRS. "If we will show ourselves well over there, we will earn a lot of points and invites."

In an interview with HLTV Magnojez reflected on his team's performances since adding Boombl4 and Ax1Le, their preference for LAN play, and their preparation ahead of the Major.

[Editor's note: This interview was conducted at BetBoom LanDaLan 2.]

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We're at LanDaLan, but your team isn't playing here. So what are you doing here?

I have actually just come here with my team to cast some games and just chill for a bit. Just spend time in my day off.

Do you know the reason why your team is not playing at this event?

As far as I know, I was told that we can't participate in this event because there is a conflict of interests. The tournament is run by BetBoom, we're BetBoom, which is why we cannot be invited by VRS.

Is it upsetting?

Actually, it's a great opportunity for teams like ARCRED, Spirit Academy, and all others to earn a lot of points, because VRS ranking rewards LANs with points way more than online. For us, considering that we have a preparation period for the Major and online events like CCT, we could have easily played this LAN instead of those events to try to earn more points. I wouldn't say that I'm really upset, of course, but I think we would have happily played this event.

Speaking of VRS points, your most recent LAN was BLAST. Is it hard to grind the VRS points, playing exclusively online?

The way that the [Valve] ranking works is that it's very hard to earn points online. Before you reach LANs, it's really hard to enter top 20. For example, speaking of the current situation, we lost to RUBY recently and got -50 points. Above us, let's say, are Lynn Vision who play local LANs in a different region with $10,000 in prize pool, for which they earn 20 points for a win over any opponent. I can't say that it's unfair, because LAN matters more than online, that makes sense.

But thank God we made it to the Major. If we will show ourselves well over there, we will earn a lot of points and invites. So I think this system is imperfect, but it's definitely better [than it used to be].

You made it to the Major. Did playing this much online help you feel confident at the MRQ?

Actually, the teams that play online are forced to play a lot of events, because if you don't play those events, you won't have invites. Aurora [Editor's note: ex-Aurora, now known as Astrum], for example. You can see it both as pro and a con: you have less time to prepare for those events, but you play way more and get more experience.

Generally, I believe it's much harder to play online than on LAN for our team. We have quite experienced players: BoombI4 and Ax1le, zorte feels much better on LAN as well. For me personally, LAN or online doesn't matter, but the amount of online events we've had definitely worked to our advantage, even though they were not much of a success to us, to be honest. Nevertheless, they brought us together as a team and we've earned a lot of experience from those cups. Overall, I would say it was more or less successful grind, even though we didn't earn a lot of points and made it through to few events.

What share of that online grind did you spend bootcamping?

After we had played the finals of BLAST Bounty, we came together for a small bootcamp to play qualifiers for Astana from there. We could see that our performance is not too good during a bootcamp. After that, all of us went home to play all events from there, and it was better than it was during the bootcamp because the individual performance had improved.

Before the MRQ, we came to a bootcamp to work on some things. The bootcamp is still a necessity for an important tournament like this, I believe, because the people feel each other and their emotions after the game. When playing online, you never know: lose the first game at MRQ and you don't know what's inside a person's head, he might be tilted. At bootcamp, you can sit down to talk, think through and solve some problems, make some decisions. So I believe the bootcamp was very productive, even though we didn't play too well at the next event, losing to ENCE. But overall, it was a great bootcamp.

It's been three months since Ax1le and BoombI4 joined the team. How would you evaluate the progress of your team overall in that time period?

I believe that we have grown a lot as a team and individually as players, but I would say it's very hard to notice to a regular viewer, it can only be felt from the inside. There are some key problems that don't allow us to reach a new level, but I believe we're addressing them very well, and the result of us making it to the Major had proved it. Even though it was online and the teams were, objectively, not the strongest, we have grown significantly as a team despite the mediocre results.

If you draw preliminary conclusions, are you rather happy or unhappy about where your team is at right now?

It's a hard question. I believe the primary goal of any player is making it to the Major, so any event or practice is a step towards the main goal. It doesn't mean that all other events don't matter, but overall we played them okay.

Objectively, it's hard to play qualifiers like for PGL Astana, because there's five to eight BO3s to be played for just one slot. You have to be fully focused, because CS2 is... not to say random, but it really punishes you for not getting enough rounds, the economy is kind of shaky as well. It's very hard to maintain a level like Vitality do, and I believe that's the indicator of a strong team. That's what we aim for. Overall, I believe that was a successful season.

When the Major is the only LAN for you and is also the key opportunity to show yourself, are you concerned that the pressure might affect your game there?

Our team worked just for that, to get to a LAN, especially a Major. As I've said, for most of our players LAN is more comfortable setting than online, and the game itself also works better on LAN than online. This is is why it's unlikely for anyone on the team to have pressure, because all of the players are experienced.

As for me, considering that I haven't played too many events, it doesn't pressure me at all. It's more comfortable to play on LAN considering that emotion-wise our team is really good. Kirill [BoombI4], who charges up and motivates the team, calm Seryozha [Ax1le] and Sasha [zorte]... I believe those are comfortable conditions for us.

What goals do you set for yourself at the Major?

We haven't discussed it yet, but the goal for each of us is to go further, we're not talking about it like we got the stickers and we're already good. Everyone aims for going as deep as possible, earn as many VRS points as possible, go up the ranking to consistently play LAN events, and prove that we're ready to win over tier-one teams.

The event will take place in Austin, the US. Has your team secured the American visas yet?

As far as I remember, BetBoom has already announced that our team are going to go in full, so yes. Three of us have already had an American visa when we played an event in Atlanta last year, so we didn't have a problem. Ax1le also had a visa from Cloud9 and BoombI4 went recently so his visa got approved, so we're going to to the Major in full.

What are your impressions of working with BoombI4 as the captain?

I'm really motivated by the fact that BoombI4 has come via a very hard path. from being a champion with NAVI to absolute collapse, if one can say that. He came a hard way with 1WIN, he was a player there, not even an IGL, but still managed to get some results like CCT wins. After that, he came to us, and he's playing really, really a lot, and it's very motivating. Such player who already won a lot of events might lose motivation, but he plays 150 hours in two weeks, plays FACEIT, and it motivates me a lot.