ub1que: Random factor chose our bad Maps
dAT Team was eliminated at the ESL One Cologne, after they lost against the ukrainian Team Virtus.pro and iBUYPOWER. Alexey ‚ub1que‘ Polivanov is explaining to readmore.de why the performance was looking so poor und with what problems the team had to deal before the event.
readmore.de: As soon as the ESL announced the qualifier, you started playing with Egor 'flamie' Vasilyev instead of Konstantin 'Pr1zraK' Krivosheev, why?
Alexey 'ub1que' Polivanov: Actually it was a big problem regarding the qualifiers because it was announced only one month prior it was held. You know, it is summer and a lot of people plan their vacation beforehand. And this is what happened, he just did not want to cancel his vacation. That would have cost him money, which he could not get back and secondly he is married. His wife won’t like that. So he was like: „Do what you want guys“. At first we were looking for whom to ask, because flamie was playing for USSR, it was serious because they were playing at StarSeries.So we looked for upcoming players, and we thought that we would have no chance at this qualifier because it is pretty hard to prepare against the top teams. We are actually a strategy based scene, we have a lot of strategies. We play without skill, we play with a variety of plans. In order to play at the maximum level, we had to introduce our strategies to the stand-in. We only had a few days to prepare for that, and suddenly there were some issues with USSR and they split up. Then flamie decided to join us, all this happened two days prior to the qualifier.
So you were pretty lucky?
Yeah, sort of. Of course we did go through our strategies with him but we have ten strategies for each map so it is hard for him to remember those in only two days.
Was it a surprise for you to get through the qualifier?
Yes sure, we just wanted to play for some experience. We are a pretty new team, Vlаdуslаv 'bondik' Nеchуроrchuk and I just joined half a month ago and we didn’t play much. We only had three maps prepared: Mirage, Nuke and Inferno. We didn’t expected anything. Especially when we saw who we are going to play, I mean it was mousesports, and especially ESG! who had a history on beating every good team. Before the split they were 8-1-1 at StarSeries. So it was a total surprise and that was why we did not talk about money for the event, we were just happy to attend it.
After the qualifier you were happy but you had issues to get the money? I heard you had problems attending this event.
Yeah, in order to get to Germany we had to get a visa, in order to get a visa we had to buy the tickets and book a hotel. We only had a week to arrange everything in time if we wanted a chance to attend this event. Three of us were able to pay for themselves, only one didn’t had the money. So we asked for it via crowdfunding.
Did this work out? How much money did you get?
We got around 800 Euros, it was enough for the tickets, to print the t-shirts and stuff like that. But we still had problems with our visas. flamie and WorldEdit got their visas the day before yesterday, so on Tuesday. We didn’t know for sure if we were going to attend.
What would have happened if they didn’t get their visas in time?
Well, we would have used a stand-in. We needed to attend because Valve would not like to see us skipping the event after winning the qualifiers, maybe we even get blacklisted or something. We all want to play competitively, so we all want to play, getting blacklisted means we are not able to attend major events anymore, and thus there would be no sense of playing at all. As for stand-ins, one option was Dmitry 'hooch' Bogdanov and the second option was Nikola 'LEGIJA' Ninic: He lives somewhere nearby were no troubles attending this event if he was needed.
Was it a huge help when you had the sticker money in mind which is coming in and the 2.000 US-Dollar for each team? Does this help the team to attend such an event?
Yes. We spent money ourselves so that we will get it back at some point, we got told, it takes about two months, which is pretty good. So when we get enough money from the stickers we are maybe able to attend another event.
So the plan is saving the money and attending maybe future events?
Yeah, let’s see what is happening with our team, we have plans to stick together of course. We are not too surprised that we got knocked out.
You said you’re sticking together, so flamie will be part of your team in the future?
We haven’t really discussed this yet, he probably will, but nothing is set right now. We will talk about that when we get home.
How was your preparation? Do you think you had a shot at Cobblestone and Overpass? Did you practice these maps specifically?
Yes, at first we wanted to practice both of the maps as our ace maps because we though we have a lot more chances of winning these maps instead of any other map, but then again we thought that the other teams don’t want any randomness, so they simply would veto those and destroy us on any regular map. So after a few days we gave up on those maps and so we started to eliminate Dust2, Cache and Overpass, because as we said, we are a new team and could not prepare as much.
The plan was to eliminate those maps and let, for example Virtus.Pro, eliminate the other new map. But in the end we did not get to play the maps we trained, we ended up playing the new maps both times. It was actually very surprising. First time we had Inferno, Mirage and Overpass and we got Overpass and had to play it. And the second time it was the same but with Cobblestone instead of Overpass. We were pretty upset, we did not expect to play these maps at all.
How was it to play these new maps, I assume you played Cbble in 1.6, how was it in CS:GO on a professional level?
Well, I think Cobblestone is an awful map, I don’t know why it was introduced. It was played for a long time in 1.6 and people hated it, then Forge was introduced and people still hated it. Now Valve reintroduced it in CS:GO and I don’t think people will start to love it either.
What is bad about the map in your opinion?
It is too huge, it is too much of an AWP map, it has so many important spots and I don’t like it in general. You need to have five smokes otherwise you cannot do anything because you’re getting sniped. It has too many angles you cannot control. You check the first angle and it is ok, you check the second one and it is ok, too. Then you smoke the two other ones but you’re getting sniped by an AWP from the fifth angle. It is just impossible, since it is a new map no one had really time to practice it enough.
And your opinion on Overpass?
Overpass is actually a good map. It has fast rotations, like Nuke. Nuke is my favorite map by the way. It has a nice multilevel design, you can throw flashes from kindergarden to B and you can smoke almost everywhere. There are many boost spots, for example the ones we used. You can boost towards the CT spawn to check what is happening near the door. You can’t kill but you can jump and check. There is a boost spot near T spawn, you run towards B where the swamp is and at the dead end you can jump on each other and check.
Do you think these boost spots will remain in the map?
Yeah I think so, they are no bugs, they are features if you ask me and they are pretty cool. Maybe we forgot about them, maybe we planned to do something else. I don’t even know, I am not the team captain. I am not against overpass either. I’m totally fine when it remains in the map pool for tournaments because there are quick rotations for both CT’s and T’s and that’s fun but I hope Cobblestone will be removed after this tournament.
Which map should replace Cobblestone?
Probably Season. A lot of teams liked it and it was played in a lot of tournaments before Valve decided to remove it for Cobblestone and Overpass. It is a good map, it is probably not as unique as Overpass but it still has its touch.
Unfortunately you are out of the tournament so what will you do the next days?
I don’t know, we will probably drink us to death. Is this going to be in the interview? (laughing)
We will probably visit Düsseldorf, I’ve been there already two years ago. Cologne is beautiful, the Dom is cool.
So it is not too bad that you are out of the tournament?
Well, we will hang around the venue. Too bad? Yeah too bad we did not get to play the regular maps, those we practiced the most. We would have had a better chance on them, as I already said we are not playing with skill, we are more a strategic team, and we only play based on strategies. Galder 'bladE' Barcena is an excellent captain, probably one of the best in the history of counter-strike. He really likes to go in-depth as he is watching for the smallest details. We had a lot of strategies on the regular maps, especially on the CT-side. We had many discussions about retakes, we talked about how people will help each other, how they throw flashes and where everybody is going. All that we did not had on Cobblestone. We had one main strategy on T-side and two strategies on CT-side. That should be no excuse, those two maps were just our worse maps out of the five we wanted to play.
The luck wasn’t on your side today?
Sort of. It was bad to see the new maps getting picked by the randomizer all the time but we don’t want to make a conspiracy out of that. (laughing)
Thank you for you the interview. The last words are yours.
Thanks to all of our fans and also for those who flame us. (smiles)
