These days a prestigious series tournament is being held in Belgrade BetBoom Dacha from the FISSURE studio: the four best national teams and the best teams from other regions participate, and the total prize fund amounts to 500 thousand dollars.
Before the start of the competition, we managed to chat with the Virtus.pro refrigerator Peter fame bolyshev. The player from the ninth team in the world ranking told how the team feels after the transfer of Electronica from Cloud9 and what goals he sets for the next part of the season.
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– Hello. Tell us, in what state did you and your team approach BetBoom Dacha?– Hello. The general condition is good. In the ESL Pro League playoffs we lost in the quarterfinals, so we had a couple of days to reset and get some practice in. Yes, there was almost no time to train some global things, but we managed to prepare a kind of base. But I think we feel good and we are prepared to play a good game here in Belgrade.
— Did you manage to recover mentally after the defeat in the EPL?– Yes, I think we have already “let go” of this tournament and now we are in a good moral state. We were able to restart, there was time.
– I respect! How can you generally evaluate the results and play the first tournament of this lineup, after the arrival of Denis electronic Sharipov?— Reaching the quarterfinals is a good result in general. Of course, I wanted to achieve more. And I think we expected ourselves to be able to win at least one more game, against Complexity. But we were missing something. Somewhere, perhaps, there was not enough training. Perhaps we gave our last strength in the match against MongolZ.
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This, of course, is not an excuse, but it was considered that it was in our hands to reach the semi-finals. In this sense, we slightly fell short of our expectations, but I hope that in this tournament we will show a better game.
As for the game, with the transition from electronics, more non-standard actions appeared for us. Previously we played with a more structured and pronounced system, now we have a kind of balance between structure and other actions: those where you read the enemy, want to trap your opponent somewhere, etc.
The Russian team started the tournament in Serbia with a brilliant victory over the Danish team Falcons (2-0)
Photo: HLTV
— Many, including his teammates, say VP will face major changes, including changes to playstyle. How long do you think this entire restructuring process could last?—If you look at our games, you can already see that the style has changed a little. But for now this is due to the fact that we did not have enough time to play our basic structural game, so now we are playing somewhere on the fly, agreeing on some things during the matches, during the tournament. For now, we simply don’t have time to discuss everything, talk about everything, etc. Somewhere we are trying to “take” the game away from the players’ personal skills, etc.
I think the ideal is that, as time goes on, we can practice all our material and add moments of improvisation when we are surprised by the structure that already exists. Ideally, this should be a symbiosis, a balance between structure and improvisation like this.
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—What things will you personally need to change in your roles? How big is this volume?— Well, my roles did not change at all with the arrival of Electronics. Only on the Mirage map do I have to play more actively for defense, but in general the roles remain the same. On a global level, maybe I need to take more responsibility for the game, because it seems to me that I also played too structurally. But this takes time: you have to feel everything, play and see what it will be like.
— A little about the current tournament. What goals does the Virtus.pro team set for BetBoom Dacha? Is it more important to win the tournament or get closer to the game you want to show next?“We always have the goal of winning, of going as far as possible. We would also like to achieve a better result in this tournament, but the most important thing for us now is to develop new strategies and work to activate our new player as effectively as possible.
If we do not take first place, but get a lot of useful information for the future, this will also be to our advantage.
One of the best players in the world, Denis electronic Sharipov, joined the VP roster just a month ago.
Photo: HLTV
– Good. Let’s touch on an equally relevant topic. Now there are many rumors about possible changes in the Virtus.pro coaching staff…– I don’t know, all these rumors, to be honest… I wouldn’t trust them. There is always a lot of information about various changes and often they do not come true. And, let’s say, when we signed with Electronics, there was no rumor about it. That’s why I advise people not to believe in all this.
— You have a pretty busy schedule: two tournaments now, and almost immediately the IEM in Dallas and the BLAST spring finals. How difficult is it for the team and for you personally to deal with this?— Honestly, this is probably the busiest schedule for us in recent seasons. This year we started to play consistently in all level 1 championships, which was not the case before: due to substitutions, qualifications, some tournaments were not there, there was no BLAST.
Now somewhere there is no time even to practice, fatigue is building up a little because of the flights, but I think now… A new person has joined the team, so now we are fresher, we are still getting used to each other, such a “candy-like” bouquet. Therefore, it is easier for us to endure this than for other teams.
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-How do you deal with this? Now, in another popular discipline, Dota 2, there are more and more tournaments and the system will soon be similar to a season in Counter-Strike. Maybe there are some general tips for colleagues and young players?– I don’t even know… If you spend a lot of time together, try to take a break somewhere if possible. If you feel that it is already difficult, you need to go for a walk somewhere and do some active actions. Don’t sit still, don’t play for days, because sometimes it starts to get very tiring.
To be honest, it’s difficult: you usually live with someone in one room, one way or another you see all these people every day. But it is worth trying to relax somehow, go for a walk, etc.
Now Fama, 21 years old, is the youngest player on the Virtus.pro squad.
Photo: Virtus.pro
— Let’s say a few words about the map group. You recently said you regret replacing Overpass. What card would you delete instead?— Probably Vertigo. For me, and I think for a lot of people, this is my least favorite card right now. It would be better to bring Train back; when I was in tournament mode, I liked it.
But overall, to be honest, in a sense I even like that Overpass has been replaced by Dust2. This is a breath of fresh air, something new. We already played a little Dust and practiced it; It is a very nice map. You have fun when you play it.
– Good. Then the last question: it’s been more than six months since the release of Counter-Strike 2, and if you look back and compare it to Global Offensive, what would be your opinion?— Counter-Strike 2 is developing and does not stop. Developers constantly add something, fix something, change something. It’s good to see that they are monitoring the game and posting updates; the game is no longer the same as it was in the fall.
And CS 2 is probably more interesting than CS:GO in any case. When I accidentally open an old match to watch it, it appears that the game is very old. Smokey in general looks different, it is even unusual to see him: in CS 2 his mechanics have become much broader.
Many different rounds have appeared in the game and the game itself has become much more interesting and lively. It’s a good decision on Valve’s part to update the game to Counter-Strike 2 and develop it that way.
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