XAOC: «Saksa is a coach of our Dota 2 roster»

 Let's talk about your new position – CEO HellRaisers. How did that happen? How did you take a new position?

 We just had some rearrangements. Maksim, ex-CEO HellRaisers, resigned. I just took his responsibilities, and we decided to keep moving in the right direction. Nothing extraordinary happened.

You signed Dota roster. Whose idea it was? How did you make agreements with the players? Was it fast?

Initially, Maksim did that. He has been negotiating with them for about 2-3 weeks, but the players decided to choose another organization and sign contracts with them. When I replaced Maksim, they contacted us again, and told that they are ready to work with us.

We signed them and wanted to give them a chance, and we did that in fact, to have a great practice on The International so they could show good results and delight the fans.

Are they on bootcamp now?

 Yes, they are. They are in bootcamp, in USA, they will have trainings for one week, and even more, and then they will move to Seattle, where The International will take place.

Did they have any visa issues?

 They have not, as far as I know.

Do they have coach, analyst?

Saksa is their coach, and I hope he will bring something to their game. But he will be a coach only for this event, and we do not know whether he will be coach further.

 What about further cooperation with roster, do you have plans for a long-time cooperation or just for one tournament?

 Not for the one tournament. We are planning to cooperate with them for a long time and we will give them all possibilities to play as good as they can on championships. We will struggle for better results.

Do you have some tasks for The International? What do you expect from them?

 We’ve got no tasks. We understand that this is a young team. They have been under pressure when they got into this championship. It would be wrong to push them more from the point of view of tasks. We know that esports disciplines and the competition in general should be played on maximum.

You should not worry that if you do not show your maximum results, you get punished or fined. It should not be like that, because with such approach and pressure, you will never show the best game. We don't want they, we want the opposite. We want guys to play relaxed on one hand, and on the other hand, we want them to be focused and think about game only.

What do you think about it? How it was for you?

 The result was rather unexpected, and the Major itself was rather unpredictable as well. Many teams that should not have got to the play-off managed to do that with a rather good score. For instance, BIG with overall result 3:0 defeated strong opponents like SK Gaming. No one expected for such a result for sure. As well as for Gaming winning the final. No one could have thought that they would get there even when the participants of play-off were determined. They had a complicated bracket. They left SK behind in quarterfinal, and they were the favorites of the event.

In general, Major left a bad aftertaste with all those delays. I worked in analytics, and 8-hour analytics turned out to be 16-hour. It's very unpleasant, and I think these situations should never happen on Majors.

Gambit are just great. They've got their peak condition in this event, and this is a huge achievement for them, especially for Zeus.

Do you think that Gambit won't show such a game they demonstrated on this Major?

 I think it was their peak. It's hard for them to have practice online, as they are extremely experienced, they all have great achievements, and it’s just difficult for them to gather for some online events that mean nothing to them. But when they arrive at LAN events, they put themselves together. They know how to do that, how to tune in and get focused for their LAN-matches. They have huge expertize, that’s why we see perfect game on each LAN event from these guys.

They were perfect on this Major. If only 2-3 players showed their best on previous championships, these time all 5 of them did that. Everything worked for them (don't forget the clutches they took)

But this won't last forever. That's why I think that the Major just coincided with their peak condition. They were lucky with that. But I could not count on the stable top2-top4 game from Gambit. It's necessary to see a couple more events to tell something about that. But we know that sometimes they can surprise everyone.

Did new mapveto help them as well as they met SK Gaming in quarterfinal? As everyone told, upper play-off bracket was more difficult that lower one. Were they lucky?

Were Gambit lucky? They were in the upper bracket, so it was hard enough for them.

The matter is that any Swiss system ends with play-off where upper bracket is more difficult than lower one. In upper bracket, there will be a team with 3:1 result, while in a lower one with 3:2 result after the group stage. So I can't say they were lucky. They had the most complicated bracket that could be in this event.

But Immortals were a little bit lucky, as they met BIG in quarterfinal, and Polish players, who are not in their best condition now, in semifinal. This is luck.  For Gambit, it wasn't about luck, but still they managed to win Major.

Did new mapveto help them?

 It does not matter at all.

Do you think that mapveto has no influence?

In fact, it did not change. The order was changed a little bit, that's all. And you can veto the map that you did not like to play in the last turn. In general, everything else is the same, and you can do that with old mapveto. I don’t think these are dramatic changes.

Many fans told that a new mapveto should not appear a week before championship starts. I think, it does not matter as it changes nothing for the team.

The information about a new Major was released. It will take place on January-February 2018. What do you expect from it? Where will it take place?

I don't know where it will take place, but I hope somewhere in CIS. We show a growth of audience, it's really active, we like Counter Strike, and we're interested in this discipline as well as in Dota. We don't like LoL and other games. Other regions are more interested in them and watch them more. I would like CS:GO Major to take place in CIS.

I have huge expectations, because these are the best Valve events. This year, we had only 2 of them. Of course, I would like there would be no delays and technical issues that were on these Major.

There are talks over the Internet, that it would be nice to give a Major to the country the team of which won the previous Major. Just like on Eurovision. What do you think about that?

 Eurovision format is rather interesting, and it will be fun to do something like that. But in fact, in esports it can’t be done. In Eurovision, any country can hold the event in a good level, some countries a little bit better, some countries a little bit worse. But in Counter Strike and esports it's more difficult.

I mean, not all countries have the operators of tournaments. To hold a good tournament, it's necessary to focus not on the country or team that won Major, but on the operators a country has.

For example, Virtus.Pro won the event, or Astralis, like that did at the beginning of the year. So how can Denmark hold a Major? How will organize it? Copenhagen Games?

Theoretically, PGL could do that, but there are too many difficult aspects for realization. PGL cannot hold the events anywhere. That's why it's important to focus on the operators, not on the teams.

  Is reshuffle in CIS possible? How would do that?

 Reshuffles will definitely take place. We saw the results of Na’Vi on Major, and this was a disaster, so they will definitely do something about that. Gambit will do nothing, there is not sense for them in that as they are the winners of Major. But reshuffles in CIS will happen. You will know more information later.

What about the future of CS:GO roster of HellRaisers? Will the guys play or maybe you will make some reshuffles?

We are now working on that. I can't exclude reshuffles, they might be done. The problem is in decent substitutes, we need to analyze different variants and possible options. The final decision will be made when we get certain variants and understand what should be changed and what will happen next. We need to find good substitutes.