For our seventh pre-ESWC interview, HLTV.org sat down with mousesports talent Tobias "Troubley" Tabbert for a chat on his team's preparation for the event in Paris.

In the wake of the last EPS season, Tabbert saw himself without a team, as ALTERNATE closed down their CS 1.6 division and chose instead to support the CS:Source squad.

He did, however, refuse to give up, and assembled a new team who have been running high in EPS Germany and defeated mTw in the final of the ESWC qualifier before being recruited by mousesports.

How have you prepared for ESWC 2012? Have you bootcamped or only practiced online? Do you feel ready for the competition?

We have been practicing almost every day and we did a bootcamp this weekend. Overall, we are pretty much ready for the tournament. Everyone is confident. But for strux1, stavros and nex it will be the first major lan tournament of their lives.

How many hours have you played CS:GO overall? How about your teammates?

Overall, everyone has roughly 250 hours and 100 hours in the last two weeks.

What are you thoughts on CS:GO? What do you like and dislike? If you could change one thing, what would it be?

Well, as everyone else said before, I do not like the molotovs. They really slow down the match and are still way too strong. Also, I miss de_tuscan and also de_season from CS:Source. Those maps are really great. Hopefully they will be integrated soon.

What do you expect from ESWC 2012? If your life depended on guessing your final placing, what would you guess?

Our expectations cannot be that high. We have three players that have never been to a big LAN tournament. Therefore, our first goal is to get first in our group.

Can Troubley's team give Germany its first ESWC gold in CS?

What can you tell us about your competition based on seeing them play and practicing against them? Who do you consider the strongest three teams going into the event?

Based on my experience I can say that NiP, the winner of the French qualifier and mouz will be the strongest three teams, to be honest.

Can you talk about your teammate and explain to our readers what everyone's role on the team is in-game?

nex, stavros and me are the madfraggers, while strux1 and approx are both tactical leaders and they use the AWP.

Many say CS:S players had an advantage in switching to CS:GO, do you agree? Has the game been out long enough for it to even out?

That is more or less accurate. They have the advantage because of the engine. But in general, everyone has had the same amount of time to prepare the game. It is up to them how effective they used that time.

Do you believe it is necessary or advantageous to mix players from different games, or do you think it does not help?

It does help a lot. You can combine both gameplays and turn them into one. But at the beginning, there are always conflicts between the players because everyone is used to different types of playing styles. If you are willing to learn things, you will have success in whatever you do.

With CS:GO still being a relatively new game, do you believe simply playing more hours still gives players a clear advantage?

Yes. The more you play, the more experience you gain. Overall, it helps you to improve way faster.

Your team successfully mixed both CS:S and CS 1.6 talent to defeat favorites mTw in the qualifier. How much do you think having players from both backgrounds helped your team become so good in such a short amount of time?

As I said, we combined both gameplays into one. We have a good mixture of players and player roles. We just played a lot in a short amount of time. This helped us to get really good.

mousesports now holds two competitive CS:GO teams. How much pressure do you face to perform at ESWC in order to stay in the organization instead of the UK squad? Do you see the two co-existing or will one have to go?

I do do not feel pressure at all. We have got our contracts and are allowed to attend every event in the future we might think of. I think its mousesports' plan to keep both teams. There is no disadvantage for any team because of this fact.

Troubley with ALTERNATE at Copenhagen Games 2012

You ended the last EPS season in Team ALTERNATE but you had to find your own way elsewhere, since the organisation decided to keep the CS:S team, who now represent them in CS:GO. Were you disappointed that ALTERNATE did not give you a chance to assemble a team in the new game?

At first, I accepted the decision. But now I think that they regret picking up their old Source team instead of us. We finally got picked up by mousesports, which means that ALTERNATE won't have much chances of getting us into their organisation now. Probably, they are not happy right now.

Your team is currently second in EPS, just one point behind ALTERNATE. Are you happy with the team's performances so far?

We are somewhat happy. We have not lost a single official game so far. You cannot be unhappy with this record. But of course we have to get better in order to keep up the pace.

mousesports' British team received this week an invite for Dreamhack Winter, but there was no news about your team. Do you plan on attending the event?

Yes. We will participate in the qualifiers and also hope to get one of the last two invite spots. Unfortunately, Dreamhack Winter invited the UK team, not ours. The decision did not come from mousesports, but from Dreamhack Winter officials. On a side note, I would like to thank our sponsors, Medion, Geil, Intel, Razer, Thortech and Sansibar Sylt.