hooch: "Proved we are a LAN team"

Gambit have joined the major list after defeating OpTic, Envy and G2 on their way to a 3-1 record at the ESL Studios in Poland.

After they qualified, we grabbed in-game leader and captain Dmitry "⁠hooch⁠" Bogdanov to get his thoughts on some of the matches, as well as the upcoming major.

First of all, since we didn't get to talk to you during the event, what was your preparation like prior to the event?

We were playing for about seven days at a bootcamp and before that we had a small break before we played GODSENT for the Kiev qualifier. But then I went for a vacation and after it we played really bad, we got pounded by many teams online. When we went to the bootcamp it became better, we played some online leagues, Operation: Kinguin and UCC. We just knew we had to prepare four maps, so we made our mind up on these four maps, but it looks like we only needed two maps here. 

It's been quite some time since you added spaze, how has he developed in the team?

In the beginning it was very hard for him, because he never played in a professional team and he doesn't know how to play properly, if you know what I mean. The thing is that at the beginning he was struggling really hard, but when we came to the bootcamp we worked with his mindset, he is always hitting good shots but he just doesn't know how to make it happen. So we helped him with it and he became better. There's still a lot of work to do, but what I really like about him is his confidence, he doesn't care who he's playing, he's like "I'm gonna crush them".

How has your style changed with him as opposed to with wayLander, if at all?

Maybe we changed some positions, but our gamestyle didn't change so much. spaze is doing what he needs to do. The mentality changed a little bit in the team after he joined, but nothing more, no big changes.

I want to talk about the format, it's very new and most people have said it is great, what is your take on it?

I mean, this format is really nice I think, all teams have a chance to play against other teams. If you have a bad group and you don't play well in the first game, you have a small chance to qualify. It's good for strong teams. I don't know how the seedings were made, but as it looks like now, we have played four games here and three of those teams have already qualified and one of them has a good chance to qualify. We maybe faced the strongest teams here, except mouz of course. This format is nice, as I said, it's better than the groups with best-of-ones.

Let's get into the technical pause rules as well, I don't think you've had any, but what do you think about the subject overall?

To be honest, I don't understand that, because in football if you make pauses - I know it's not the best comparison - the thing is like if someone has a technical problem, what did I have to do with it? I just wanna say some words to my teammates. Maybe it's too harsh to say, but maybe some teams like to do it on purpose to break the hype of another team. I don't really understand this rule, but maybe I don't know something.

Train has historically been one of your best maps, but you couldn't deliver against FaZe, what happened?

We played really good as T, and as CT we started well, but we lost two rounds versus fox where he made a 1v3 and a 2v5 where he got an ace, so he played that match really well, but we made huge mistakes in these rounds. When you lose these rounds like that, your morale goes down and the other team gets super-hyped. After we lost I said to my team that we just need to let it go, because shit happens. It's really important to adapt to things like that. So I said we should just forget about that game and don't make the same mistakes we made before, and we didn't make them today.

You were able to improve on your previous games on both Cobble (against OpTic) and Train (FaZe), is it just you making sure you don't make the same mistakes?

We have a coach and also my teammates, who make the mistakes, we talk about it together. My role is just to make them fix it and don't think about that. So it's teamwork, I can't say it's just on me.

At the end of the last match you looked super happy, what does making another major mean to you?

After struggling so hard and people saying that we aren't as good after wayLander departed, we struggled hard online and nobody believed in us, people were talking a lot of shit to us, it just feels nice. We proved that we are a LAN team and I hope we prepare well and show good results than we did last time in Columbus.

Lastly, how are you going to spend the next three weeks prior to the major? Is there going to be a bootcamp?

Tomorrow we're going home and we'll spend some time with our families, like five days. On the 26th we're leaving for ELEAGUE, so we're going to go to a bootcamp for about three-four days before that to prepare for the teams - Virtus.pro, EnVyUs and compLexity. We don't have much time to relax, so we're just chill for a couple of days and practice again.

Make sure to check out the other interviews we have conducted during the offline qualifier:

Yegor "⁠markeloff⁠" Markelov: "I don't want to face dignitas"

Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip: "We didn't expect Mirage vs. mouz"

Chris "GoMeZ" Orfanellis: "Got an option to stay in RNG"

Mathias "⁠MSL⁠" Lauridsen: "We have to stop losing to ecos"

QiFang "⁠Karsa⁠" Su: "We changed our style for Immortals"

William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba: "We choked against Gambit"

Edouard "⁠SmithZz⁠" Dubourdeaux: "Format good for big teams"

Robert "⁠RobbaN⁠" Dahlström: "G2 are our biggest threat"

Aleksandar "⁠kassad⁠" Trifunović: "Nobody will gift us the win"

Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk: "Have a lot up our sleeves"