TABSEN AND ROMAN R. ON RECENT RESULTS

Last week Philian was joined by tabseN and Roman R. in our regular “Coinbase PressekonfeR.enz” Q&A podcast to address the recent form of the team, talk about future expectations and answer various viewer questions. Since the podcast is conducted in German, we have translated the most requested questions and the respective answers so our international followers and fans can be up to date about the team as well.

 

What is the team missing at the moment?

Roman: In principle, everyone has the potential to play at the top. That’s why the five of them are in our lineup and I think it’s the same with hyped. What we’re lacking at the moment is simply consistency. After the ESL Pro League we had a lot of bad games, against supposedly worse opponents, but at the same time we had, for example, an outstanding game from my point of view against Heroic, which we could have won just as well. With CS:GO, it’s always such nuances: If you win this game in the EPL against Heroic, you’re directly qualified for the playoffs, you receive a lot of points, you don’t have to play the CCT tournaments, which is, of course, no excuse for playing against supposedly worse opponents, but you’ll slip at some point if you keep playing against teams that also want to annoy the big teams.

We work on things, we work on methods, and we work on patterns that show up again and again, but the progress that you see right now is just very small. We will continue to work on it. I think that also applies to other players. So I wouldn’t limit it (inconsistency) to k1to and faveN. I think you can say that about other players in our team as well. That is the basic problem, that the consistency is not there. There are situations, like k1to against FURIA, he plays a game where the opponent has no chance, no matter what he does, it all works. One game later it just doesn’t work anymore. I think that’s what we’re trying to figure out, where gob b also works very intensively with it and looks at how you can give solutions to the individual players. And otherwise, it’s always repetition and discipline.

 

What happens when the team takes a timeout?

tabseN: In principle, when gob b takes a timeout, then of course we all listen. He gives very important and good input, that we don’t see from the inside and he sees from the outside – be it communication, be it a read on the opponent, be it anything we can work with. Otherwise, I’m the one who calls the most and discusses the setup the most or dictates what should be played, of course with my own decisions here and there, which are always there. Of course I rely on the communication, on the information processing from my team. Otherwise, Fatih also talks a lot about strategy and outplay here and there and handling, and so on.

 

What are your expectations for the upcoming Major?

tabseN: If you think you are improving during training, then an improvement must be seen at some point ingame as well. Sooner or later you will see it. I think at BLAST we showed that we can play reasonably good Counter-Strike and win a map here and there against better teams, but now we’ll see if that really proves to be true and if we can continue that, especially in the next upcoming tournaments, which are much more important. Of course, we would have liked to qualify for the BLAST Premier Spring Finals, but hand on heart: everybody would like to go to a Major, everybody would like to play a major and especially the last CS:GO major is just what counts and if we qualify and if we perform there, then you can turn a blind eye regarding the first three months where we messed up. Because we are then represented at a major as the only German team and hopefully it will happen that way.

 

What do you think about Counter-Strike 2?

tabseN: I have five minutes of gameplay if less. I played matchmaking or deathmatch once. What I saw looked interesting and cool. Especially the menu in general is just nicer, newer. It all feels better and what you’ve seen in the trailers or in the streams looks very similar with a few other tweaks – with the HE for example and the smoke – these are all cool, new features that you’ll have to see how they play out in competitive play.

 

Are you satisfied with the performance of hyped?

tabseN: There are phases when a newcomer joins the team and proves himself immediately. I think Krimbo is a very good example, because he found his way into the team very quickly and showed what he can do. I think it was the same with hyped, but he’s in a position and has to replace an even more important player, which I think is a bit difficult without any experience and the expectation that you have to fill such a position. I think he also has an expectation from himself that he would have to fulfill, which of course is very very difficult. In principle, I’m actually satisfied with his performance, even if it’s better here and there. But you can always see the improvement. He has shown good performance, he has also shown bad performance. But on the whole, from a human and playing point of view, he’s actually a good, suitable player.

 

What do you have to say about the team’s recent performance?

tabseN: The results are currently far below our expectations and level. Of course, it’s a bit difficult to say what the reason is. I think if you ask every single player in the team how we feel at the moment, I would say that nobody feels very bad right now. Of course, there are days when you feel worse, but we are definitely making progress. The fact that we are making progress is of course very very important. Of course, not every day is the same and not every day is useless. But we don’t have the perfect solution either. We’re trying to make the best of it and we’re currently trying to work a lot on basics, that we’re on the same page, that everyone understands the playing philosophy, that it harmonizes well and I think also especially with hyped, it’s still very very early that he’s playing at this level. Of course, we are not playing against teams with TOP level now. Now in the Open Qualifier we lost against a FPL-C or FPL-Mix, but nevertheless I think we are training hard and we definitely think we are making progress. That’s just the thing that gets us all thinking. None of us are saying that we’re stalling or we don’t know what it is or what we need to work on. We’re definitely making progress and we feel like we’re always improving.

 

How much does the team practice on an average day?

tabseN: Today it was from 11:00 to 19:45 approximately. That’s team training, then everyone has to add a few more hours individually to performance and bring in their own hours of play. Team training of course includes theory and practice and demo sessions. So you can imagine that we train from 11-20 o’clock approximately – sometimes more sometimes less – with breaks in between. This is the daily routine that we go through.