A year ago, 9INE's AWPer hades was playing in a Major semi final for ENCE. Since then, a roster revamp for the Finnish organisation saw him lose his spot and be forced to find a new home with his Polish brethren at 9INE.
The move has been a huge success, with 9INE becoming dominant in the online space and recently turning that into strong LAN form with a 3-0 qualification from the RMR to the BLAST.tv Paris Major.
After the RMR, BLAST.tv got the chance to talk to hades about the event, his performances, and 9INE putting Polish CS back on the map.
Photo: Michael KonkolInterview with hades
Congratulations on qualifying; how are you feeling?
I’m feeling thank you [laughs] but for real, it feels really good to qualify for the final CS:GO Major, especially as the only Polish team for a long time to do so, it's amazing.
Did you expect to qualify as Legends or even in the fashion you did beating the teams you did?
No, we were hoping to qualify but we knew it wouldn't be easy considering the teams we were going up against so to go straight to Legends and in the fashion we managed to do so was quite unexpected.
9INE are putting Polish CS back on the map with recent performances, what does that mean to you?
I try not to think about it too much but it's something I wanted to do since the scene started to struggle. I feel like this is a very good start to hopefully something much bigger.
You guys have been on the up ever since you joined; how is the atmosphere in the team?
The atmosphere is good. We’re all friends and we spend time with each other, even outside of practice, so it's pretty awesome and makes the working environment much easier. Of course, we have our arguments every now and then, but we always work out the best solutions.
You were one of the stars of the RMR; would you say you’ve been playing with a point to prove ever since joining 9INE?
So far I am really happy with my performances and I can still see a lot of space to improve. It did and still does feel like I have a point to prove as I feel like I never was able to play up to my potential before.
The team in general does things by committee with everyone having similar ratings, would you consider that one of the teams greatest strengths?
For sure, everyone in this team can pop off at any time and do so pretty consistently, so having the whole team putting up numbers is a huge strength of ours.
Since the RMR you’ve played in IEM Rio and had an early elimination, what were the issues there?
In my personal opinion there was less hunger during Rio. The rollercoaster of emotions during the RMR got to us and it felt like we just couldn’t hype each other up like we did in the RMR, so you could say we were still a bit mentally exhausted there. I feel like we could have won all of the maps that we played but we just lacked some details both in game and outside of the game because all maps that we lost were really close.
As a team you’re obviously incredible in a tactical sense, would you say there are extra steps in terms of mental strength and being able to close out games?
We prepare for the games well so we know that we can always win, if we have the attitude like we had in the RMR it just feels like every round is winnable and you just focus on the current round so that for sure helps us to close the games because we don’t even see the score sometimes. [laughs]
Looking ahead to the Major, what are your expectations for the event?
Of course we would like to go to the playoffs but it will be much harder to do so in the Legends Stage so we just need to go in without any expectations, take it one game at a time and just do our best once again.