Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussens lag, som sedan två månader tillbaka spelar under Team SoloMid, men som innan det representerade Team Dignitas, har gått till slutspel i varje major-turnering hittills. De förväntas att avancera även i år, där de ställs mot Virtus.pro, Cloud 9 och 3DMAX i gruppspelet, då de inför turneringen har bland annat ett brons på MLG X Games i ryggen.

Fragbite har nått ut till den danska stjärnspelaren, där vi får svar på frågor som hur organisationsbytet samt spelarförändringarna påverkat laget, hur de planerat att komma över semifinal-tröskeln, vad de ser på sin grupp och ESL One Katowice i överlag.

In the beginning of the year, during MLG X Games, it was announced that you had been recruited by Team SoloMid. This, together with a third place at MLG X Games after recruiting Finn “karrigan” Andersen to the team, could be seen as a new beginning. Do you feel like it’s a completely different time now compared to your preparation for the previous major, DreamHack Winter 2014?

I’d say both yes and no. There is a whole new atmosphere on the team and a new mindset, so in that matter it’s different, but in a good way! Getting karrigan into the team has given us a lot of bonuses in my opinion, not just tactic-wise, but also how we try to solve things and discuss things when they don’t go as planned, so I am very pleased to have such a dedicated person as karrigan as my in-game leader. For the first time we are also going to bootcamp, since ever. We have never ever had a bootcamp during those 2 years the core of me device, Xyp9x and Fetish existed, so we’ll see what those days of bootcamping prior to the event will bring us, but I am sure it is stuff like that we have always needed, but never really had the chance to do so due to Fetishs work and device and Xyp9x’s school colliding!

Team SoloMid is quite a big organization and it seems like joining them was a huge milestone in your team’s timeline. Are there any differences between them and, for example, dignitas when it comes to expectations for tournaments like Katowice?

I am extremely excited to be able to represent Team SoloMid in CS:GO for the first time, and then even at a major which makes it even more exciting! We’re not under any pressure from their side, as they know we are still a somewhat “new-team”, as we changed pretty much every aspect in January before MLG, but I know that both their and our goal is always to have a top3 finish when we participate in a tournament. With that being said, my personal goal is to win everyone of them, though it’s a tough task with such a strong scene. Joining Team SoloMid is probably one of the biggest achievements we have accomplished so far, so now we just have to put up some results! I am glad to be here!

Before, with FeTiSh as your tactician, it was well known that your team were struggling to go past the semi finals in bigger LAN tournaments. Now, you didn’t exactly go through the semi finals at MLG X Games, but a third place over a 3-4th should be considered progress. Are you still working hard not “to choke” (to quote you), or do you feel that you’ve gotten over that hump?

I think we’ve come a long way, and been able to realize and accept to ourselves, that we have choked, mainly myself and device, when it really mattered, and I think that accepting the fact instead of denying it, is one of the bigger things. I could always make up excuses to why we failed or why we choked, but accepting that I didn’t perform is a huge step in the right direction, I think. I think it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is the reason why we choke, because we’ve had loads of debates, discussing if it was because we got nervous, but neither of feels like that. We’ve never reached a final yet, mainly because we have under performed or simply didn’t make the impact to win the important rounds. I don’t think myself and device is to blame solely, as it’s a team game, but plenty of times people has claimed us to be the stars, and stars need to standout when its needed - and thats where we have failed.

I hope our new mindset and our victory over fnatic at MLG will give us confidence. It’s very very uncommon that we lose against teams thats ranked lower than us, but we’re having consistensy problems against teams like fnatic, nV, NiP and Virtus Pro, and that has to change, if we want LAN victories! Time will tell!

At last year's edition of ESL One Katowice you had almost the same lineup as you’re playing with today, but with FeTiSh instead of karrigan. What do you remember from Katowice that you will be looking forward to in the upcoming event?

I really liked the small movies they did about every team, and the photoshoots for ingame avatars, that looked so awesome. Katowice has by far been the best audience too, so I hope we’ll see a lot of those guys back!

Is there anything negative you’re hoping that they have “fixed” since last year?

On stage the space for each player was a little slim - I hope for a better solution this year.

You’re in Group D together with the reigning champions of Virtus.pro, the american team Cloud 9 and the finns in 3DMAX. If I’ve calculated it all correctly, your first match should be against Cloud 9, a team that has both performed well as well as crashed in majors. Do you feel comfortable playing against non-European teams, and what do you believe is the biggest difference compared to playing against teams from Europe?

I think we have faced an American team every single major in group stages by now, and we’ve never really had problems against them, apart from our loss against Cloud9 at ESL Cologne last year, but that turned out better for us in the playoffs.

Last time we faced Cloud9 we stomped them pretty hard at MLG in the group-decider, but I know they are a great team, so we’re not going to underestimate them just because of that result, as Bo1 can be very misleading. But I am confident that we’ll win against them this time too.

I guess Virtus.pro is the biggest threat to you in the group as they are expected to go to the playoffs. Even though they are the former champions of Katowice and are playing on home soil, they have been pretty weak in LAN tournaments in 2015. How is your mindset going up against them, and how much of a difference do you think it would be to play them best of three on stage as opposed to playing them without audience during the best of one group stage?

Virtus.Pro is indeed the stronger team in our group, who is aiming to go to playoffs as 1st. As mentioned, and as I think, we would potentially face them without audience and that’s a huge bonus for us, compared to facing them with thousands of poles cheering for them. I think we can beat them, but they have improved their game the last couple of weeks, so I am confident, even though they are a great team and will be hard to beat. I think if we play our game and hit our shots, we can finish 1st in group. It’s not impossible at least :) If we end up going to playoffs, it’s pretty good to know we will avoid Virtus Pro until an eventual final, so we wont be pressured by the crowd until then!

The top of the scene is pretty wide right now as no team is really dominating. Who do you consider being the strongest opponent for Katowice, and why?

I think fnatic is the clear favourite this time. They have dominated the rest of the top online the last couple of weeks, and their individual performances is really strong, combined with pronax’s great ingame leading skills. I see fnatic being in the final atleast. I doubt we’ll see them out of top4 atleast!

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions, and good luck in Katowice. Any closing words?

Thanks to SoloMid for picking us up! Thanks to Kinguin, HyperX, iBUYPOWER, Logitech, HTC, and MGN for making this possible for us! Go support them guys, they’re awesome! Thanks to all of our supporters, it wouldn’t be the same without you guys! See you in Poland!