ash on preparing for the StarLadder StarSeries Fall 2026 grand final: “I played Fortnite all night.”

We always knew we had what it takes to go very far and play in several finals. I guess it happened a little sooner than I expected. Things just kind of fell into place a little faster than I’d hoped, but we’ve already had our ups and downs. I think we’ve learned a lot because we’ve had some tough losses, including some where we were leading by a huge margin. Yeah, I think it was a good learning experience, so the fact that it happened so early is a nice confidence boost.

I played Fortnite all night. I mean, of course, we needed to prepare a little, but we didn’t know exactly who our opponent would be. So there are a few things we can do. I’m not going to go into a lot of details or anything, but we need to find some things that the other team might have noticed—maybe some mistakes—and try to fix them. So it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just sit around and play Fortnite all night—or some other game I’ve never played in my life. But, anyway, that’s the life of a Counter-Strike coach. You want to celebrate, maybe watch some highlights for 30 minutes, then go back and review your demos and all that. So I’ll be glad when all this is over, to go home and get some rest myself. It’s nice to see that all this is paying off a little. 

He always finds ways to make entries consistently. I think, looking at it from the outside, he actually played that game pretty well. It seemed like he had a huge impact at certain moments. He wasn’t as good as he can be at his best, so maybe his cheats aren’t working right now or something like that—I don’t know. We’ll see in the Grand Final. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of smoke shots, random timings, and all that. But, overall, he’s an incredible player. We need to try to slow him down a bit. 

I think anyone would be lying if they said they weren’t nervous at all. I notice it myself—I’m a little nervous because I’m excited. It’s not often you get to play in grand finals. My last grand final was probably at the CCT about 10 years ago, before the Paris Major, so of course you get a little nervous. We’ll have to deal with that ourselves during the game. The same thing will happen to the players. There will be moments when they forget something and make mistakes, and that’s normal. The only question is how we’ll handle it today. If you’re not nervous, I think you just don’t care.

He often says things like, “I want to do this and make these kinds of moves,” and so on. We don’t often say “no” to him about things like that. But, generally, sometimes I or someone else has some ideas that we want him to try, and then we put those ideas into practice, and it can turn out really well. It might be something like, “Okay, let’s try that again.” What I like about him is that you can say “no” to him, and he’ll just keep coming up with different ideas.