mo0N: “I don’t know about others, but I’ve never practiced my aim”
Magic sniper Abdurakhim “mo0N” Isa spoke to OFFSTAGE about his idols, his most memorable match for the team, and his training routine.
On the snipers he looked up to
It was m0NESY—I always watched him and wanted to play like him, of course. Well, s1mple was also at the top of his game back then, yeah. s1mple and m0NESY. I guess when s1mple left, I started watching m0NESY because he was just breaking into G2 at that time and so on.
On his most memorable match for magic
It was the PGL Astana qualifier final against K27, when we came back from a 0-2 deficit to win 3-2.
On watching other snipers play
When they make a play or get a frag, you watch to see why they did it, which of their opponents’ actions prompted it, and how their teammates helped them. You watch all of that and think about the why and the how. And there’s a lot you can learn from it.
On training
I don’t know about others, but I’ve never practiced shooting. I never sat down and shot 5,000 bots or 1,000 DMs every day. I’ve never done that. When I joined RUBY, we had a quota of 1,000 DMs. I met that quota in the first month, but then my aim started to slip—I don’t know why; my hand would get stiff and so on. After that, I didn’t play DM; I never practiced my aim—I just play a lot of FACEIT matches. I don’t know about the others, but I just play FACEIT, and my aim somehow improves on its own.
On Magic’s proximity to Tier 1
To be honest, it wasn’t like we were just a hair’s breadth away from playing in Tier 1. We did make it into a Tier 1 tournament. We always want to play in Tier 1 tournaments consistently, yes. Of course, the very fact that we made it to Tier 1, played well there, and established a certain ranking means we now need to maintain that level to stay there, qualify for Majors, and so on. We need to work hard toward that. But to answer your question, there wasn’t a moment where we thought, “Just a little more, and we’ll always be Tier 1”—that didn’t happen. Personally, I haven’t had that thought yet.
Earlier, in an OFFSTAGE interview, sniper magic Abdurakhim “mo0N” Isa talked about how the team is trying to develop its own playstyle and explained how the return of Cache has influenced their map pool.
Photo — PGL.
