YEKINDAR: “Playing on FACEIT is just pointless.”

Playing on FACEIT is just pointless. I mean, you play this match—so what, bro? What’s in it for me? I get nothing out of playing with four random players. The situations I find myself in there are nothing like the ones that come up in real matches. Plus, when you arrive at a tournament and play match after match, tournament after tournament, your aim is already on point. You don’t want to spend another 30–40 minutes playing if you’ve already been playing all day or constantly thinking about the game.

At some point, we ran into a problem: our matches constantly start late. Usually, games start at 6:30 p.m., but sometimes the start time gets pushed back to 8:00 p.m. or even later. Last year, we didn’t have anything planned for the first half of the day because we were winning. Everyone went about their business and did whatever they wanted. Then they’d show up for the match—and were ready to play. Now we don’t have any time between tournaments, and the matches constantly start late. So the first half of the day is simply wasted. Now we get up earlier—perhaps sacrificing some of our pre-match energy—but in return we play practice matches and do something useful. We don’t treat every official match as if it were the last game of our lives. Let’s say we have a match at 7:30 p.m., but we play practice matches from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Sometimes an official game runs late and doesn’t end until 1:00 a.m. At some point, you have to make these sacrifices to get better in the long run. Right now, this is the only way. There’s no other option.

I think it all depends on the team. We might very well go out for dinner and have a beer even before a match. We don’t have strict restrictions. The guys are Brazilian, man. They have a different take on these things. But we never go to clubs or bars outside the hotel, and we don’t go out anywhere else just to party. We don’t do that. When we win, we don’t even go to the after-party. We’re just so exhausted that we don’t feel like going anywhere. Imagine: you show up at a party, meet people, and say: “Hi, my name is Mario”—and then you don’t remember any names, who you met, or even what happened at all. Literally after every tournament, we order McDonald’s, eat it, and drink beer as a whole team.