Ainkrad on Level UP at the 2026 Dota 2 Esports World Cup: “I think we fell short.”

Of course, we had certain expectations—we knew we’d be facing top-tier teams. But we wanted to at least gain some experience and try to do what we’re good at. And if it became clear that it wasn’t working—okay, then we’d improve, add new heroes, and so on.

I think we were seriously underprepared—we were losing in the early stages and all that. For example, in the game against Aurora, I had an absolutely amazing start in mid, but I couldn’t do anything with it, and the game ended very quickly. There’s not much to learn from games like that because we didn’t execute the basic things we usually go over over and over again. But we also had quite a few good games—the first game against Liquid went pretty well, and the first game against Aurora was okay, too. We struggled a bit in team fights, and things got tougher after that, but at least we can analyze and discuss those moments.

[So, in the first games, you got off to a good start but couldn’t quite close out the game. And in the second game, your opponents adjusted, and you got completely crushed?] I don’t fully understand how much of that is related. From my perspective, I was a little frustrated—it felt like the games should have gone smoothly, but they didn’t. Our opponents were simply faster in certain moments—you want to fight for a rune, you think: “It’s mine, 100 percent mine”—but it doesn’t work out, even though it should be mine. For some reason. You want to take a tower—but they defend it well. And after moments like that in the second game, you start reliving the thoughts from the first one all over again. Maybe it’s some kind of fear—you catch yourself thinking, “I won’t be able to do this; I won’t be able to because they’ll react.”