Saksa on Aui_2000 as Tundra Esports’ coach: “To be honest, I think he was doing too much.”

We played The International with OG. We also had that crazy match in the qualifiers against Tundra Esports, where we beat them 3-2. And we qualified for TI. I don’t know, I think we were in good form leading up to TI10. We made it to the top 8, but we had some team disagreements that didn’t end well, and the atmosphere wasn’t great. On top of that, we faced Team Spirit in the lower bracket.

I think we could have performed better if, I don’t know, the team atmosphere had been a little better. But it all ended the way it did. After that, the team basically fell apart. Everyone left. SumaiL was gone, the rest either retired or stopped playing, and I ended up being the only one left. In the end, I left too. After TI, I messaged Fata and asked if they wanted to make any changes to the roster and if they were interested in doing so. We talked, but they didn’t want to change anything. After that, I was without a team again.

I don’t know, I just played public matches and waited for a few months. Then I heard that Fata was actually being cut from Tundra’s roster. And that’s when I joined the team, and Sneyking was supposed to move to the fifth position. At the time, of course, the situation with Fata’s removal left a bad taste in my mouth, especially considering how it all ended. But I think they had a reason to do it. And the fact that we won that TI, in a way, showed that maybe the decision to remove him from the roster was the right one.

I don’t know—overall, it was easy to work with the team. They were good guys. I think we all had roughly the same vision of how we wanted to play Dota 2, and we just developed our ideas from there.

I think Aui_2000 definitely helped us a lot. He was the one who solved most of the team’s problems and set the general direction we followed. That’s why I don’t think we were the team with the highest level of individual skill. I can say that we weren’t exactly superstar players. But when we played as a team, followed our plans, and stuck to how we wanted to play Dota 2, we were the best in that regard.

I think he was the best coach I’ve ever worked with. He helped with practically everything. Of course, he helped with Dota 2 itself as well: he could tell a player that they could have done something better, that something should have been done differently, or that they should have handled a certain situation differently.

But at the same time, he knew how to listen. I could tell him, “I watched their games, and we need to do this. Maybe we should focus on this part of the map and ignore that part entirely”—and he’d listen. And then, the next time we watched the replay, he’d explain it all in his own words or try to draw you into the discussion so that you could better articulate and explain your own ideas.

He was also great at communicating with people. It was very easy to talk to him. Even when someone on the team had problems, he was usually the one who helped solve them. To be honest, I think he did too much. He basically handled everything: he helped with Dota 2, and he obviously knew the game inside and out. Ever since TI5, he’s had a deep understanding of Dota—how to play the map, how to use its resources effectively, and so on.

He also learned a lot from EternaLEnVy. He said himself that much of what he talks about came from EternaLEnVy. I don’t know, I just can’t praise him enough. I think he’s helped in so many aspects of the game. He’s won so much—he seems to be the only person to have won three TI tournaments—but even so, he doesn’t have a big ego. He just keeps doing his job no matter what.