A look at the finalist: 1337HUANIA
BESL Pro Season 3 finals are going to kick off on the 1st of June at Kipsala exhibition center in Riga, Latvia with the event being hosted as part of the HyperTown RIX 2019 urban & esports festival. Tickets can be found here!
The culmination of €9,000 CS:GO competition is going to feature the four best teams from the online stage. These teams are going to continue playing out the single elimination playoff bracket with all the games being played as a best-of-three series.
The winner of the event is not only going to be crowned as the best team in Baltic states, taking home the beautiful BESL Pro Season 3 champions trophy, but will also receive the lion share of the prize pool in form of €2,500!
As we’re still waiting for the event itself to come along, let’s take a closer look at the teams that made it to the finals this time!
1337HUANIA
Finishing off our ‘A look at the finalist’ series is 1337HUANIA - the second Lithuanian representative traveling to Riga. Attending their third LAN finals in a row, 1337HUANIA are definitely no strangers to the big stages and last time when they were in Riga for Season 1 finals, they went all the way!
1337HUANIA finished the newly introduced swiss group stage with a clean 3-0 win-loss record as they took down the likes of Timechasers and MALCO in weeks 1 & 2 before receiving a forfeit victory against wolsung in week 3 due to Latvian squad not being able to field a roster on easter break.
In their ¼ final game 1337HUANIA had to go up against Estonians of Lamp, who barely made it through the swiss group stage with a win-loss record of 3-2.
Despite the series ending in two maps, both the games were closer than series scoreline suggests. Firstly, 1337HUANIA managed to convert their own map pick of mirage into a 16:12 victory. However, things were a bit closer on Lamp’s map of choice, inferno, where in a closely contested thirty-round derby Lithuanians edged out Estonian squad with a scoreline of 16:14.
To find out a little bit more about this season’s iteration of 1337HUANIA and their run here, our head admin Gekons spoke to their captain Carcass.
First of all - congratulations on once again reaching the LAN finals! Overall, numerically, this has been a great season for Lithuanian squads as not only half of the playoff teams were Lithuanian, but also, this is the first time we see two Lithuanian squads making it to the LAN finals. Are you surprised by how good your countrymen have performed this season compared to the rest of the field? Is this the rise of Lithuanian CS in Baltics?
Thank you! No, I’m not surprised that two Lithuanian teams made it to LAN finals. As a matter of fact, I thought that we would do even better by having three teams in Riga this time around as I was a firm believer of alltheRAGE making it as well, but they were stopped by WORTEX.
I wouldn’t say it’s a rise, because our Baltic scene has been a rollercoaster for many years now and every single one of Baltic state countries has been on top at some point in time. Not to mention, we still have no clear favorite in this tournament, which means that Baltic scene is pretty even at the moment.
This is your third time attending BESL Pro LAN finals and while last season, in Tallinn, things didn't go your way and you were stopped in the semi-finals by wolsung, back in Season 1, when LAN finals were held in Riga, you guys ended up lifting the trophy by defeating both home-crowd favorites in form of MALCO and SkinLordz. Now, with this season’s finals happening in Riga again, do you guys feel like you can replicate the result you had here last time? Does it feel in any way special returning to Riga and playing in front of Latvian crowd once again?
I feel like we really have a great shot at winning this event as even though we are a mix-team, our roster is a little bit stronger than the one we had in Season 2.
Returning to Riga is always nice. I feel like the crowd here is more passionate and active compared to other countries. I hope that they’re gonna cheer for us in our semi-finals, but I really doubt that they’re gonna do the same if we meet wolsung in the grand final.
You came out of the swiss group stage undefeated, but not without a gift from last season’s champions wolsung, who had to forfeit the game against you due to them not being able to play on easter break. When I asked hyskeee to speculate on the outcome of this game if it did happen, he said “we would’ve ran over them 2-0”. What’s your take on it? Who do you think would’ve won the series if it was played out?
Hyskeee was always known as ‘trash-talker’, so I don’t really care what he says. I would understand if these words would’ve been said by YEKINDAR or Flarich, who are two of the best Latvian players in my opinion, but now...meeh. Dream more bralukas hyskeee, because even if you would’ve “ran over us” then it would not have been because of you. :(
In your ¼ final game you had to play against Estonians of Lamp. Although you were definitely the favorites in this duel and it did end in two maps, the series itself was very competitive (16:12 mirage, 16:14 inferno). Be honest - did you guys actually expect Lamp to put on such a good fight against you here because they are far from the old XGR/WASD team they were before?
Well, although guys from Lamp played great CS in that series and I don’t want to take anything away from them, from my point of view, I think that we were just underestimating them and not playing with full focus. That’s actually a bit of a problem in our team. We often start playing sloppy if we’re rolling in early game. And then, in the end, when it’s time to finish the game, we make a show for the viewers and come back ourselves to win.
Other than that, I think that Lamp have good potential and if they keep playing together then they can make it to the finals next season for sure!
The first two seasons of BESL Pro were played out using the traditional league format of round-robin, but this time around things were different as teams were competing in the Swiss format groups while transitioning into playoffs a bit earlier than the LAN finals. Now that you have been through the process of qualifying to LAN finals in both the formats, which one do you prefer?
I prefer swiss format over the traditional round-robin just because of the fact that for us it was easier to make it to playoffs by playing couple of Bo3s this season rather than spending time playing fifteen Bo1s like in the previous one. Also, I feel like favorites have the upper-hand in swiss Bo3 format.
Moving on to the LAN finals. In your semi-final game, you’re going to be facing the other Lithuanian representative - FiGURE05. With them obviously being far less experienced in terms of playing at events like these, how do you think they will deal with the pressure of playing on the big stage in front of a live crowd? Additionally, are you surprised that from the three other Lithuanian squads that made it into playoffs (alltheRAGE, MAKONGA, FiGURE05 ), FiGURE05 are the ones who made it through to the LAN finals?
I think that FiGURE05 will manage to deal with the pressure just fine, because couple of their players have already played on a stage like this, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
I was actually a little bit surprised that alltheRAGE didn’t make it to finals, because we have played against them in other Baltic events and they have very strong individual players. With that being said, I thought that they have a really good chance of making it, but, as we now know, WORTEX thought otherwise.
Talking about MAKONGA - I was sure that wolsung is going to take that match, so it wasn’t really a surprise that they didn’t make it to finals. Any other opponent in the ¼ finals and we would’ve probably seen them in Riga as well.
If things go well and you do defeat your countrymen of FiGURE05 in the semi-finals, who do you think is going to come out on top on the other side of the bracket and how do you view your chances of winning against them in the grand final?
I think that it’s going to be wolsung, who come out on top on other side of the bracket. As for playing against them in the grand final - I feel like we have a solid chance to win, because their best players, pro100 trio, won’t be at the event in Riga and they’re going to play with three stand-ins.
Thanks for your time! I wish the best of luck to you and your team in Riga! Do you have any final words or shoutouts you want to give?
Thank you! Shoutout to all the 1337HUANIA fans and see you all in the arena! carcLove <3
Stay tuned as even though the online portion of the season has come to an end, our news section is still going to be filled with interesting content such as interviews with the teams that made it to the finals and the big LAN finals preview article to let you guys know what to expect from the matches happening at HyperTown Riga Urban & eSports festival!
BESL Pro Season 3 is a 7 week battle between the sixteen best Baltic state CS:GO teams for their share of the €9,000 prize pool and the chance to acquire themselves one of the four spots at this season’s LAN finals held in Riga, Latvia at Kipsala exhibition center with the event itself taking place on 1st of June.
Want to attend the LAN finals? Grab yourself a ticket HERE!
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Interview by: Bruno ‘Gekons’ Gailītis
