A look at the finalist: alltheRAGE
BESL Pro Season 5 LAN finals are set to take place on the 15th of February at the Kipsala exhibition center in Riga, Latvia with the event being hosted as part of the HyperTown urban & esports festival. Additional information about the festival and tickets can be found by visiting hypertown.pro.
The culmination of the €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 the Baltic states, taking home the beautiful BESL Pro champions trophy but will also receive the lion's share of the prize pool in the form of €3,000!
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!
alltheRAGE
We continue our ‘A look at the finalist’ series with Lithuanians of alltheRAGE! Attending their first-ever BESL Pro LAN finals this season, alltheRAGE are looking to finally end their streak of lackluster performances and break out of their shell in order to possibly lift the trophy in Riga.
alltheRAGE kicked things off with a successful Swiss group stage run that saw them scoring victories over teams such as FRAGMINE, LESGEDI, and EoN while suffering only one defeat by the hands of the defending champions Akatsuki.
In their ¼ final game series, alltheRAGE were matched up against last season grand finalists SACRAMENTO, and while the majority of our prediction game pundits did put the Latvian side as the favorites in the duel, Lithuanians proved them wrong!
The game series ended in two somewhat close maps with alltheRAGE kicking things off with a victory on their own map of choice, dust2, with a 16:11 scoreline, while following it up with a double-overtime victory on SACRAMENTO’s map of choice, nuke, with a score of 22:19.
To find out a little bit more about the insides of team alltheRAGE, our head admin Gekons spoke to their star player jL-.
Congratulations on making it to your first-ever BESL Pro LAN finals event! As I know, from my personal encounters with you, you are a very passionate guy when it comes to CS:GO and even though there have been times when your health has prevented you from playing, you’ve still managed to pull yourself together and get back on track after making a recovery. Now, looking back at where you were two seasons ago with Timechasers and comparing that to now - how much does this mean to you as a player?
Even though it doesn't look like I have achieved much, which I haven't, I have improved immense amounts since then. I have never ever been this confident in my life. This confidence doesn't come out of the blue. I have trained and learnt so much in this time period and my understanding of the game is way better than it was before. As I said previously, I haven't achieved much (YET!) but now I'm investing 100% into this game and the results will come. I have to give credit to my ex-coach Teodoras 'Undercover' Poškus as I feel like he was the start of my transformation from a 'braindead' player to a player that actually thinks about his decisions and tries to improve his game regularly.
Coincidentally, for a few of your teammates, this is also their first time making a LAN finals appearance. The likes of prochas, Dreamas and Regg1e have never played on the big BESL Pro esports stage, while Boo has done it only once with 1337HUANIA back in Season 2. For those three guys, it has been a long journey as I remember that all three of them played in BESL Pro even as far back as Season 1 when prochas played with NotLikeThis, and Dreamas and Regg1e represented Žalgiris. With that being said - how happy were your teammates to finally make it after grinding season after season here?
Not to sound rude or arrogant, but ever since the season started, we somehow knew that we’re gonna make it to the LAN finals. Our roster was far more superior compared to other teams in BESL Pro and we just had that gut feeling. Of course we were all excited when we actually proved it to ourselves by beating SACRAMENTO in the quarter-finals.
During your run in the Swiss group stage you guys managed to score three victories against teams such as FRAGMINE, LESGEDI, and EoN. On paper, judging purely from the series scorelines, you guys had absolutely no problems dealing with these three teams as all the series ended with a result of 2-0 in your favor. However, when examining these matches a bit closer, each of them had a map that was very close. Can you tell us a bit more about these three series? Which one was the hardest to win and which one was maybe even easier than it looks from the outside?
If I’m not considering the scorelines of these three series, then I would say that we had the toughest time against LESGEDI. They were so unpredictable and their playstyle was very extraordinary. They were just constantly peeking us at times when you are not 'supposed' to peek (if you know, you know). But, even though it was catching us off-guard every single time, we understood that they aren’t going to stop doing this, so we just made the decision to let them play their game and adjust around it. They didn't respect us and got punished for it. As for the other games - I don't really remember them as they didn't make an impact in my day, sorry.
Though everything did not go so flawlessly in your game series against Akatsuki and although you guys managed to open things up with a 16:14 victory on dust2, they bounced back in the second map with a 16:13 victory on overpass. And, in the end, on mirage, it already felt like you guys had given it everything you got and they just rolled over you with a quick and easy 16:5. In your interview with Heccu you mentioned that you did not have the greatest game on overpass and that you think that you were the reason you guys lost that game. How hard was this loss on you knowing your passion for the game? Were you mad at yourself for not playing better?
The loss as much as it was humiliating, it was far more depressing for me. Think of it this way - you spend 100+hours in 2 weeks preparing for one single game series, and to go out and perform like this is highly unacceptable for me. After the game, I sat wondering what exactly went wrong and why was I not able to perform. I came to realize that I have to stop judging this performance by my gameplay, but rather by my mentality. I made this game personal and I choked hard (got what’s coming for me)! So in the future, I made a promise to myself to never make a game personal because judging by my games that I've made personal, it always impacts my performance drastically.
In your ¼ final game series, you were matched up against SACRAMENTO who was the last standing Latvian team in the competition. From the perspective of an outsider, this match felt like a toss-up as both teams could easily come out with their A-game and take the series. With that being said - what were your initial thoughts when you saw that you guys are going to play against SACRAMENTO? Did you also have the notion of this being anyone’s game or were you confident that you are going to win against them?
I never doubted my team to make that match ours. Not a shadow of doubt came across my mind that we could ever lose that game. Even if something was not working for my teammates and they had an ‘off’ day, I was never going to let this game slip away. We had too much on the line to just let it go. We didn't just represent ourselves, we represented the whole Lithuanian community, as our match was the main decider between having or not having four Lithuanian teams in the LAN finals. We proved the majority of BESL Pro predictions wrong and this is why you should never underestimate us.
As we now know, the ¼ final game series went your way and you scored a 2-0 victory against SACRAMENTO. Now, looking forward to the LAN finals event in Riga, in your semi-final game series you guys are going to go up against the two-time BESL Pro champions in the form of 1337HUANIA. As I alluded before, you guys are not the most experienced bunch when it comes to events like these and for four of you, this is the first time you’re going to play on the BESL Pro LAN finals stage. Do you think that this is going to play a part in how well you do on the server? Or are you confident that the pressure is not going to affect you guys and you will be able to perform well?
As I mentioned before, I've never been this confident in my life. It doesn't matter how many times they've been on the stage or how many finals they've won, I'm bringing my A game, and to beat that, just having experience is not enough. They have 250 hours combined through all of them in the past 2 weeks and 200 of them are divided between Bymas and slokker. We are the winners of this match-up and I will stand by my statement until they can prove me wrong.
As far as the team goes - we aren't under pressure, we are the underdogs, 1337HUANIA should be the ones feeling the pressure! We don't have any weight on our shoulders! Let's see how they perform against a team that is continuously running them down. They might not see it now, but after the first few rounds, they'll remember what is on the line, but we won't let them breathe.
However, if you do manage to defy the odds and take down 1337HUANIA, who is yet to actually be defeated when it comes to BESL Pro LAN finals events in Riga, who would you like to meet in the grand final? Would you prefer to go up against the defending champions Akatsuki? Or would you rather face the team that you played for previously in the form of Timechasers?
Even though we have some unfinished business with Akatsuki, I think they're far more superior compared to Timechasers. With that in mind, I’d actually like to face Timechasers. It would be a fun match-up, though, I think I'd feel a lot of pressure playing against them knowing they are my ex-teammates. But, as I mentioned before - the loss to Akatsuki taught me a lot and now I know how to deal with pressure. It boosted my growth to becoming a successful CS:GO player and even though I’m still so far behind, it definitely is a great start!
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?
Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. I'd much rather win, but without losing it's really hard to improve. Although I sometimes lose, I always learn, which makes it a win.
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 the HyperTown urban & esports festival!
BESL Pro Season 5 is a seven-week competition between the sixteen best Baltic state CS:GO teams for their share of the €9,000 prize pool and the right to call themselves the best in Baltic states.
The four best teams from the online part of the competition are going to meet each other on the Samsung Odyssey esports stage on the 15th of February at Kipsala exhibition center in Riga, Latvia at the HyperTown Riga 2020 urban & esports festival. Visit hypertown.pro for more info about the festival and tickets.
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Article by: Bruno ‘Gekons’ Gailītis
