A look at the finalist: FiGURE05
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 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!
FiGURE05
Our third ‘A look at the finalist’ series article features the breakout team of this season - Lithuanians of FiGURE05. In the ever-growing Baltic state competitive scene, these guys have managed to turn their last season’s 9th place finish into a spot at the LAN finals this time around!
FiGURE05 kicked things off with a successful swiss group stage where they took down the likes of coluant, MAKONGA and Lamp, while suffering only one defeat by the hands of their countrymen alltheRAGE.
In their ¼ final game, Lithuanians were matched up against ayned - a team that was previously praised by both Carcass and prochas as one of the strongest contenders to make it through to the LAN finals.
But, eimaNt and the boys were not fazed by this as they kicked things off with a somewhat convincing 16:10 victory on their map pick of nuke. However, on ayned’s map of choice, mirage, things didn't go as smooth as before and after 30 rounds played, teams came down to 15:15 scoreline. In the overtime, though, FiGURE05 wasted no time as they instantly took the four round needed in order to close out the map 19:15, thus earning themselves their first ever LAN finals spot in BESL Pro competitions.
To find out how FiGURE05 finally did it, our head admin Gekons sat down to have a chat with the man himself - eimaNt!
Congratulations to you and your team on reaching the LAN finals for the first time here at BESL Pro! Some of our readers may not know this, but this has actually been long time into makings for you personally as this is your third consecutive season here. How does it feel to finally break through and make it into top 4 after spending the last two seasons watching the LAN finals from sidelines?
Thank you! It feels good and, honestly, I’m not really surprised by our results this season, because we spent the first two seasons playing like a mix with zero practice, whereas now, we have switched to more of a team approach and we’re actually putting in hours to practice. So yeah, these results are not just a random coincidence, it’s our work paying off!
Last season you had the same core that you have right now (eimaNt, Kajic, wave), but you only managed to finish 9th. This season, however, your performance has skyrocketed and you are in the LAN finals. What prompted this massive increase in your level of play? Is it the format change, additions of Delection and sKy or maybe a new approach to the game?
We started off last season with the same approach we have this season, but sadly, after two weeks of play and us being 4-0 in the league, jL moved to UK and Kajic moved to Vilnius for his studies. With all that happening, the team fell apart. We didn’t practice or even play CS:GO for weeks at a time. In the end, after not playing, having bad results and having to use stand-ins, our team felt crushed and our performances was a perfect representation of how bad things were going inside the team.
All in all, while I feel like our last season’s roster was not bad in any way and it had potential with talented players like jL, the additions of Delection and sKy this season have really boosted both the motivation and the overall experience of our team. We're really happy to have them on board!
You kicked off the newly introduced swiss group stage with victories over coluant and MAKONGA in week 1 & 2 respectively. In week 3, however, things didn't go your way and you suffered your first loss by the hands of alltheRAGE. With the series going all the way to thirty rounds on map 3, were you guys kicking yourselves for missing the opportunity to secure a spot in the playoffs then and there? Or were you confident that no matter who you play against in the following week, you’re still gonna make it?
I feel like we played shaky in the first three weeks overall. The match against MAKONGA could have gone either way and the same shakiness carried over to our next week’s game versus alltheRAGE. There were multiple chances for us to take the series with a clean 2-0, but server issues lost us some rounds, and while that wasn’t the reason we lost the game, it did have an impact on our team’s mentality on both overpass and dust2 for sure. Though, props to them for capitalizing on our mistakes in that game, but, as of right now, I feel like we've improved a lot since then.
And yes, at that point we felt confident we were gonna make it to playoffs no matter who we played against, apart from 1337HUANIA and wolsung obviously.
In your ¼ final game you were matched up against Estonians of ayned to whom Carcass referred to as “the strongest Estonian team at the moment”. However, the prediction article that we published saw the majority of our pundits leaning the other way by picking you as the favorites in the duel. How did you guys feel about this match-up when you saw the playoff bracket for the first time? Additionally, I’m just curious to know - were you surprised that they decided to start as T on your map pick of nuke?
When we saw the playoff bracket draw we didn’t think much, we just went to work (practice) almost the same day expecting ayned to be a tough opponent. However, we did still put ourselves as favorites in the duel and after the veto, we felt even more confident that we’re gonna win it.
The match itself was way easier than we expected and that's not me trying to bash on ayned, but I feel like the scores didn’t match reality as most of our round losses were just us losing to ourselves.
As for them picking to start T side on nuke - all of us just started asking each other if they miss-clicked or something, because that CT side start really gave us a huge advantage. Maybe they had something planned that just didn't work out for them, but it’s hard to see that being the case as their T side just felt flat with little to no coordination.
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 played in both the formats, which one do you prefer and why?
There’s no doubt in our minds in this regard - the swiss Bo3 format is definitely better than round-robin Bo1! It takes away all the randomness factors of Bo1 games where you might see crazy upsets, weird results and just overall teams not playing their best ‘cause of not knowing what maps they're going to play. In Bo3’s, however, you have way more options for preparation and the results almost always are true to what happened in the server.
While I see how someone could make the argument in favor of previous format’s ability to bring up new teams, as it gives them a good chance to cause upsets and make a name for themselves, our team is a perfect counter-argument to that and with the right conditions and players, swiss format serves the same purposes and it does it even better!
In short - everyone in our team thinks that this is one of the best changes that you guys at BESL Pro have made so far!
Moving on to the LAN finals. In your semi-final game you’re going to play against your countrymen of 1337HUANIA, who are now attending their third BESL Pro LAN finals in a row. With them obviously having players that are much more experienced in these kind of events, combined with the fact that they have already lifted the trophy in Riga back in Season 1, how do you feel going up against them? In what aspects, if any, do you think you hold an advantage over them?
It goes without a saying that we view 1337HUANIA as a very strong opponent, but, at the end of the day, they are still human and they have shown weaknesses in the past. Objectively, I can’t really say what the odds of us winning the match are, but that will become clear once we get in the server.
Playing against them gives us the same advantage that every underdog team has in any matchup and that is the chance of them underrating us and not being as prepared as they should. But, even when I’m saying that, I still think that they’re going to take this match super seriously and hopefully it will be a good showing from both teams.
Other than that, we feel good. The mood in our team is great right now which is really important as it might impact our approach in-game and how we perform.
If you manage to upset 1337HUANIA 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?
The other semi-final is a toss up I would say, because WORTEX are getting an upgrade in form of shokz, who’s replacing PhilEba for LAN finals, while wolsung are going to have a different roster than the one they had online as pro100 players are not able to attend the event in Riga. But, then again, I don't think individually WORTEX is that strong and losing PhilEba could be a big hit on their teamplay, so for me wolsung should be winning that duel.
As for our chances against them, if we make it, I think at that point we would feel like we have a great shot at taking it, because them having substitutes would make the playing field more or less even I believe. But, obviously, it would still be a very close game for sure.
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?
Thanks you so much for the interview! We're really excited for the LAN finals! I would like to say thanks to the FiGURE05 guys for cheering us on and, most importantly, thank you to BESL Pro for once again being the best run esports league in the Baltic states! Cya at the LAN finals!
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 RIX 2019 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
