Virtus.pro got off on the right foot on day one at EPICENTER: Moscow, as the Poles grabbed a confident victory over their biggest opponent in Group B, SK.

After the match we got a hold of Jarosław "⁠pashaBiceps⁠" Jarząbkowski to get his thoughts on the important win and his recent improvement. He also touched on the new fnatic lineup and whether he sees them as a threat:

I don't want to look for reasons why we play badly or well. We had some trouble at StarLadder and we had the same trouble at WESG, so that's why we played very badly. The main point at WESG was to make it to China and everything is alright, we didn't really care about Russia or whoever else beating us. The main point was to secure the ticket to China.

Let's start with WESG - not a very good result from Virtus.pro. Something makes you play badly from time to time, we saw that at StarSeries and again at WESG, what is the problem?



pasha believes VP managed to break SK

TaZ said this event was very important to Virtus.pro, what goals have you set for yourselves here?

If we don't win, it will be a disappointment for us. So only top one at this event, we want to be in the final, and when we're in the final we win most of the time. Everyone in our company is from Russia, we play in Russia, in VP's home town, we want to prove to them that we're the best in the world and make them proud.

You started very well against SK, though it looked like the Brazilians were in disarray, losing situations they perhaps normally wouldn't. Why do you think it was such a straight-forward victory?

To be honest, in the past six months we usually took one map away from them but were struggling in the matches, got unlucky, such as on Overpass in the tunnel where the smoke bugged, stuff like this. But finally we broke them. A few months ago we said that if we break them, they're not that strong mentally, maybe apart from FalleN, a strong leader. But we thought it would probably get into the heads of the youngsters when we beat them once. They have experience on LAN, but maybe not as much experience in how to take the losses.

You have fnatic in your group as well, what do you think about the new version, do you see them as a threat?

For us the old fnatic lineup was much harder. But this lineup is like... I can't say they're nonames, but this lineup, olof, dennis and then Lekr0, twist and wenton, you can't think they can play against us and win the match. We will go into the match and crush them, it's not the old fnatic anymore. We like playing versus them.

You personally have been playing well lately, especially in today's match, has anything changed in the team or from your perspective?

Everything is in the head, if something isn't working you can change it. If it's not working, it's not working, sometimes you have a block in your head, but you need to stay focused. Even if you play badly in one game, or ten games, or like me in a hundred games, you can never give up. I've been in the Counter-Strike scene for 10-15 years, so I know how to fix things and bounce back. It doesn't matter, I waited, I was patient. You can't think like "I have bad games, I need to retire", if you don't let it get into your head, you can come back as a champion.