Interview conducted by KarY

Hey KarY, I’m doing great.

I started gaming fairly young when I was around 5 or 6 years old on my family computer playing games like WarCraft 3 and Age of Empires 2. My older brother who actually got pretty good at AoE2 inspired me to play more competitive games and eventually I moved to Dota 2 in late 2013.

Around 2018/19 I was deciding to go to university or to pursue a career at my family's establishment. During that time, I was around 7-8k MMRand going to UK LANs fairly often, however, the UK LAN scene started to dry up in terms of skill and player base.

Thus, I was looking elsewhere for my competitive drive and started to participate in online qualifiers and leagues. The more qualifiers I played, the more I realised that the gap between being a pub player and pro player was smaller than I thought, and that’s when I decided to dedicate a lot more time trying to be the best player I could be.

Being asked to play for NiP was definitely a surprise but I didn’t see it as an "upgrade" in terms of skill. I felt that even if I were to stay on Vikin.gg or move on to NiP, there would still be a lot of work to be done in terms of personal skill and the overall mentality of the game.

Peter first approached me after the Minor regional qualifier for Bukovel where we managed to take a series off of Nigma, but failed to beat them in the grand finals. I think my team at the time (Vikin.gg) without a doubt made a lot of people aware of our presence in the European scene.

I feel like the lack of a grassroots community in the UK for Dota is one of the main reasons we don’t have many pros or even high MMR UK players. In my personal opinion, I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn't for the local tournaments and events, I got to attend in the UK early in my time playing Dota. Those gave me a reason to improve and left a taste in me of what a real LAN environment felt like.

To be honest, it feels as if both of the team environments were very similar. Everyone wanted to improve and try to lift each other up.

With COVID-19 still in full force, I think the team’s priority at the moment is to just try and involve ourselves by playing online tournaments and in the process maintain our form.

7.25 is pretty strange so far with having 8 bans before any heroes are picked. Sometimes it feels that the drafts are pretty linear. On the other hand, the meta seems healthy, and games are still fun to play.

Playing under Peter, you can definitely tell he has a great winner’s mentality and has full confidence that we have the capability to beat the top EU teams.

Keep grinding! Play qualifiers, tournaments. It all adds up in the end.

Shout out to NiP and our sponsors! Thanks for the interview.

Esports Heaven was able to sit down and have a chat with Tanner about his gaming history and getting into professional Dota 2. Note: This interview was conducted shortly after ESL ONE LA Online commenced.If you enjoyed the interview, follow the interviewer on Twitter at @Karyb4u . For more Dota 2 content, visit our Dota 2 hub . Featured imaged credits: NiP