When did you get started in the CS scene, and what made you want to contribute to the community?

I’ve played all versions of CS dating back to CS 1.3 at Internet cafes with my friends. Although I played for fun, I used to play Starcraft Broodwar competitively and was never involved in the CS “scene” until Global Offensive was released. In between that time I quit when CS:S was introduced as I didn’t like the goofy models or gun mechanics and assumed that 1.6 was going to die, along with CS as a whole. Games in general were making it hard for me to focus on school so I took an indefinite break from gaming for about 8 years until 2012 when Global Offensive came out. I was in my 3rd year of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and I heard there was a new version of CS coming out. I figured I had a better grasp on my work/study life and decided it was reasonable for me to try gaming in my spare time. Unfortunately the more I played the worse my grades got until the point that I decided I wouldn’t be able to game again unless I did something productive with it. That’s when I made a YouTube channel and decided to focus on movement tutorials/content because I didn’t see any of it on YouTube. Wanting to specifically contribute to the community came out of my love for kz (climb) maps. I used to spend hours every day hanging out in house of climb (the original kz server in CS:GO) guiding people through maps until I realized it would make sense for me to simply make a series of tutorials instead.

Did you feel like you had a better understanding in regards to a specific part of the game, that other people didn’t seem to be able to grasp as well?

I’ve never felt like a movement expert, or “God” as some people like to refer to me as but I was ahead of the curve in early CS:GO, especially with the influx of new players coming into the game in terms of being knowledgeable about movement. One thing I pride myself on in my everyday life on is my ability to explain things and since I’ve always enjoyed helping people I think those traits coupled well.

In your kz guides you seem to emphasize that competitively not every bhop is reliable, because it requires precise timing. Would you suggest there’s a hybrid between a bhop and a strafe that you can use competitively? Or would you stick to one or the other?

Yeah, bhopping is a matter of probability, and although you can increase your odds of hitting a bhop with practice and a good sense of timing it isn’t something that you can do on command. The window of timing is just too small. That being said if you for example wanted to try to go for an AWP pick on B plat of de_dust2 as a CT, without a bhop you can’t beat the Terrorists from turning the corner on a rush.

Beyond some of these spawn based openings, strafing is always reliable and 100% skill based. 12 AA (Air Accelerate, competitive setting) strafing is quite different from 100+ AA strafing that would find on a KZ server but certainly worth learning if it allows you to turn a corner that much quickly in a game that often comes down to a matter of moments.

You can use multiple strafes in between bhops to gain speed, or simply become a harder target in the air than someone who can’t. Bhopping is just as much air strafing as it is hitting the actual hop anyway, so I’d say they must be always be thought of as mutually-exclusive options.

I used to be active in the quake3 mod scene, and people knew me because of my movement. In cs/csgo do you have a favorite player that you respect in terms of their movement? Or does it not really apply to CSGO?

DaZeD, Skadoodle, shroud, Roca and twist are a few pro players I look up to in terms of movement. Not simply because of their ability to bhop or strafe but I admire their ability to make simple jumps under pressure while maintaining good crosshair placement and awareness. I always remember this quote from Sean Gares where he said “Ska floats around like a butterfly in 1v3s”. Sometimes it’s really impressive to simply watch someone who has a good feel for the game get what they want out of it by making simple changes in positioning with good movement. It comes with the territory that pro players generally have excellent movement but those are a few of which I love their style. In DaZeD, Roca and shroud’s case I see their movement as more practical and efficient; sharper tighter strafes that get right to point. For players like Skadoodle or Twist when I see them play I enjoy what I perceive as a more aloof, floaty style of strafing that is smooth but yet deliberate.

What’s the hardest jump on normal maps to make? e.g. Nuke from railing to hell roof

The jump that took me the longest to turn had to be ladder to pallet on nuke because the timing was so tight. It was also not so coincidentally the hardest to explain how to do in a video.

As seen here if you’d like to check it out:

Focusing more on your contributions to eSports, we’ve recently seen you casting matches, getting in depth interviews with ingame leaders about specific rounds and matches. How are you planning to expand on that? Do you think you’d ever dive into an analyst role?

As a colour caster I think I naturally identify as an analyst even though I haven’t actually participated at the “analyst desk” at any events. I actually prefer it that way anyway. As much as I respect some of the top tier analysts desk talents out there I feel like live analysis is what I excel at as opposed to pre-game predictions, or referencing a teams match history or maps. In terms of expanding my presence as an analyst/interviewer I plan to do that by trying to get funding to go to any event I’m not hired to cast as an interviewer. Interviewing has been a huge side passion for me and I love that with interviews I can get and share responses to questions from players that I’ve always wanted to know the answers too. Where I want to end up as an analyst in CS, I’m not sure, but I’m enjoying the journey and always looking for new things to try.

You seem to be pretty involved in the NA scene, do you think there are any teams up and coming from Open/IM that people haven’t noticed yet?

This season we’ll see. Looks promising but I don’t think there is a Blitz (fruit’s s17 team), Ignite (Denial’s former roster s17), or ZePugGodz (Now Ace Gaming) out there so far. Eyes peeled though.

In the euro scene we see teams that hardly shuffle any players(NiP, VP, fnatic(kinda)) they only seem to shuffle who is calling. Do you think NA will ever have this at the pro level? Or do you think the shuffle mentality will continue?

I think with this question you’re really tapping into one of the deepest and most troubling problems North America has in competing with Europe in e-sports. This is something I honestly have thought about and talked with people about for a long time but really don’t have a concrete theory as to why its so common for teams to fall apart in NA (besides the fact that they lose). I suppose if I were to list of some potentialities I would say it definitely has something to do with our culture of individualism and generally poorer work ethic. Not all of our players suffer from these traits but yeah I think these qualities satisfy the stereotype of NA teams that you may be alluding to.

Judging from your recent AMA(link) I got the impression people are really responding positively to your content, and appreciating the fact that you ask important and mostly non-fluff stuff. For anyone trying to improve on their game I think that’s going to be a huge resource down the road. What events do you plan on attending, and do you think you’ll get to produce similar content from them?

Whenever I attend CEVO/MLG LAN they get me to do interviews. So yeah. They aren’t as controlled as I’d like however. I enjoy doing interviews sitting down that are conversational as opposed to standing up, post game interviews that people expect to be short. But to answer your question, any major event that I can’t cast I will make a proactive effort to acquire funding to send me to events to do interviews. It’s definitely one of my favourite forms of content I’ve produced thus far.

When teams have super close games, the map seems to be deciding by who won the pistol round… From my inquiries with pros, it seems like no one really practices “pistol rounds only”, do you think a custom map/gamemode for that would be beneficial? Maybe with sister teams like LG / GA?

Pistol rounds are an interesting part of the meta and map balance at any time. Practicing them can be beneficial but no matter how good your strat is pistol rounds often come down to hitting shots. Unfortunately I feel this is something that mappers have to keep in mind when considering balance because a T pistol cannot be worth too much if you want the map to be 9–6/10–5 CT favoured. I feel as though a game mode wouldn’t be as beneficial as it should be in a game like CS:GO but if created would be one of the best ways to improve your first shot accuracy.