The interview was conducted by Huy "Chronosphere" Nguyen on the 22nd of July.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, both as a person and a DotA 2 professional player?

Hi, I'm Bdiz aka Robert aka Chuckles the Clown. I'm a fun loving guy who enjoyed getting easy money in HoN and I'm now playing for the Evil Geniuses organization. If there's anything I enjoy more than meeting new people, it's going for long walks in the radiant jungle with GranDGranT.



Take us through a normal day in the office for you.

DotA isn't your average 9-5 job, so I don't treat it as one. When I first wake up in the morning I enjoy firing up the stove and getting my cook on. You cant play properly without a stomach full of homecooked goodness. I get my seat cushion aligned properly and throw on the triple headset configuration as seen at the EMS One. Then I pop a Monster and make sure my air conditioning is set just right so I'm not sweating. Use all of the extra energy to watch replays of the opponents for the day as my preparation before matches. Myself and Fear follow a similar morning regiment which prepares us to not throw away games. Trying to get the rest of the team to follow it and it's worked lately, we went over 2 weeks without an EGThrow.



Speaking of EG, your team has been involved in a lot of tournaments lately with mixed results. How would you describe EG's recent performance?

We've done alright recently, with a lot of Top 4 finishes although we've bombed out of a few tournaments early. We got 4th in the TI3WQ, 2nd in WePlay, 2nd in the American Dota League, 3rd/4th at DreamHack Summer, 2nd at EMS One, 1st in the DotaCinema RoshPit and 3rd in the Defense. The two tournaments we performed poorly in were the RaidCall D2L and Corsair Summer Tournament. Overall I think we broke out of the slump we had earlier in the year, but weren't quite consistent enough to get more tournament wins under our belt. We're the most hot and cold team in the scene at the moment and it hurts our results a lot.



EG has recently undergone another role shakeup with Fear back as the carry, Bamboe moving to support, Jeyo and Demon switching back and forth between mid-solo and off-laner. What's the rationale behind this switch?

Fear previously switched to support so he could have an impact on our early game and not let us get behind. This didn't happen. New issues popped up when he was supporting that let us get behind, so we switched to something new. Bamboe and myself as a support duo don't always work well together because we see the game very differently. I'm looking mainly for how we can take objectives while he's still looking for the same high risk kills that he did as an offlaner. We have had better results, though, and I think a large portion of that can be attributed to how well Fear, Jeyo and DeMoN excel on the roles and heroes they're put on nowadays.



Do you think that you guys' ability to play multiple roles offers EG flexibility or does it bring a lack of stability?

More important than flexibility is that it offers a surprise effect at the start of the game. Being able to switch DeMoN to mid, Bamboe to offlane and Jeyo to support based on which heroes are best in any given situation allows us to draft a more versatile lineup. There's only two things the opposing teams can count on when they're against us. Fear will be playing a carry and I will be playing support. It's a lot harder to draft against a team when they're unpredictable.



EG has been notorious for throwing big leads as the #EGThrow is very popular among the DotA 2 community. What do you think is the biggest reason behind your team's inability to put games away?

One factor has to be the lack of a proper morning regiment that I already mentioned. There are a lot of reasons though, and I think they're all contributing factors. Casters tend to call the plays attempted "High Risk - High Reward" when in actuality they're High risk low-no reward plays because it's impossible to get a map objective done after going for something so risky. Other times it'll be failed spell usage or getting picked off too often around the map. In short, the main reason for an EGThrow or any throw is us making more mistakes than the opposing team.





Maelk being an evil genius? Photo by EMS.

How do you guys plan on improving in this area? Has Maelk been helping you guys with this at all?

Maelk is the definition of an Evil Genius. He is the mastermind behind everything we do. To put it into perspective, he is Dr. Evil and we're 5 mini-me's trying to replicate everything he does and reproduce every action he teaches us. Maelk created all of our strategies that are designed for us to get behind in the early game - if you never have a lead and lose at least it isn't an EGThrow! He's the man behind our spectre strat that's been extremely successful as of late and an asset we'd be lost without.



In a recent matchup against Kaipi in the Corsair Summer Tournament, EG ran a lineup featuring Bloodseeker. Was this a hero that you guys have practiced or was he intended to be a counter to Kaipi's Timbersaw and Spirit Breaker picks?

Maelk's favorite hero is Bloodseeker. He has us play Bloodseeker in approxiamately 95.27% of our scrims so we're practiced with the hero. Silence is Timbersaw's greatest weakness and his ult does wonders against a charging Spirit Breaker and in general any melee hero. Unfortunately, our lineup wasn't built very well around the bloodseeker so we suffered our first competitive loss with the hero.



With this being the inaugural season of the Corsair Summer Tournament, what's your take on it in terms of organization, format, or competition? Are there any specifics that you enjoy/dislike about the tournament?

GGNet's Angel, who was the admin for the event, is the fastest game hoster in the west. It was a pleasure to be able to immediately join games after the first or second in the series finished and then take a quick break to either use the restroom or drink another Monster. GSL Group format into a double elimination playoff is a splendid format that I am a fan of and there were some pretty good teams competing in the event. My only dislike for the tournament would be almost having to play matches at 9 AM EST (My teammates are all PST - so that's 6 AM). Thankfully, we have our amazing scheduler Ewli helping us out, working with Angel to setup our matches at a more reasonable hour for the west coasters. Ewli's the best.



What do you think about the current metagame? What are the heroes that you would consider OP?

This is a pretty fun metagame to spectate. There's been a lot of teams experimenting within it still and we've seen a large number of heroes in the pool picked. I'm personally glad that tree is a lesser-used hero nowadays because let's be honest, there's no fun to be had when tree is in a game. Overall, I'm really curious to see what heroes will be picked up at The International which is coming up very soon! As far as playing in the metagame goes, it's more important now to play a lot of games in your free time. With a wide variety of heroes being picked, you have to be on point with the strengths and weaknesses of all of them so you don't get caught off guard with a surprise space cow shutting down your split push. I wouldn't label any hero (other than the old tree that was dealt with) OP at the moment, as there needs to be more experimenting done first in my opinion. I feel like there's an answer for every hero that's picked.







Team Evil Geniuses after winning a big fight. Photo by EMS

Outworld Devourer has turned into a go-to solo mid option for a lot of teams. What do you think are possible counters to him?

There's a lot of heroes that fare well against him. The more common ones are Viper, Kunkka and putting dual lanes up against him. Aside from that, in the past we've run Juggy and Bloodseeker with decent success against the hero. OD is insanely strong, though and is hard to shut down.



In a recent game against Mouz in the Premier League, Demon accidentally typed GG and prematurely ended the game. What do you think about this new feature?

It wasn't an accident. We were all down about our performance that game so he tried to pick up the team morale by making a very nice yoke. I like having the players end the game in a set amount of time after typing GG instead of relying on admins to do it. It's a nice feature for scrims/matches and I'm glad that it's not available for matchmaking. I'm not sure if there's an option to disable it in private lobbies, but it'd be awesome if there was because playing IXDL with one guy trying to GG out repeatedly can be quite the nuisance (Arteezy is quite the quitter).



Who's your favorite to win and who will you be rooting for at TI3?

There isn't a clear cut favorite to win. I think it's a toss up between Tongfu, LGD.cn, Na`Vi and Alliance. There are a lot of strong teams participating that we haven't seen much out of lately that can be considered dark horses, such as Orange, LGD.int, Zenith and iG. I think if iG can get past the problems that plagued them for the last few months they'll be in phenomenal form for TI3. I'll personally be rooting for Liquid (mainly Korok, Mike and TC) and Fnatic because #OOOOOOOOOFDOTO best doto. I'm hoping we get to see many massages between N0tail and Era.



How do you think the two American teams (Liquid, Dignitas) will perform at TI3?

As much as I love some of the guys on Dignitas, I think they'll be a bottom 8 team at TI3. Judging off of the fact that they were forced to forfeit a match against us in the Corsair Tournament due to internet issues it seems as if they're having some technical issues with their bootcamp which is most unfortunate. As far as Liquid goes, I think they got some solid LAN experience under their belt this year with G-1 and DreamHack Summer. Hopefully LAN nerves don't get the better of some of their players and they're able to shine at TI3 as they often do online. They're harder to predict because in my opinion, it all comes down to LAN nerves.



Any predictions on which hero will emerge as the TI3 equivalent of TI2's Morphling?

Pudge. Definitely Pudge. The two best teams in the West (Na`Vi and Alliance) have both been very successful in all games featuring Pudge. Dendi's pudge is world famous, and last I heard S4 was attempting to change his name to Gustav Pudgesson as his old last name of Magnusson isn't quite viable in this metagame.





Bdiz and Fear playing pingpong at Dreamhack Summer

If you have to name the best player in the world right now at each position, what will be your choices?

This is the easiest question to answer ever.

1) Fear

2) Fear

3) Fear

4) Fear

5) Fear

I've been telling EG's Management to invest in cloning technology. Surefire winners of TI4 if they're able to clone Fear 4 times, the man is a Monster.



Apart from DotA, what are your other interests?

After spending time in the EG Lair with DeMusliM, HuK and Machine, I've started playing SC2:HOTS a bit in my free time, and they've rekindled my interest in watching it. Aside from that, trying to use my #motivation to eventually become a #fitgamer and follow in the footsteps of #alwayseatinghealthy DeMoN.



Any plans for the future that you don't mind sharing? Could either be about yourself or EG-related.

I plan on casting a bit more in the future. I joined Ayesee for a bunch of the D2L broadcasts and received a lot of positive feedback surrounding my co-casting abilities. It's something the viewers enjoyed aswell as something I enjoyed, so I think I'll do it more! It's all schedule dependant though, playing in the D2L while also trying to cast matches for it and having a backlog of matches due to postponements from LAN Events was quite difficult and made for extremely long days.



Anything else you want to share? Shoutouts?

This was a fun interview, 10/10 would do again. I'd like to give a shoutout to all of my wonderful sponsors that make eSports a reality for me - Monster Energy, Kingston HyperX, Razer, Astro, XMG, Zam, Intel, J!NX, Beyond Gaming and Need for Seat. On a personal level, I'd like to also give a shoutout to Grant, Stevie, Carly, GorthyGabel, Gnomey, Kennigit - cheers to you mate - Ewli & Connie. Please follow me on twitter @bdizdota and tune into my stream whenever its live twitch.tv/bdiz!