Looking towards the SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 Finals LAN, we sat down with Martin "STYKO" Styk from HellRaisers to find out about his long-term plans and the secret behind his team's recent rise to form.

Even though finally qualifying for a Major was a big step for the HellRaisers team, who had closely missed out on the opportunity multiple times, the Eastern-European team did not particularly impress at the Major itself, going out with a 0-3 record.

Following the tournament, Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk decided to put his education on hold and focus on CS to regain his motivation and form. The decision seemed to have paid off as HellRaisers have been playing well online of late, qualifying for two LANs and posting numerous wins in the ESL Pro League— in which they are currently placed fourth.

We caught up with STYKO to find out more about his break, the Major and the latest mousesports rumors.

At the start of the year, you mentioned your lack motivation for CS and that you don't enjoy playing as much as you did before. Did that change at or after the Major, how do you feel about CS now? As a lot of people know I left school to focus fully on CS and it has raised my motivation a lot. I have started working much harder and I am analysying my game more. This has increased my consistency and therefore my joy of playing. When a lot of things work my way it is always more fun to play.



You didn't reach your goal of getting top8 in Atlanta, but did you learn anything from the event, either personally or as a team? We learned the kind of strategy we have to use against tier 1 teams. When we were 0-2 in the Swiss group we decided to have fun, play loose and try to be confident in duels. That almost won us a game against North, who eventually made it to the playoffs. We kind of decided to build on freedom for players, because the structured game that we tried to play before and during the Major was easy to counter by the best teams.



Rumors recently tied you to a move to mousesports - was there any truth to that? If so, what attracted you to mousesports, why did you decide to stay and are you now committed to HellRaisers? I would like to answer this question but I promised a video interview with a podcast series on this topic. I am sure once it is up I will share it publicly. However, I can confirm that I have decided to re-sign with HellRaisers.



STYKO has committed his future to HellRaisers

Many were surprised by HellRaisers' recent rise in form in online matches (qualifying for SL i-League StarSeries S3 and DreamHack Open Austin, solid results in ESL Pro League), what do you think that came down to? We had an awesome bootcamp in Kiev where we lived CS nonstop. Even during breaks or free time we talked about CS and our ideas. And when we could discuss these ideas face-to-face it made our learning process much easier and faster. We felt a bit tired towards the end of the bootcamp, but it was well worth it. We gained form, learned new counters for our game and also we felt really good as individuals. Bootcamps like these are very productive.



Currently, you are playing all seven maps, with Cache and Train, two maps you leaned towards a lot at the Major and Major qualifier, statistically looking like your worst. How do you feel about your map pool at the moment, have you made any adjustments in your preferences? I always wanted to be on the team which plays all maps. That way we always can get some veto advantage against better teams. I personally would like to have an even larger active mappool. Adding something like a reworked dust2 together with tuscan or season would be awesome, in my opinion. I think it only increases the skill ceiling of a team and of individuals as well. We are making adjustments to our mappool prior to each tournament when all our opponents are known. We kind of discuss which maps we want to focus on more so we don’t get surprised during any veto. Your team often praises Johnta, your coach, what does he add to the team? Can you compare him with your old coach LMBT? How does your analyst ami fit in the picture? Ami is a really hardworking guy. Prior to any official match he send us a lot of pictures and text with info on how the opponent likes to play and which setups they prefer. Johnta works individually with players more than LMBT, I believe. Johnta’s understanding of the game was very dependant on timings when he joined, and he worked well with ANGE1's decision making. I can’t really compare them because they are somewhat different, but they both have a huge influence on me to this day. I tried to take the best I could from their teaching skills and I will use it to my advantage in any tournament.



Quitting school and a bootcamp with HR helped STYKO get back on track

Specifically for SLi StarSeries S3, what is your preparation going to be like, what are you going to focus on in the coming days? As I have said before, we used the bootcamp to prepare for the upcoming LANs. We have some online games just days before StarSeries (DH Tours Qualifier, Binary Dragons tournament play-offs, EPL) so we will try to work even during the LAN. We expect the LAN to use the Swiss system so one game per day could mean we have some free time to practice or discuss our gamestyle in Kiev. Other than that the preparation will be normal. We feel confident, we have to maintain our form and we know that no one is unbeatable with our A game (with a bit of luck).



What placing would you be happy with in Kiev and what do you think would need to happen for you to achieve that? Every team has certain win conditions, what will HellRaisers rely on and what will need to go right for you in order for you to get wins at StarSeries? If we are confident and relaxed, and we have the chance to fight for a top-four finish. Personally, I would be happy with advancing from groups first and then set the bar a bit higher once we hit the play-offs. Looking at the teams in attendance, it will be not easy to achieve this, but CS:GO has shown that nothing is impossible. I feel like our map-pool could be improved a bit. We have spotted some mistakes on maps we were really good on before, and therefore we will use the upcoming days to fix them as well as we can. We have a lot of good strats and playouts, we just need to hit our shots to upset teams.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.