By Panda McBearface at Friday, November 01, 2013 9:47:03 AM

Dimitri ‘Detrony’ Hadjipaschali





Dimitri ‘Detrony’ Hadjipaschali is a very talented young man. His gaming career holds many notable achievements, one of the most recent being part of the Bravado Gaming team that took first place in the Counter Strike: Global Offensive Do Gaming League Championships at the rAge expo earlier this year. He’s also a frikking brilliant Quake Live player; and is currently ranked #2 in the country and #12 worldwide according to qlranks.com.





Detrony and the Bravado Gaming CS:GO team at rAge 2013





The South African Quake community is rather abuzz with excitement at the moment as Dimitri and Stephen ‘Ph4ntom’ Cloete have been invited to the Dreamhack Winter 2013 tournament which runs from the 28th – 30th November and where they will face off against some of the biggest and most intimidating Quake names like Rapha, Cypher, Cooller, Evil and Pavel.





Stephen 'Ph4ntom' Cloete. He only wore pretty dresses like this when he was in [SSG], which is a source of near constant disappointment for me.





Dimitri very kindly agreed to do an interview with me. He struck me as being a very humble and level-headed person, a mindset that I feel will allow him to bring his best game to the Dreamhack event.

Last we we watched you give Stephen ‘Ph4ntom’ Cloete a bit of a beating in the South African Quake Live expo match streamed by Zoot. How did it feel to dethrone the so-called “king” of the South African Quake Live community?

Great I guess :), I wouldn't say beating! We had some good intense games. Ph4ntom's definitely the best I can train against and alongside in South Africa with, so playing him is always a great challenge for me every single time.

We've both been pretty rusty regarding QL coming off rAge purely really playing CS for a few months too.









How will you be training for Dreamhack?

I will be lanning and training with Stephen (ph4ntom) properly as of the 12th November up until Dreamhack. Suppose we're just going to be playing against eachother alot, working out strategies and new techniques on how to go about the new maps, watching demos and analyzing leaks, weaknesses and strengths vs our possible future opponents.

How do you think our South African players will do against the titans from Europe and North America?

Personally, as a first timer, it's going to be tough, these guys are on a different level and they live for this game, but I'm confident and I know what I'm capable of pulling off on my A game. There is still alot of training to do and i'm definitely looking forward to putting in the needed work required for stepping up to such a big stage as my first proper quake tournament. Overall, I think our community has stepped up a notch over the past year or so.

Players are certainly becoming harder to beat by the day and a ton more consistent and can safely say the internationals in general wouldn't have an easy game.

Which international players are you most looking forward to playing?

Haha, there's only one name that comes to mind before I can even finish reading the question. Cooller, definitely. Friendly game or not, I will make sure I get my game vs this crazy russian. He may have lost his touch a bit, but it is just always so entertaining to watch this guy play, his style, movement (list goes on), everything about him as a player is what always motivated me to carry on. Ofcourse just playing different high ranked duelers i've never been able to play vs is just such an experience to look forward to, it's definitely going to be interesting!

Which player (s) do you think will pose the biggest challenge if you had to face off against them?

Av3k(although not confirmed at this stage yet) and Cypher are looking pretty scary over the last 2 weeks. I will not underestimate any opponent and will take each game as it comes, #32 or #1 seed, I will have the same mindset and focus on just winning every single game.

Who do you think will win Dreamhack?

It's honestly a battle of who is in the right headspace and playing their best game at that given time. Anything can happen between the top 5 seeds, there's just no consistent #1 these days at the level of play overseas. Cypher, Rapha, Evil, Cooller are definitely just a few of the top dogs in my opinion and anyone who beats them will cause an upset.

You've clearly worked exceptionally hard to get to the top of your game. How can the rest of us learn to be as good as you?

Should I spot out the obvious and be boring; practice practice practice?

Hahaha. It's taken time, I've been at this for years and there was really 6 months - 1 year at a stage where it was all I did, every single day for nothing less than 3 hours. Focusing on different details of the game to try and improve rather than just "playing" and trying to improve is where the mistake most people make when having that desperate urge to try to get better. Example, for awhile, I focused on purely movement, 1 of 200 aspects, but I watched demos, I sat strafing through obstacles on different maps for weeks, just to try and perfect that alone, and that's just one of many.

The Bravado Gaming QuakeLive team

(L-R): Shase, Void, Sp4ceman, L1nchp1n (since removed) and Detrony.

Ten quick questions:

Amon Amarth or Modest Mouse?

Modest Mouse





Dolphins or horses?

Dolphins





Cupcakes or Pies?

Cupcakes





Cooller or Rapha?

Cooller





Chick flicks or action movies?

Action movies





Oros or Red Juice?

Red Juice





Family Guy or American Dad?

Family Guy





Lolcats or Doge?

Lolcats





Aerobics or pilates?

Pilates





Katy Perry or Jessica Alba?

Jessica Alba





If you'd like to be nice and help out with some sponsorship for Detrony's trip to Sweden, you can do so here.





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Please note that the opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not MWEB Connect (Pty) Ltd