Esports Heaven caught up with Lee "" Seung Gon, former MVP player and TI7 winning coach with Team Liquid. In this interview, Heen speaks about his time at Liquid and the various phases they went through, his current role at Shadow.gg -- an analytics firm and much more.I'm Heen, former player for MVP and former coach to Liquid.I think a lot of my decision to quit playing came down to my lack of motivation. Even though there are plenty of Koreans still in the scene, trying to create an all-Korean roster can only be done in so many ways and we weren't mature enough to work out our differences. I guess I didn't believe in myself nor the team enough to think that we'd one day win or do well enough at TI.I wasn't looking for a coaching position when I joined Liquid. It was a fortunate coincidence that they were in search of a coach and I was available. I believe it was my connection to Jerax and Blitz that connected me to the team even though I had no prior affiliation with Europe. I traveled to the 1st Epicenter as a tryout coach, we won and we shook hands.The main responsibilities I had was acting as the relational bridge between all the players, including the captain so that everyone gets on the same page regarding strategy and game vision. It's a tough position to coach players with such high levels of skills compared to your own so, often my opinions were draft or team oriented rather than micromanagement and improving efficiency.We were definitely one of the favorites coming into TI6 but looking back, we lost a lot of our confidence for emotional reasons rather than rational ones through failure. TI is a tournament that tests more than your skill as a team. It pressures the team on a mental level, and we were too tense throughout the entire tournament. There is nothing you can say to a team that gets knocked out of TI below their expectations. We were sad and full of regrets. I don't think we took it particularly well or poorly. Most teams would have had similar reactions in our position.To be honest, I wasn't involved in the situation really. We all went home after TI, and didn't have much contact with each other for some time and I learned that Jerax and FATA had left the team.The road to the finals was more exciting than the moment we won it. No matter how good you are, most people think of winning TI as a dream more than a goal. As we went on our lower bracket run and improved our form, we knew not only were we getting closer to winning TI but that we were deserving of it. So when we won it was more of a rewarding, grateful moment towards each other and the work we put in than pure excitement as many people would imagine.After TI, I wanted to stay in Korea for some time. Being part of a team is synonymous with spending the majority of your year abroad. Since I'm a consultant, I could work from home and that was probably the biggest appeal compared to coaching. They make an analytics platform for professional teams in CSGO, LoL and most recently DotA. As someone who has the competitive experience that they cannot possible have had, I'm the guy that tells them what I think is a good direction for them to take so that it helps the teams using it.One of the key concepts of Shadow is that you can save a lot of time when it comes to analyzing potential opponents and working on your own team's flaws. For example, you can see a team's warding patterns on a single page without going through all the replays. Sometimes, the value you get from thoroughly watching a replay is undeniable but there are times, especially during a tournament when time is scarce resource and you need to a recap of things faster and more conveniently. Basically it lets you keep track of players, teams, trends etc. easier at the top level. There are other features that are less obvious when you think of analytics but I'm not sure I'm allowed to go into too much detail. In any case, any competitive team can request a free demo.Obviously, Liquid have been disadvantaged in terms of the 'race to DPC points' as they've missed out on the 1st Major and played with a stand-in in the second one. They were looking really good in the 2 LANs that they've won this season. And MDL was fairly recent too so I did not expect them to get last place in Dreamleague. I know they were capable of doing much better but shit happens and a team may lose confidence or become confused in the heat of the tournament. If you look at TI7, even though we were in really good form, we lost a few games and we were close to being knocked out of the tournament at 12th place. It took several series to find our true form. I expect them to pick themselves up and prove that they're a tier 1 team by the DPC season's end.Analyst, probably not since I know nothing of it. Commentator, maybe. I'm not naturally talented at it but I think I can make up for it with research and knowledge about teams.I'd say you need to have passion before thinking too far ahead about a career. Most of anyone in the DotA scene did not have a job until enough popularity and demand allowed for them to exist. It's also something I regret since as I said before, I lost a lot of that 'pure' passion leading up to my quitting as a player, being too conscious of whether or not I could succeed.Nothing in particular. Can't think of something genuine I'd like to say or shout out.If you would like to know more about my work, you can follow me at. You can head over to our Dota 2 hub for more content. Headline image courtesy: Team Liquid