It wasn’t the best exit G2 has had recently, but Kenny “kennyS” Schrub is moving past it. The star player for G2 esports sat down with VPEsports to talk about recent events, their defeat here in IEM Chicago, the impact of bad vibes and more.

After defeating MIBR in an early best-of-three with relative ease, the Brazilians dispatched of the Frenchmen to take them out of the running for a stage appearance at the United Center.

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VPEsports: First, we’re going to talk about this event in particular. Not the best showing from you guys, but it didn’t necessarily start off bad. What changed between facing MIBR in the first best-of-three and facing them later in the event?

kennyS: I think the first day was pretty cool in terms of the fact that we actually beat MIBR in a pretty easy way. Coming into Liquid afterwards was also a pretty good showing even though I think we could have won. Some details on Overpass made them win the map and the series.

I think the next day it was pretty complicated for us to play MIBR. They had a better approach to the game and yeah, I think they overall played better because they had the better mindset for this game.

And yeah, I think we fucked up. It happens, shit happens. We are trying to not make it a big deal even though we are obviously disappointed. Especially that we got to be at the stadium earlier and the American people are ready to see some CS:GO. It’s always a pleasure to play in such a big stadium and in front of a passionate crowd.





VPEsports: You kind of touched on it there that you guys are trying not to be too upset about it. So do you reflect on you recent successes when you view it? Do you look at your EPL run to help balance this poor showing here in Chicago?

kennyS:Pretty much. We’ve been boot camping and working super hard. We’ve come a long way as well, we’ve had a lot of good results recently and we are trying to not lose our confidence just because we had a poor showing at this event.

Like I said, we are obviously disappointed about it because we had high expectations. But yeah, I would rather it happen now than at the Major for example. So we are disappointed but as you said, we are trying to reflect on the good things we’ve had and just because we lost yesterday doesn’t mean everything is gone.





VPEsports: It’s pretty easy to see when watching the streams that when you guys get down, the mood seems to change. Is that something you guys try to focus on? Maybe not you, but with certain players their demeanor changes when you guys start losing rounds. Is that something that spreads among the team? Does it cause issues?

kennyS:That’s actually a good question. Well I think that for our team mostly, we all need to be kind of happy. It happens to everyone – we cannot have like five players fully perfect on the same day. It’s all about all being on the same page and obviously not giving up after tough rounds.

I remember on train yesterday, after losing that eco, again, that was a really tough shot for us. So we’re actually trying to focus on not giving up on those kind of things. And I don’t feel like we gave up yesterday for example but for sure we were not at 100% in our head. We got hit pretty hard in a few rounds. We felt it was already an off day in the way that the match itself was super difficult even though we won a map it was super hard.

So we’re trying not to get hit so hard on rounds that might be frustrating. It’s CS so frustrating things happen all the time so when you’re able skip it as soon as possible and be together, facing the difficulties together we always manage to come back into the game and actually put a decent show and win the game in the end. Sometimes its harder and yesterday it was.

But for sure, we all need to be happy to play. You can be upset, it happens, but you can’t be upset too long. Not one player or two players, you’re not allowed to be upset.





VPEsports: Do you feel that it boils over? If one player on your team dies in a way that aggravates them and they get upset, does that typically spread?

kennyS:It’s like anything, the vibes flow between people. You can feel it. When it’s all positive things, everything goes perfectly. When you’re spreading a bad vibe, you’re spreading it all over your team so we’re all trying to avoid that.



That’s the hardest part in the competitive scene at the highest level of Counter-Strike. Even with sports in general, it’s super hard for every competitor to be at 100% regarding the mindset and the attitude. But I think we’re doing pretty well even though we all have our weaknesses sometimes. That’s something you cannot stop working on.

As I said, I don’t think one of us gave up yesterday but the vibes were not 100% positive.





VPEsports: On the same note, do you think that is what’s happening with MIBR in terms of the positive attitude? They’re laughing, smiling, playing with little pressure. Do you think that’s what’s benefiting them right now?

kennyS: Yeah, that’s what I was talking about with their approach to the game. They definitely have the better one. They were having fun and just enjoying playing together. We obviously enjoy playing together but yesterday was more like they were more hungry somehow. Not that we didn’t want to win, but obviously they had the better approach.





VPEsports: Moving into the Major, are there specific things you guys are focusing on to change or just working on getting more comfortable with what you’re already doing?

kennyS: I think we are doing well so far, so we must take what happened yesterday as an accident. It can happen. So I think we’re pretty much going to work the same way, obviously we’re going to make some technical adjustments. We’ve actually pointed out our weaknesses at this event, we know CT sides are really weak for us and we’ll be working to fix that stuff.

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