After being eliminated from ESL One: Cologne by Team Kinguin in the group stage decider match, Cloud9's Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert sat down with theScore eSports to discuss his team’s performance, his play and his predictions.

How are you feeling now that you've had some time after your loss to Kinguin?

We are feeling motivated to come back to the next Major, make it out of groups, go far in the tournament, and continue to prove that North America can compete with the best.

How much did you guys prepare for Team Kinguin specifically?

We knew we would play them most likely the night before. They were playing Team Immunity so we figured we might as well prepare for one so we chose Kinguin. The format is kinda random, but we actually thought about us too. We knew they didn’t have many strategies so it came down to us just playing our game.

It was an extremely close match against Kinguin, why do you think you ended up losing?

I think where we made mistakes was probably doing the same pistol rounds we have done in the past 'cause they anti'd them kinda, and they won both pistols, which pretty much swung the whole match in their favor.

Losing both pistols is really tough for the economy. We actually still won more gun rounds than them. I think it was just us getting a little too complacent with things that are pretty small like the pistol rounds or our default setups on Counter-Terrorist side.

Your group was arguably the hardest to call. With you, mousesports and Virtus.pro all being teams that are dangerous. What did you think about the group coming into it?

We’ve been in a group with mousesports and Virtus.pro like four times already this year. We figured that we shouldn't change too much 'cause it’s easy to over analyze and screw yourself over with too much thinking. We tried to make sure that we stay focused on the little tendencies they had and play well.

We beat mousesports, we felt like we could, we got a pistol round win. We lost both pistol rounds to Virtus.pro and we got beat. So pistol rounds seem to be the theme of our losses lately.

Going back to Day 1, it seemed like your team struggled against mousesports until Skadoodle was able to pick up the AWP. How much does your team play around him having an AWP?

Anytime we have a sniper who will be getting the gun a lot, we pretty much let him look for picks and where they are. Anytime mousesports wasn’t throwing smoke grenades or was giving him space, basically he was our priority number one.

Virtus.pro seem to have a really good read on you guys, and TaZ even talked about that a little bit in his post-match interview. Do you feel like that is true? If so, what do you think you need to do to counter that?

We are all good friends so we always talk to each other after the game. He thinks he knows everything about our game, which you know, watching a demo you can learn a lot about a team. I think their answers are pretty straight forward so in the future I don’t think it will be too hard for us to beat them. I think we just have to play well individually and like I said before, hopefully win some pistol rounds.

In the past, many players have said that North American players didn’t think enough. Has anything changed?



The reality is that a lot of the time North American players think too much about the wrong things. There is a lot of skill in North America, but I think that only lately have we really started to solidify more logic into our tactics across the board. A lot of North American players tend to not think about the team and tend to think about their fragging, which doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability, it just means that they are focused on the wrong areas.

Overall, how would you evaluate your personal performance in the event?

I might give myself a six or seven out of ten. I felt like that even though we had limited chances, I made some mistakes that I actually corrected in the past. Somehow, they weren’t as damaging to our rounds, but I still could have played the situation differently in terms of pulling out of grenades when I don’t need to for example and looking at my teammates screens. Things that seem trivial, but they actually play a big part when I do them at the wrong time.

Expectations for this team coming into the tournament were higher than ever before. Did it give you guys confidence or put more pressure on you?

I think overtime, as a pro team, you learn to disregard the whole context of how the public perceives your team. We really focused on the bootcamp, on what people knew about us, and that is more important than anything. People sometimes think you're good because one player popped off and you won a game in big fashion. But, if you know why you won, then you know how high to value yourself. We knew why we won, it was winning pistols and two to three players playing well each game. I think we were placing pressure on ourselves individually just to play well 'cause we know we can beat anyone if three or four of us play good, let alone just two.

What are your plans for the rest of the tournament?

Hanging out with our fans and support our sponsors, keep our chins up and show appreciation for how big Counter-Strike is growing and eat froyo.

Let’s get some predictions!

Who is going to win it all and why?

I think right now, Fnatic should win it all, but Virtus.pro is up one map on them as we speak. I thought Fnatic would win so I will stick there so I don’t seem too lame.

Who has been the MVP of the tournament?

I don’t know if I’ve been watching enough today because we’ve been doing a lot of signings. I’ve heard KRIMZ is playing really well and TaZ is really underrated. He does a lot for his team but I am not sure.

Who surprised you or who disappointed you in the tournament?

Team Immunity surprised me because they probably should have beat Kinguin before we played them. For disappointed, probably Counter Logic Gaming because I felt that they probably should have made it out of groups against Natus Vincere.

This article was edited and condensed for clarity.