photo by: StarLadder

Team Secret are the Chongqing Major Champions. Earlier today, they took down Virtus.pro 3-1 to claim the trophy after a lower bracket comeback into the grand finals. The best-of-five series was extremely close to end with a clean 3-0 sweep and a possible record as the fastest Major grand finals victory. However, VP forced a game four, which they lost. The Chongqing Major didn’t have a tournament MVP prize, but if we could give one, it would go with Yazied “YapzOr” Jaradat who had two incredible series today and who was instrumental in his team’s victory.

We were fortunate to be able to witness the finals days in Chongqing on site and at the end of the grand finals, we talked to YapzOr.

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Big congrats on the victory and I’d like to start by asking if you are a superstitious person. My question is related to what you said on the English stream after the upper bracket semi-finals, “we won the finals in Kuala Lumpur, then went on losing the grand finals to VP, this time we will do it the other way around.”

Hahaha, no I said that only as a joke, I didn’t really mean it, obviously, nobody wants to lose an upper bracket final. But, I do really think that losing the upper bracket final here, let us win today in the grand finals, because we learned a lot from those matches with them and we came into this series much more prepared. Even the earlier series we had today, the lower bracket finals versus Evil Geniuses made things much clearer for us.

You’ve been in both these situations, Major grand finals from the upper bracket and Major grand finals from the lower bracket, would you say that the first option is a bit dangerous, maybe it makes you feel too confident or whatnot?

Not really, to be honest. Coming from the winner bracket it always feels nice because you know you deserved your spot in the grand finals and you know you haven’t lost yet, so it’s more like a supreme feeling. But sometimes it can be deceiving because you’ll never how good you are until you lose, really. Once you lose you learn and when you learn you only become stronger. So, sometimes is good to lose.

Let’s talk about the games you just played and especially game two. Can you tell us how did you come up with this Luna support idea?

Two days ago I was sitting in front of my computer with Puppey next to me. And we were just thinking that with the picks that are happening at this Major we are missing a hero, that we need just one more hero to be very fine in the draft. So, I was randomly looking at the heroes and their talents and I just saw Luna. [he laughs] I saw her talents, I saw her skills and it just made sense in my head. So, I showed it to Puppey and he kind of liked it, kind of didn’t like it, but he told me ” if we win with this in the grand finals I’ll give you a high five. And I got the high five!

credits: StarLadder

Game three. You had it in your hands. We were all preparing in the venue for the winners’ photos and all, but then, in the last five minutes of the game, VP took two favorable fights, two lanes of barracks and the victory. What was the main reason for which you lost game three?

We tried an all in strategy in that game even though we knew that if the game goes past the 30 minute we will lose because of their Phantom Lancer. I think we did a few mistakes there. First of all, we died too much in lanes. We let the Earth Spirit roll over us too much. Later in the game, we took a really bad fight which almost completely turned the game. That lead to another bad fight for us because they got stronger. Well, we almost did it, it almost worked.

Tell me how did you guys gel so well with Nisha. He is super young, and yes we all saw his potential last year when he was with the Polish squad, but with you guys, he grew so much, so fast. I’d say it’s an unbelievable form explosion from him.

I really think 100% props to him. He is not only a very talented player, but his personality reflects on his play. For his age, I’m always amazed at how wise heactually is. He is not this young, dumb teenager that just plays Dota and thinks he is the best. Nisha knows he is good, and he is very confident in what he says and what he does. But the thing is that he is very, very smart, which, honestly, it’s crazy to see because he is still at such a young age and he is already like this. So, I think all of it is because of who he is and of course, being on a team like Secret, where he has around him lot of people with experience, and especially Puppey, it speeds up the process by a lot.

Amazing words to hear from a player like yourself. So, next month you are going to ESL Katowice. Are you looking to beat Virtus.pro on the ESL trophies and Mercedes gathered as well?

Haha, we never thought of it like that, but hopefully, we will be able to achieve that at some point. It will definitely be a big plus if we win that event, but I’m more excited because we will play in Nisha’s hometown. We want him to enjoy this Dota life as much as he can. I would love for him to win a tournament at home. I know the feeling can be very amazing, although I, personally, haven’t had it yet. So, we decided to go to Katowice for him.

Good luck in Katowice and once again congrats on the Chongqing Major trophy. Thanks a lot for talking to us. Any shout-out at the end of the interview?

Shout-out to my family, to our sponsors, to all our fans and to all who came to watch us today here, and shout-out to my team!

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More interviews from the Chongqing Major

– ArsZeeqq: “RodjER is feeding too much”

– Kyle: “I built teams my whole career, I’m over it. I don’t have it in me anymore”

– ASD: “We are here to learn”

– Fy: “We practiced with Fnatic and the results were pretty even”

– Fade: “We didn’t make any serious mistakes”

– Black^: “I thought of it as a joke build for pub games, but now people are using it at the Major”

– MidOne: “There is no way we are going to relax until TI is over”

– Faith_bian: “The competition should be about the skill instead of luck”

– Players’ Thoughts After BO1 Elimination Matches at The Chongqing Major

– Mars by Forward Gaming

– Mars by EHOME