Although 100Thieves gave up the first place spot to Team Liquid, they managed to stay as a contender for first place by defeating Golden Guardians. Their new jungler, Andy "AnDa" Hoang has been doing quite well considering the time he has been with the 100Thieves.



The 100Thieves have been playing with AnDa for about a month now. AnDa spoke quietly of what he wanted to say. In a humble manner, he talked about how he was adjusting to the team he only joined a month ago. Setting his own goal somewhat smaller than supposed teammates' goals, he aimed to reach the playoffs.



The following is the interview with AnDa.



You’ve been playing with the 100 Thieves for about a month. Are you fully adapted to the team now?



I don’t want to say fully because I’m still making some mistakes, and I could still be better.





What kind of mistakes do you think you’re making?



Maybe I’m a bit slow in tempo. For example, I might recall late or be late to a play that everyone makes, and that kind of stuff I guess.





So do you think just one month is too short to be fully adapted? Do you think you need more time to build up the teamwork?



We had a little less than a month because they were playing in Rift Rivals as well, and I wasn’t scrimming during that period. [I’ve been playing with the team for] Maybe three or almost four weeks, but I think I’m going to get there real soon.





In the current meta, the jungle-mid synergy is quite important. How is it playing with Ryu?



Playing with Ryu feels really good as a jungler. His playstyle orients from playing with his team so he’ll help me a lot when I ask for something. We duo all the time in solo queue and have a lot of fun together.



You had played with Fly before, and they’re both Korean mid laners. How are they different?



They’re actually pretty similar. Both like to roam to the side lanes. They’re not too different, but it’s a lot easier to work with Ryu just because his English is a lot better. But I really enjoyed playing with Fly as well.





Ssumday is doing really well. As a teammate, what do you think about his performance?



I think Ssumday is a really special case because if you give him resources, you can be sure that he’ll put a lot of pressure on the map and play really well. If you tell him to play defensively, just hold his zone, maybe he’ll even 1v2. He holds out for a really long time. I think that’s really special because a lot of top laners aren’t able to do that. The level he’s doing it at is really high. I really appreciate that I can play with him.





Is that one of the reasons that the team gave him Jayce today?



We played Jayce today there were a few top lane bans, so it was pretty safe to blind pick and our comp would be really easy to play with Jayce. If we have to split push with Jayce and the opponent tried to kill Jayce, we can pressure really hard with Sejuani and Rakan.





About Cody Sun, it seems that his performance isn’t as consistent. So as a jungler, what do you normally choose, care for Ssumday to make him stronger, or look after Cody Sun?



It depends on our team composition. If we have a tank top and a strong bot lane that wants to fight often, I’ll look to bot lane, but I don’t really go into a game thinking I need to cover for Cody like that.



Obviously, he’s not playing the best, but he’ll still play really well. I can rely on him and trust him.



Are there any players that you look up to?



There’s a lot of Korean junglers that I’ve looked up to for a while like Peanut, Haru, and Ambition. Those are the top three. I have studied and watched a lot of their games. I started to like Mlxg. When I was on Immortals and went to Worlds, I became friends with players like Karsa and Tarzan. I was happy to see them doing really well now. They were really friendly to me.





So if you were to pick one player, who do you think is the best jungler in the world?



Probably Tarzan. Maybe it’s just his team plays really good, but I think he plays really well. He’s always at the right spot at the right time. He’s like 10-0 or something on Trundle. He has a lot of picks that he’s confident on and play really well.





What is your goal as a player?



For most people. it would be like winning NA LCS and going to Worlds. Since I’m only just getting started playing in the LCS this year, I would rather have smaller goals. Even though like having a smaller goal like making playoffs; it could be a good place to start, but I know my team wants to aim way higher than that, so I want to be able to match their goals as well.





If you get to Worlds this year, which jungler would you like to go up against the most?



Honestly Tarzan, but I don’t really want to. (Laughs) I think it’ll be pretty cool because they’ve been doing really well and I think highly of him.



Ssumday says that you really like Kpop. How did you get to like Kpop?



Back when I was in elementary school, I had a Korean friend, and he introduced me to Girls Generation at first. Then I just followed Girls Generation for a bit, and I just branched out to other groups. Eventually, I just kept following Kpop ever since.





I read that your nickname AnDa was from Starcraft player NaDa, Lee Yun-yeol.



Yeah. I used to play Starcraft 2, and I was like semi-pro. I was at Grand Master, competing in some lans; it was kind of smaller at that time. I remember when I was about 16, there was a big competition, WCS, World Championship Starcraft 2 or something like that, for Canada, and I qualified for that. I was very young at that time, so it was pretty surreal for me, and I felt like a real pro gamer.



I remember a couple weeks prior to that tournament, I didn’t have internet in my house, so I was only practicing build orders on offline games. It wasn’t the most effective practice so I was pretty sad going into the tournament. I was one game from qualifying but I kind of choked. I was pretty young, but learned a lot from that experience.

※ AnDa had competed in 2012 StarCraft II World Championship Series: Canada Nationals.





Did you want to become a pro gamer because of that experience?



Maybe because I was just good at video games, and the more time I put into the game, I got really high ranked. After Starcraft 2, I started playing League and saw my cousin Balls do really well. He won a lot in Cloud9. I just grinded the game a lot and eventually got to a high rank.



Did Balls help you a lot when you wanted to get into the League of Legends scene?



He didn’t help me too much to be honest, but he was a big influence. My parents were pretty against gaming in general, but they saw how much success Balls was having, so my parents gave me one year; my dad told me like “You have one year. If you can do well, you can keep doing it.’ kind of thing. Even though I didn’t do to well, I just kept going at it and I’m here now. I’m very happy where I am now.





Any last comments?



I want to say thank you to the 100Thieves fans that have been cheering me on, and I hope that they’ll keep cheering me on even though I have a lot of mistakes to fix. I’ll think we’ll do really well in the future, so keep cheering us on.



