Interview with EliGE from Team Liquid CS:GO

A brief interview about life, the major, and more with the CS:GO rifler.

Courtesy of Major League Gaming

I had an opportunity to talk with Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski in a brief interview which took place about a week and a half ago.

Hey EliGE, how’re you doing?

Hey, I’m doing well!

For those that might not know, can you give a brief introduction on who you are?

My name is Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski and I play CS:GO professionally on Team Liquid.

Give us a day in the life of a professional CS:GO player. What do you normally do, or what’s an average daily schedule for you?

I usually wake up around 1–2 pm EST where I just relax while watching streams and having breakfast / lunch. I deathmatch before team practice for an hour which has started at different times over the months, but it is usually around 4 or 5 pm EST. We start with an hour of reviewing whatever topic we need to focus on, or schedule more than that if necessary. The rest of the evening is scrims until 11 pm / 12 am. After team practice is done, it’s either you relax for the night, or stream playing rank S until 4–5 am. A lot of players are west coast so the day ends late for me.

What about with the ELEAGUE Major starting up on January 22nd. Has the schedule changed at all?

Yes, we are about to be doing a bootcamp in our EU team house in the Netherlands. It’ll be up until we have to travel for the ELEAGUE major.

You guys have placed 2nd and 4th in the last two majors. Do you believe that consistency at the majors can continue, and what might you personally be doing to make that happen?

Our ending towards the end of the year of 2016 was not that good, so I am not completely sure. We practiced after Oakland, up until Nitr0’s wedding preparation days, and they were pretty productive and I thought they were going well. I am hoping it can continue into the bootcamp and I’m personally looking forward to it!

In November, Team Liquid picked up “zews” to coach. How has it been working with him so far and what have been your initial impressions?

As soon as he started in Northern Arena (without any prior team scrims or anything), I knew he was gonna be really good. The way he was communicating with us was really good and he had a really neutral way of dealing with issues we had in game and out when we would go over the demos. He didn’t have any idea of our strategies or how we called when he just started with us for our tournaments, but it still showed how good he is. I am really excited to have him as our coach in 2017.

Is there something in CS:GO that you believe is unbalanced? What might it be and how would you change it to make it balanced?

The RNG of jumping weapons needs to be definitely increased. Ever since the beginning of this year it has become more and more commonplace to see a jumping kill. I don’t think it really has a place and it should replicate how it was in 1.6. If you ever got a jumping kill in 1.6 it was seriously amazing because it rarely ever happened. In CS:GO it happens pretty often for how much people actually are attempting them.

What about with map rotation, is there one you’d like to see replaced?

I’d like to see Cobblestone replaced for Inferno. Inferno has always been a staple CS map and I think Cobble just has a boring design to me.

Whether it be in official matches or even scrims, is there a team, or players, you personally enjoy playing against more so than others and why?

As far as scrims I like playing against whoever plays like they do in tournaments, which means that will be really good practice for us. For matches I like playing whoever we win against of course!

Now a bit off topic… I know you’ve carried me a few times in some Overwatch games lol, who’s your favorite hero to play?

With this meta, I am kind of forced to play meta heroes like Soldier, Roadhog, Ana, but I’ve liked playing McCree, Tracer, and Genji in the past. I’ve been playing Tracer a lot though and it seems to work.

Do you have a song you listen to that hypes you up maybe before matches or even just life in general?

Nope, I actually don’t have any pregame rituals or anything!

Lastly, do you have any shoutouts or callouts you’d like to give?

I’d like to thank all of my fans, teammates, and sponsors for having a good year last year and let’s make it even better moving forward in 2017!

Alright man, thanks for joining me for this brief interview and I wish you and Team Liquid the best of luck at the major!

Thank you and no problem!

You can watch EliGE and Team Liquid take on Team EnVyUs in their first group stage match of the ELEAGUE Major at 4:15pm EST on January 22nd.

A big thanks to Jonathan for joining me again. Make sure you go follow him and Team Liquid on Twitter.