Ninjas in Pyjamas recently picked up a DOTA 2 team, but what do you know about the players in the lineup? In this series of articles we introduce the players of our Dota 2 team. First out is the in-game leader of the squad Simon ”Handsken” Haag,

Tell us more about yourself, how did you start off your gaming career?

I’m 20 years old, always been into games starting with consoles and lots of other PC games. When I got into heroes of newerth and started watching pro games over there it all came naturally. I got pretty talented and went on to create a team with a bunch of friends and from there it went on until I finally ended up with Dota 2!

What is your previous experience before you joined ventures with Ninjas in Pyjamas?

Competitive heroes of newerth for roughly 2 years.

How did your competitive career start off in Heroes of Newerth? And how did you get into Dota 2 competitive?

My first official team, that had any kind of success in HoN was Lions Esportsclub which later became Bad Monkey Gaming. The team was initially built by myself and a few friends I had met online(including Sealkid). After lots of practice and a couple of roster changes the team turned out to be one of the better teams HoN had for the time being.

What is your role in the team?

I’m the In-game-leader aswell as the 4 position.

What is your role as a in-game leader in Dota 2?

As the in-game-leader i make most of the strategic calls, aswell as the drafting for the team. My style tend to be quite loose, in comparison to others, which essentially means that I give alot of room for input from my team-mates, but I generally want to have to last word in terms of decision-making.

What are your expectations of the team?

The expectation aswell as the goal for now is to reach TI and perfrorm as well as we possibly can over there, we want NiP to be one of the strongest teams in the world.

The next time you will be seeing the team in action is at the Starladder, a offline event in Ukraine. The event starts this upcoming thursday, more information about the tournament can be found on the Starladder website here.