yxo: “Everything suggests Virtus.pro will have fantastic support”

Arseny “ceh9” Trinozhenko and Alexey “yxo” Maletsky discussed the prospects of individual IEM Katowice 2017 competitors on the Tsekh 9 show. Virtus.pro G2A, SK Gaming and Astralis were named as the tournament’s favorites during the discussion.

Alexey “yxo” Maletsky

I have my doubts about Virtus.pro G2A. For one thing, I know they’ve had issues with their flight home. byali wrote on Facebook and Twitter [that] they’d been unable to leave Vegas for a long time, and had a long wait for a connecting flight in London, I think. In the end, the context in which he said all this was that they weren’t going to practice. So with Virtus.pro, there’s a question mark. Besides, I can’t remember if we’ve ever had anyone win two tournaments in a row. Except for that one streak from fnatic; they were just about the only team that won five or six tournaments in a row. So you could ask if Virtus.pro would indeed win their second tournament in a row, although actually, the Spodek Arena, 15 thousand seats… Everything suggests Virtus.pro will have fantastic support.

Arseny “ceh9” Trinozhenko

I think the favorites here are obvious to everyone, but I suppose I am leaning more towards Virtus.pro. I certainly agree with you that two championships in a row are a very taxing thing, and there haven’t been any such teams. But If we think about it a little differently, then:

• Essentially, not a single team has had time to prepare well since Las Vegas
• Virtus.pro are in great shape and should remain so
• They’re on home turf
• They don’t have Inferno in their map pool

In these respects, they’re the best-prepared team. They’re vetoing Inferno now like they used to veto Dust before, and these six months in which we’re not going to have Dust 2 are perhaps the most convenient for them, because they don’t have to practice on Inferno like other teams do. They can veto it every time and play their map pool, where they’re soundly prepared on every map.