Dmitry "hooch" Bogdanov, captain of the Gambit CS:GO squad, told about the preparations for the ESL One Cologne 2016 qualifiers, the team's performance on the tournament, changes in the teamplay and impressions from the victory.

About the preparations for the tournament:
We were playing for about seven days at a bootcamp and before that we had a small break before we played GODSENT for the Kiev qualifier. But then I went for a vacation and after it we played really bad, we got pounded by many teams online. When we went to the bootcamp it became better, we played some online leagues, Operation: Kinguin and UCC. We just knew we had to prepare four maps, so we made our mind up on these four maps, but it looks like we only needed two maps here.

Changes after Ivan "spaze" Obrezhan joined the team:
In the beginning it was very hard for him, because he never played in a professional team and he doesn't know how to play properly, if you know what I mean. The thing is that at the beginning he was struggling really hard, but when we came to the bootcamp we worked with his mindset, he is always hitting good shots but he just doesn't know how to make it happen. So we helped him with it and he became better. There's still a lot of work to do, but what I really like about him is his confidence, he doesn't care who he's playing, he's like "I'm gonna crush them".

ESL One Cologne 2016 Qualifier: Gambit VODs

Changes after Jan "wayLander" Rahkonen left the team:
Maybe we changed some positions, but our gamestyle didn't change so much. spaze is doing what he needs to do. The mentality changed a little bit in the team after he joined, but nothing more, no big changes.

Why Gambit failed to win against FaZe on the train map:
We played really good as T, and as CT we started well, but we lost two rounds versus fox where he made a 1v3 and a 2v5 where he got an ace, so he played that match really well, but we made huge mistakes in these rounds. When you lose these rounds like that, your morale goes down and the other team gets super-hyped. After we lost I said to my team that we just need to let it go, because shit happens. It's really important to adapt to things like that. So I said we should just forget about that game and don't make the same mistakes we made before, and we didn't make them today.

About the impressions from the victory:
After struggling so hard and people saying that we aren't as good after wayLander departed, we struggled hard online and nobody believed in us, people were talking a lot of shit to us, it just feels nice. We proved that we are a LAN team and I hope we prepare well and show good results than we did last time in Columbus.

How the team is going to prepare for ESL One Cologne:
Tomorrow we're going home and we'll spend some time with our families, like five days. On the 26th we're leaving for ELEAGUE, so we're going to go to a bootcamp for about three-four days before that to prepare for the teams - Virtus.pro, EnVyUs and compLexity. We don't have much time to relax, so we're just chill for a couple of days and practice again.