TaZ: “No more disappointments. We will make sure of that.”

“We built them from scratch, spending six hours on each instead of playing. We then realized that we did not have enough time to practice them, or to improve our teamplay. We went to the WCG finals with this conviction,” says Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas, the team captain of Team of the Year PGS Gaming, after their disappointing losses at the World Cyber Games and Extreme Masters in Los Angeles.

It is said that you plan to become a lawyer and you care a great deal about it. Is it true?

Yes, those are my plans at the moment. I study at the best private university in Poland, the Leon Kozminski University in Warsaw. I am a third year law student. I am very pleased with the department and the university that I have chosen.

Tell me about your life outside CS.

Long story short: college, meeting friends, parties, squash, the gym and a bit of CS. Sometimes I add other things to this, but generally those are my pastimes, next to CS training with the team. I used to think that trying to combine playing a lot of CS with normal activities would be impossible, but with a little bit of luck you can manage just fine.

When and how did you find yourself in PGS?

I have been on the team since its very conception, the same as LUq and Neo. You could say I was one of the founders of the team. I had a hand in picking the first lineup, the memorable conneXion team. The roster has undergone many changes since then, but I was able to prevail. We will see how long that will last!

In interviews, LUq often stresses that you are not very best friends outside of tournaments. You don’t try to see each other as often as possible, you don’t go to bars or things like that. How long can you tolerate each other that long without being best friends?

Let’s say that a guaranteed period is three years. What can I say. Some like each other more, others less, but that is normal in life. The important thing is to tolerate one another and we somehow manage that. It is visible at tournaments and during matches. I think each one of us has his own life and wants to hang out with his own friends, girlfriend, etc. We meet five times a week anyway, and even though it’s only Ventrilo, you can show some of your character there.

How do you resolve conflicts in the team?

We try to talk. Each of us is an intelligent person and knows that the only way to resolve a conflict is a conversation. It is worth noting that the only reason we quarrel is CS. Each of us wants what’s best for the team and that’s why each of us wants to improve something. Sometimes some us don’t concede to having made a mistake, others lose patience. We work on it and I think it is much better than it used to be.

You lost unexpectedly early at the WCG and at EM in Los Angeles. Is PGS undergoing a crisis?

I think that PGS simply did not play enough. We began training for WCG a month before the event and we wanted to change our strategies so that we would not be too predictable. We were at ESWC or GameGune. A week before the WCG we went to Sweden for a week’s bootcamp and we changed our strats on four maps. We built them from scratch, spending six hours on each instead of playing. We then realized that we did not have enough time to practice them, or to improve our teamplay. We went to the WCG finals with this conviction.

You could easily see shortcomings in our teamplay in the match against Roccat (I am not saying they played poorly – on the contrary, they played a great game). We had a lot of situations in man advantage but also a lot of misunderstandings and we did not remember our strats precisely enough. You could say we asked for it.

The next step was LA. We had the choice to go back home and train for four days or to stay in the U.S. And practice for at least a week. Unfortunately, training turned out to be impossible due to logistics and money issues. This is why our only training for EM were ESEA gather games on laptops and WiFi internet. It was not too much fun and not all of us had laptops. This doesn’t change the fact that the reason of our loss was the lack of teamplay, not enough PCW’s.

Now we are back in Poland and we began training again. It doesn’t matter what our next event is, we will work very hard on our game to perform well.

Did the MYM offer influence your performance? Perhaps the negotiations with MYM and PGS dragged your thoughts away from CS and you were not mentally prepared for major competitions?

I don’t know. A psychologist would have to answer this question. The offer definitely had a negative influence on our focus, but to what extent? I don’t know that and I don’t want to guess. We played poorly – that’s all there is to it.

A lot was written about your “transfer to MYM.” You had running contracts with PGS and you still talked to MYM. .Why?

This is a very awkward question for me and I would rather not answer it. I can only say that MYM is a very well-known brand, we received a good offer and we considered it.

How did PGS manage to keep you?

They gave us a better offer. We talked about our future together and it turned out it’s not the time to change sides yet.

How did you react to rumors that Neo has an offer from SK?

We asked him if it was true, what his plans were and so on. This also took our attention away from competitions. Filip is a very valuable player for our team, that’s why we could not be indifferent to such gossip.

Polish esports websites wrote that PGS did not manage your stay in LA properly and you had to pay for your own hotels and so on. How much of it was true? What was not taken care of?

I don’t want to answer this question. I am a member of team PGS and what goes on inside the team should not go out.

What conclusions did you draw from those few weeks in the U.S.?

The most important thing that we learned from the whole mess in the U.S. was training. Those two events showed us how important teamplay is.

Why did Loord take over for you as a strat caller? Did the slump period influence it?

I don’t know. Maybe. As for leading in-game, I never wanted to do it. I preferred to focus on my own game and help the team this way, not by giving commands. Unfortunately, no one wanted to take this spot until our return from America.

I think that the change of the strat caller will introduce new gameplay ideas and we will only benefit from it. Loord is a very wise player. He always has many ideas for how to play a given round, so I am sure that he will cope very well.

Will the switch also change your weaker play against teams that play slowly and wait?

I don’t know. Perhaps.

What kind of a strat caller were you?

I think that I prefer an aggressive style of play. I always tried to understand other styles of strat calling, predict what the opponent could play and risk at the same time. I like quick strats and I preferred to be the one to decide which strat we would go for in the coming round, rather than listen to the others. You could call it a bit of a dictatorship here… this may have annoyed the others, but it’s the past now!

Your team mates joked that you went against all four of them at the ESL Supercup against aTTaX and made the team walk into four aTTaX players, resulting in the loss of a round. Then you said it was their fault. Tell me the story.

Well, as I said before, it was a better strategy and it should have worked, but sometimes not everything goes our way. I always try to analyze every winning as well as losing strategy, find errors and tell the others about them. Unfortunately, I no longer remember that game so I can’t give you a detailed answer. I can tell you that it was a mistake to put us where there were four opponents, but if everything had been played the way it was planned, we would have had a greater chance of survival.

You came back to Poland, you switched positions on the maps and you still beat every other team in the country at the Heyah Logitech Cybersport finals. Why are the domestic teams so weak?

I don’t think all of them are. They all make gradual progress. Some of them quicker, others slower. United has taken the greatest step forward but they still lack the experience of playing the best teams in the world. There is time, there will be results.

Over the years, PGS has had many players and the team was consistently a top European team. This could mean two things: either Poland has many players or the core of your team is so strong that it doesn’t matter who else is on the team. Which of itis true?

CS is a team game and every player is just as important. Our team has got a lineup that is hungry for success (aaaaaaall the time), wants to practice and develop our skills and has the means to do so. I think that Poland has a lot of very good players. The previous PGS lineups were not much weaker than this one. We always just lacked one element. Kuben?

If there are talented players, how can you explain the lack of a counterweight for PGS on the Polish gaming scene?

There is no shortage of talent, but there’s a lack of motivation to fully develop it. A lot of excellent players have stopped playing because they found something else to do. I wonder if they would make the same decisions today. Another reason may be what I said earlier – we develop our game constantly. We don’t let them catch up, that’s all.

What’s going to happen to PGS if the next tournaments do not bring the desired results?

I am not going to make predictions on that. I hope we will not have any more disappointments. We will make sure of that.

Do you have any final words?

I’d like to greet all of my friends and thank them for their support! (Adam, Pawel, Klocek, Kroni, Ofca, Eber, Dudek, Zug, Tomek, Erda, Puchatek, Volerin, Smooth, Carlos, Furia, Kamil, Maslak, Carmac, Ryan, Rulon, Homer, Lex and all those that I forgot to mention!) I would also like to thank our sponsors: PokerStrategy, SteelSeries, Shooters, Pentagram, Multimo! And all the fans for supporting us and believing in us. We will do our best not to let you down at the coming tournaments!

Photos #2 and #3 “borrowed” from Readmore.de.