Hobbit: "I want to play in a way that is unreadable"

In the aftermath of Gambit's victory over fnatic at StarSeries i-League S4, we caught up with Abay "Hobbit" Khasenov, the CIS team's new in-game leader.

fnatic had a great start in the series against Gambit, closing out Inferno 16-8 after a comfortable 10-5 CT half. However, Gambit woke up on the second map, cruising to a 16-6 win on Overpass and closing the series on Cache with a 16-11.

Gambit secured a win in their first LAN game under Hobbit

We managed to talk with Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov following the game and heard more about the 23-year-old's leadership, the recent player change and their struggles to make it into ESL Pro League.

After the Major, which wasn't a good tournament for you guys, you ended up changing a player and fitch was replaced with seized. Just talking about fitch now, when he came into the team he had a great debut at Malmö, but as time went on it seemed like he was struggling to adapt, that was something you mentioned in interviews. Why was he was changed, what was the thinking there?

First of all, fitch is a very awesome guy, and second, he is a really nice player, but his playstyle is not good for us because he plays aggressively and sometimes he just wouldn't say some information, very important information. And it's a big mistake from him, but, anyway, in my opinion, he just needed some time. However, we don't have any time now, we lost a lot of tournaments and that is why we just picked up seized, because he has a lot of experience. seized is more experienced than fitch, but fitch is still awesome.

When you picked up seized there was a lot of talent around, in FlipSide and other CIS teams for example. Was seized the guy you had in mind from the start or were there any other players you considered picking up?

For example, AVANGAR have a lot of players that are very talented, but they are now a very good team, so firstly we didn't want to break their team up [by recruiting a player], and secondly, they wanted to play and stay together. That's why we thought about seized and that's it.

You now picked up the in-game leader role, for starters, how did that happen?

I just started calling after the Major, it was my choice. I just came to my team and said: "I want to be an in-game leader". The reason is that when we lost some tournaments, some games, I didn't feel that I was doing my job 100%, and I felt that that was something I could do as an IGL. So I came up with the idea, talked to my team and they supported me.

Now that you are in the role, what is the style that you want to see Gambit employ? How do you want to play?

First of all, I want to play as a team, together, always. Secondly, I want to play in a way that is unreadable. For example, I don't want to play with a lot of tactics, I want to play in a way that we adapt to the situation. We need to get more information, talk more as a team and that's it.

In the fnatic game you started off rough in the first map, but you picked it up later in the series. What was the issue on Inferno, was it more down to the map or were you just not warmed up?

After the first map I understood that we just lost a lot of clutch situations, for example, we lost a 4v2 three times and it was a very unlucky game for us. Following the map I felt some power, you know, I knew that we could win if we just have a little bit luck. And that's it.

Not connected to this tournament, but you are once again not in ESL Pro League, you are in the Mountian Dew League for another season, and that has been happening for a couple of seasons now. What are your thoughts on that, playing in the lower division, is it kind of frustrating, and is it a big goal to make Pro League this season?

Right now, making Pro League is an important goal for us. I don't know, we can't play online, I don't know what happens. Maybe we don't play with our 100%, but we will fix it, of course, we will do some changes and I think we will bootcamp in Moscow... and it's going to be better. Maybe it changes the atmosphere and we can do better online.

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