fame: "We are a tier-one team for sure"

After a dip in form in the middle of 2023, Virtus.pro have returned to their winning ways as of late, taking a number of top finishes in European events before being crowned as the champions of their final event of 2023 — ESL Challenger Atlanta 2023. This event saw the team take down Apeks in a final series where the Russian squad looked firmly in control, ending the event with a 6-0 map record.

Off the back of this win, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore talked to Petr "fame" Bolyshev about VP's renewed form, their disciplined playstyle, and fame's MVP-level performance, among other topics.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

To start, Virtus.pro has proven themselves to be such a consistent and disciplined team here. You guys rarely make mistakes and when you, there's always a way out. How has the the team been able to maintain this insane level of discipline?

It's just our playstyle, it's the thing we believe in and when the whole team believes it's when the discipline starts. We try to be focused on it in practice, everywhere, all of the time. That's why.

Virtus.pro had a dip in form in the middle of the year but have really rebounded in CS2. What has changed in CS2 that's allowed VP to find their form again?

We started to play CS2 very early and we had a lot of practice even outside of team practice and we tried to find new thing. We were fully focused in the new game and we had some online tournaments in the beginning when some teams were on LAN and we managed to get into good form, and I guess we saved it for the end of the year. On some tournaments we had some problems, but I think the ending of the year is ok and we need to keep this form into the next season.

Focusing on your form, you ended this event with an insane 1.44 rating. Keeping in mind you're only 20 years old, how do you manage the pressure of being such a young star?

I don't know actually, I do the same things, same practice every time and I chance nothing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. For example, in the last few events I played not that good but... these statistics I don't like it because impact that you have in the game sometimes its not in the statistics.

You can be below a 1.00 rating but you can do more impact than other people. Sometimes this is unfair, but on this event only six maps for us and I managed to have a good performance on these six maps, that's why this rating was so high.

With this win, Virtus.pro has qualified to ESL Pro League, is it a relief to directly qualify to EPL and not have to worry about how you'll make the event?

Yes, this is very important for us to get into Pro League because in 2023 we had some roster changes and we didn't qualify to the Majors so we lost a lot of points and rankings, that's why we lost invites to the big tier-one events. This is very important and I think in the next season this slot that we get will be so important and we hope to play all of the tier-one events and keep our form.