Our next pre-DreamHack Winter interview is with ESC Gaming's Paweł "innocent" Mocek, who talks about his team's debut in a major event, the 'online' tag of Karol "rallen" Rodowicz and the cheating scandal in the CS:GO community.

The Polish team, who secured a place in the major via the European online qualifiers, are widely regarded as an outsiders as this will be the first big event for most of their players.

ESC face a very difficult task to progress to the playoffs, having been drawn alongside LDLC, the new Ninjas in Pyjamas team and also Planetkey Dynamics, with Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek admitting that this was the toughest group in which his his side could be.

innocent believes ESC can make it out of the groups 

How well prepared do you feel for DreamHack? Did you change a lot of things in how you play or simply focus on refining your current style? Will you be taking part in the official Inferno Online bootcamp, considering the problems having all teams on-site might bring?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: We feel pretty good and confident, as we have been practicing a lot before this tournament. We decided to change some strats to and switch positions just to make things work more smoothly, and I put my faith in minise as he is our ingame leader. We took part in the bootcamp and I believe it gave us tons of self-confidence and improved our game. We are ready.

What’s your stance on the stickers? Were you surprised at how much money teams made from them for ESL One Cologne? Do you think more of the money should be allocated towards prizes? As things stand, the Legends capsule pays (per Cologne) more than winning the event.

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: I never thought that stickers could make so much money. It is just an insane amount of money. The stickers' idea is wonderful and I love it. I would love to see a bigger prize pool, but I do not think the extra money should be taken from stickers. You practice so much and sacrifice a lot of time to qualify for a major, it is only fair that it pays off. It is a shame that you can earn more money from stickers than from the tournament, but winning is the best feeling out there, so the tournament is not about the money for anyone, I guess.

How do you expect your group to play out? Can you talk about each of the teams in your group in detail, what you expect from your potential match-up against each of them, and how do you expect to fare?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: I do not know what to say. It is the worst group that we could get to surprise, as we have to face two teams who are heavy favorites to win the whole competition, but if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best. Our first match is against LDLC and we think we are going to play on a standard map and that we will be ready for it. I think we can take down LDLC, I am personally more afraid of NiP. Planetkey are probably on the same level as we are. Generally, we have to play our A-game to go through group stage and I know it is possible.

Our recent article “Major problems” brought up multiple issues such as the online qualifiers (cheating, DDoS), inconsistent format (best-of-one groups) with very few matches, etc. What is your stance on the qualification system and the tournament format? How would you like to improve the majors?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: As TaZ mentioned in his interview, I would love to see the Dota 2 system in CS. It is the fairest system. I also think that Valve should consider hosting LAN qualifiers and even use part of the proceeds from stickers to cover the costs. That would be awesome and I think every player would love to attend those qualifiers without DDoS and stuff.

SZPERO is the most experienced player on the team 

Another big issue for debate right now is the CZ-75. Suggestions for it have ranged from altering its rate of fire and damage, to even making it an SMG while upping its price. Do you think it should be changed, and if so, how would you recommend Valve do it?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: I was a big fan of the CZ during its early days in the game, but now I am using it very rarely. It is a fact that the CZ forcebuys make the game more dynamic and emotional as you cannot be sure you will have an easy 3-0 lead after winning the pistol round, but I would actually remove it from the game and improve the Desert Eagle instead. It is not so bad as it used to be, but compared to 1.6 it is still total crap.

Obviously going into the event the favorites are fnatic and LDLC, but so far the favorites have never won a major. Is there someone else who you think could surprise us and win it all? Who do you expect to place in the top four?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: According to our practice results and from what we have observed, fnatic will win the event. I think that there is not a single team that can even take a map from them, actually. About the top four, I am not sure, in a best-of-one group system anyone can advance to the playoffs actually, but I expect to see fnatic, dignitas, Virtus.pro and Na`Vi/iBP in the semi-finals.

What do you make of this cheating scandal? Were you surprised players might have been cheating at tournaments, or did you expect it? Do you believe the players caught cheated in LAN tournaments, and do you believe more players cheated who simply haven’t been caught, yet?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: I was really surprised that you could cheat on LAN. I did not even know that you could buy some private cheat. Maybe KQLY was kind of suspicious to me, as he suddenly jumped into a top team, but he was great on LAN as well, but now that is not enough since we know you can cheat at offline events. Now I see some people that might have been cheating and I hope they are going to get caught right after DH Winter. No mercy for cheaters in any game.

Your team will be one of the youngest at the event in terms of average player age, and this will be the first big event for most of you. Is that a problem due to lack of experience? Your oldest and most experienced player is SZPERO who previously attended some bigger events in 1.6, what advice did he give you so far and how does having him help outside of the game?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: Indeed, this is going to be our first major tournament and we could not be more excited. We have all attended tons of events before, but none of them was this huge. Money was always the problem when minise and I were playing in MYM, we did not go to any event because it was too expensive. Luckily, we are in ESC now, and we will attend every possible event. Szpero is as excited as we are, and I do not think we need many advices. We just have to play like it is nothing, without stress, but I know that will be a very hard task for the young players.

rallen was accused by some opponents of cheating lately and was later put on the infamous "supex0 list", what do you guys have to say about all those allegations and what is the team's mindset about it?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: Rallen has always been accused of cheating in Poland, the same thing happened in 1.6. At one point I, too, thought that he cheated, but he played some excellent tournaments with his previous team, carrying them so hard that when Michu left us there was no doubt about who was going to be be the fifth player on our team. Supex0's list is bullsh*t since there are Virtus.pro players on it. That is not possible, trust me. I was maybe a little worried about rallen before the bootcamp, but he showed us that he is just a great player, far from 'onliner'.

TaZ mentioned that you guys helped them with their Cobblestone game, how exactly did you do that? How come you decided to add that map into your routine unlike many other teams, did it have anything to do with having to play it in EPS Poland or did you decide that before?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: We just played it a lot with them, it seems like they had no idea how to play this map and we were beating them hard on it, but after some days they were beating us, so I guess that is our contribution, they are ready to win on it against everyone. The thing is, we never practiced cobble, we do not even have any strats for it. We just like it. We decided not to remove it because of EPS Poland (which we pulled out from anyway). Maybe we will play it next season.

How do you envision the future of the Polish CS scene, with the G5 having been so far in front of everyone else for years, but now with you guys slowly but surely catching up - can there be more good teams from Poland? What did you guys do right to get this far that other teams aren't doing yet? And what can you do better to catch up to VP even more?

Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek: I think that we always had potential but we could not use it due to lack of experience or wrong approach to the game. If I had to choose one person that was responsible for the fact that we have a second really strong team in Poland, that would be Loord. Michu, minise and I learned a lot from him, we connected our personal skills with his experience, which we can now share with other young players like mouz, for example. He was playing in a top 10 team in Poland or something like that and he is now at DreamHack Winter. He is a great talent that did not waste his chance to shine. I am sure he will continue to shine. We need to attend a lot of events to catch up with all the top teams, and I believe we will continue to be one of the best 16 teams.

Paweł 'innocent' Mocek Age: 20 Team: ESC Rating 1.0: 0.91 Maps played: 94 KPR: 0.63 DPR: 0.69