After Cloud9 took the victory over Liquid in a domestic matchup, we had a short talk with Jake "Stewie2K" Yip and heard about what they did since their last LAN event.

The North American squad Cloud9 has one win and one loss so far at the ECS Season 4 Finals, after dropping a lead in the opener against Astralis and then 2-0ing Liquid on the second day.

Cloud9 are trying to add a different style before the Major

Shortly after his team beat Liquid, Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip answered questions regarding their LAN downtime, the off-season practice and their chances here.

You didn't play a bunch of LAN's recently, your last was the iBUYPOWER Masters, what were you doing in the meantime, what was the focus?

When tarik joined the team we struggled a little bit with in-game leading and we knew that he was kind of new to the role. During that time, when we had downtime between LANs, we tried to help him adjust to the way that we used like to call. We didn't want to shift it towards the way where we completely switch our style, we wanted to add it in as well so he is comfortable calling and he understands what to do.

We've been helping him a lot with that, so we are trying to add a new style before the Major and hopefully we can do that. And we are just trying to make him comfortable.

Now that the online stage of ECS finished, EPL finished, ESEA finished... In the past it used to be tough in NA to get good practice when the offseason starts. How is it now, can you still get good practice even though the leagues finished?

I think that practice is getting better and better when it comes to North America, I feel like the teams we play, they've been improving a lot. Even a lot of teams that aren't in Pro League, that play Premiere, I feel like they've improved a lot as well and that they are kind of catching up to the meta.

Tell me a bit about coming to this event, what were the goals and how is the team feeling?

We expected to make it out of groups here but we had a tough loss against Astralis and they beat FaZe, they are playing really well, so we kind of shot ourselves in the foot by not beating Astralis. I think that if we beat FaZe then we have a good chance of winning the finals, but if we lose we are obviously out. FaZe is the first step.

You mentioned the Astralis game, I think you started it 7-0 up, but they managed to have a very convincing win in the end. Can you tell me about that game and how it slipped away, in a way?

I think we gave them a little bit too much respect. When we were up 6-0 we played really fast-paced, we kind of won in a convincing manner. Now that we started playing a little slower and giving them a little respect they started pushing us, they started playing more aggressive, they got money for double AWPs and they started reading us really well. They brought it back on the CT side.

Our CT side, I think we struggled a little bit, we got eco'd, we weren't playing how we usually do. Giving them a little bit too much respect. I think that was the biggest problem for us.

The match we played now was obviously against Liquid. A domestic rivalry, what was the feeling going into the matchup?

Losing against Astralis on the first day kind of killed our vibe a little bit, but playing Liquid kind of revived us. We know that we always compete for the number one spot in NA and we know it's a big match for us to make it out of the groups, but I think it kind of spices it up even more when we know it's two of the best NA teams and both are trying to be the number one in NA. It meant a lot to us and I'm glad we closed it out.