WinOut

With a WCG gold medal at the Pan-Am games in 2008 as well as a 3rd at Extreme Masters III LA Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert has been firmly in the spotlight of North American CS as one of the premiere players of the region.  Thanks in part to his highly lauded movie "n0thing but headshots" the Californian has built himself a following, and joined by some legends from the pre-CGS era of 1.6 he has his sights set on making 2009 and beyond the most successful period of his CS career.  Be that as it may, with EG.usa struggling against the international field at the EM III global finals and crashing out of the kode5 USA qualifier there are plenty of questions for n0thing to attempt to answer.

The Frag Dominant team which beat you at the kode5 qualifier had 4 of the same players as the line-up you played with at the same qualifier in 2008.  Were you surprised that team gelled so quickly for that event?  How did your team go from being in the driver's seat up 12-3 to being completely dominated on the CT side and unable to hold the catwalk area?

Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert:  Well like you said it was pretty much the same line-up as the previous kode5 with quas in for me.  And quas having played with them for months prior to their latest roster change before that event made it pretty easy for them to already be on a pretty similar page.  Yeah that loss was pretty dissapointing.  As we showed first half it's pretty easy to dominate T side on de_dust2 if you can get a good flow on the other team and just work it the whole half.  When we switched over to CT we planned on getting 4 rounds some way or another, even though we knew our CT wasn't that strong, we weren't thinking about that at the time obviously.  After going down about 6-0 we basically fell apart at A and they did the same strat about 8 gun rounds in a row and we became POD bots for them to kill.

What was the thinking in playing A so passively as you did at times?  Was that pre-planned based on how you thought Frag Dominant would play or did someone make a bad decision that you just rode out?

Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert:  Well we originally had an idea behind the passive setup, but we were persistent with it because we felt the first few rounds we lost using it were for other  reasons.  Then a few rounds later we had a good chance to take the momentum by getting an early tradeoff at long, but still lost the 4v3.  After that we basically only had one more chance to tie/win it, and that round I believe was the one where I was out in the open at A holding a flash out not realizing that a player was already up catwalk.  After he picked me he got to top A quick and was able to control the round for them.

Against x3o your opposition seemed to constantly come out on top of every situation, so while you were necessarily being raped you were coming up short almost every time.  A couple of significant key rounds a) were losing a 4v1 against ninespot which swung the match to 6-2 in their favour instead of 5-3 and b) On the T pistol round when you accidentally killed your team-mate and then lost a 1v1 with the bomb planted against an opponent who was trapped in the vent.  Was that your standard kind of approach to the latter situation or would you typically have tried to force him to defuse?  How did you see the flow of that game going?

Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert:  In the situation vs. mehLer, I forget exactly why, but I was pretty sure he was low to begin with, and once I knew he was waiting for me in the vent I was 99% positive that I would be able to finish him while he was stuck there.  Of course, maybe another time I would have fell back after my first peek and tried to draw him into me, but when you're in those situations you just have to follow your instinct and try to make the smartest move possible.  We started out the CT pistol round with a few kills gaining the number advantage and then lost the round.  Then from there on out the tempo of the match strongly resembled that of our CT side dust2 vs. Frag Dominant, not much energy in our communication which basically resulted in the loss of so many mid-game rounds.  A lot of times we would trade kills then it would become a 3v3 and we were basically always in the wrong spots to secure the round. Most of the time it was something like us being cluttered in upper or something, forcing us to make moves that werent thought through very well.

In the game against crack-clan on de_train at the EM III global finals you played quite well individually but seemed to be having one of those games where your kills weren't having a huge impact on the actual results of rounds.  You also were making a number of comments and calls to your team-mates, trying to anticipate how crack would play the next round.  How much has that kind of reading element been a part of your game within this EG line-up and was it specific to that opponent in that you thought you had a good handle on them or is it more general than that?  How frustrating was that match individually and in terms of your team's difficulty in controlling the CT side?

Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert:  Well, a natural habit I have is to try to break down my opponents' defense, and as a more aggressive player doing so helps me learn how I can use my play style more effectively for the match at hand.  Well as far as it being an element, it's more just part of my game, and if I ever feel that I can help the half of the match by giving my input, I'll speak up to the rest of the team.  It didn't have to do with just them, the only real thing I remembered from watching them was probably how their inner guy liked to play early in the round.  The rest came from just the few gun rounds we played before I started typing out ideas.

CT side was frustrating because we got up 4-0 and had a pretty good money sitatuation on the rise then they started abusing our inner and Matt was having trouble adapting to them.  After that we just played pretty sloppy, losing a few rounds that we definately shouldn't have lost on CT side.  Most notably when I flew up ladder in the ladder room and took out 2 early, then getting stuck on the ladder and trying to ask my teammates for help causing us to sloppily lose the round.  Then the last round vs. lurrpis where he won a 1v3,  prior to him winning that I accidently dinked Matt (warden) to 5hp, then lined up with Danny (fRoD) leaving Matt in a 1v1 with a deagle and 5hp.