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Hooch. Source: liquipedia.net

Hooch told how he helps select players for the new Cloud9 roster

Coach Dmitry "hooch" Bogdanov, currently assisting the Cloud9 organisation, explained his responsibilities within the North American club. In an interview with the portal "Cyber," he discussed his role in recruiting players for the new roster and elaborated on the process.

"Kostya [groove] asked me to help with scouting new players after three team members left. It was challenging for him to manage alone, so he brought me in. Kostya and I have known each other for a long time; he was my first captain and coach. Hence, I readily agreed to the offer, especially since I had often managed to find young players in the past. Now, of course, the system is different: it's much harder to find players because academy teams are always on the lookout and snap up everyone.

The bulk of the scouting work is done by groove and me, with Boombl4 and Ax1Le also playing active roles. Alongside other Cloud9 members, I propose candidates for specific roles: providing player descriptions, explaining how they can play, and assessing their suitability for certain roles; I also create psychological profiles of players when possible. After that, everything is handled by Kostya and manager Sasha."

Bogdanov also shared his thoughts on the changes to the major qualification rules, specifically the cancellation of open qualifiers for RMR tournaments in all regions except Asia.

"It's hard to choose words without swearing. This is complete nonsense. It destroys the ecosystem. We already have chaos in terms of structure in CS. Young organisations are closing because they can't qualify for majors.

The principle of sport should always be straightforward: anyone should be able to qualify for a major. Thanks to open qualifiers, we've seen many interesting teams. Now they're losing this chance.

Instead of implementing a proper anti-cheat system or at least hiring competent admins... Okay, there's no anti-cheat, but when you have one and a half admins overseeing the qualifiers for the year's main tournament, of course, cheaters will get through.

On one hand, Valve says it's moving away from franchise leagues to uphold the principle of sport. On the other hand, they're closing the qualifiers."

It's worth recalling that Cloud9 is rebuilding its Counter-Strike 2 roster after Denis "electroNic" Sharipov, Abay "HObbit" Hasenov, and Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy left the team in April. The club will form a new roster around the two remaining players—Sergey "Ax1Le" Rykhtorov and Kirill "Boombl4" Mikhailov.

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