HLTV 2018 rating: interview with electroNic

Denis «electroNic» Sharipov takes the fourth place in the HLTV rating!

HLTV reporters interviewed  Denis «electroNic» Sharipov about his fourth position in a yearly HLTV ranking. Denis spoke about the early stage of his career and his first teams, about the period in FlipSid3, as well as about his performance in 2018.

— Rolling back to the start. Unlike many young talents of today, you didn't make a name for yourself through FPL, you started with local LANs in Kazan and built on from that. How was that like, how old were you when you started playing CS and competing?

— The emotions and experience gained were incredible for that age, as when I started playing at events I was only 11 years old! In the first two years, I lost at all the events in my city, but I always have goals that I aim to achieve.

— You played your first HLTV matches for ACES at the CIS LAN Championship and ended third, behind HellRaisers and FlipSid3. How did you look at that achievement at the time? And how come you didn't stick to that team, which was lead by hooch?

— Hah, that tournament was funny. In the first day, we were close to elimination, which meant that on the second day we had no room for mistakes - if we lost to any given team, we were out. Thankfully we started demonstrating our game and had a deep run in the tournament, or so it felt at the time. I was upset with our loss to HellRaisers, because I thought that on that day we were stronger than them. After that tournament, the team experienced internal tensions, and I had a falling out with hooch, which contributed to my subsequent decision to leave the team.

— You spent a year in Rebels - Empire - NokSuKao, playing online, for the most part, barring two Minors and a Major qualifier. Those were teams full of unestablished players, mostly playing online, a lot of roster changes… What was the experience like? Was there something you learned during those days that you didn't know before, that helped you down the line?

— At the time we seemingly demonstrated decent results, but we were always missing that little something. Our organization and manager frequently made decisions concerning the roster without consulting the opinion of players. Every time this happened we had to reconstruct from the ground up, leading to wasted time. It was then that I truly realized how important it is to play with a stable quintet, something that has helped me to this day.

— Coming from those teams into B1ad3's FlipSid3 - how big of a jump was that? Both in terms of opposition you played and the way the game was approached, was it a difficult adaptation?

— If I’m honest, I knew and was totally convinced that I need to join the team and play under his leadership. B1ad3 has undoubtedly taught me a lot, and I am very grateful for this. He gave me a knowledge that allowed me to be as flexible a player as I can be.