When and where were you born ?
I was born 1985 in the city Karlstad, located in the western part of Sweden. I still live in this city together with my mum and dad.

How different is the life in Karlstad compared to other parts of Sweden
Sweden is in swedish measure a pretty big city, with about 85 000 citizens. The life here is pretty much the same as the other major cities in Sweden. Of course there are some different, we speak with our own dialect and I would say people here is abit more friendly and calm comparing to Stockholm for example.

How were you as a little kid, were you active in sports ? ( pre-teens )
I think I have always been very competitive, not that I can´t take a defeat but I really like when you can compete in something. It can be everything from playing Monopol or of course play soccer which i did til I was 16 and discovered Counter-strike.
Soccer was my main sport, but I played floor-ball and golf aswell. Today I´m unfortunatly not that active with sports which I will try change in the near future

How does your family look like ( parents, brothers, sisters ) ?
A typcial Swedish family, as I said I live with my mum and dad(still). And I have a an older brother which has moved out.
And ofcourse i have to add, we have a lovely cat too!

How was it to grow up in your family ?
Very nice I would say, my parents has always like taking the family for journeys which is one of my biggest interest. I just love to travel, so my pro gaming career fits me well with all the travels there in.

What school did you go to and which majors did you take ?
I´m not sure that the school system works the same as in the US, but here you have to go to school until you are fifteen years old, and after that you can decide to go to upper secondary school which I did. I decided to study computer science, but I pretty much found out now that I don´t want to spend my life working with networking and trouble shooting. But the studies made me prepared to choose
further studies such as universities, but I´m pretty happy with my current situation and I´ve no plans on starting uni yet.

Were you a good student or did you care more about having fun outside of school ?
I would say I had a easy time studying, I didn´t pay much attention to it but I managed to get pretty decent grades. And yes, I have to admit the gaming could be one of the reasons I didn´t paid much attention.
Did you practice sports during your teens ?
I played soccer til I was 15, it was during this time I found out that I didn´t enjoyed spending time training so I decided to quit. But I love soccer, it´s by far my favourite sport, one of the best things in life is to watch Sweden play the World cup, I enjoy it so much.

How serious were you about sports, did you practice on your own, or worked out for it or maybe was on a diet etc ?
Well, I guess I was like everyone else, dreaming of one day be able to play professional. But I was also like everyone else who couldn´t forfill this dream. But I was pretty serious, I went to all training sessions and did my best and tried to play on my spare time aswell.

What do your parents/friends/girlfriend think to your gaming lifestyle?
I would say that all people who stand close to me accept my decisions. I mean, it´s pretty cool to be able to live on this and be able to see abit of the world at the same time. However, I can´t be doing this forever but as I said as long as I enjoy it and my family and friends supports me I see no reason for quit.

Have you had to cut back on social activities because of gaming?
I don´t want to call it that, of course I have to practice sometimes when my friends do other things. But also, I think i´ve been a more social person by playing this game, I´ve met many persons which I would never met if I decided to not play. In the end of the day I think all my decisions in life have been good so far, I dont regret a thing.
(this is for the Have you had to cut back on social activities because of gaming question"

What do you prioritise first; Gaming or Socialising?
A balance of both I have to say, my dear teammates are very understanding and we respect each other. So if I want to do something else, like going to club with friends they would respect that. I just can´t see why you can´t be a social gamer, you just have to try find balance between both.

Can you drive? Do you have a car?
Yeah I have driving licence but unfortunatly I don´t own a car. At the moment I don´t find that necesary neither I just borrow my parent cars if I need it.

What are your favourite brands for clothes ?
To be honest i´m not that guy who goes for specific brands, and i´m not that into design or fashion neither. To be honest I get stressed by the thought of buying clothes. However I have to do it sometimes and I just buy what I like, it can be anything from monarchy jeans to a non brand t-shirt.

What is the most expensive piece of clothing you have ?
Hmm maybe a pair of jeans for 350$. But I seldom buy clothes more expensive than 200$

If you are at a club do you dance or just stand around chat and move your body a little ?
Believe it or not you probably find me at the dance floor. I love to go out have fun, but you would never find me on a dance floor sober, that just aint me!

When you were little did you idolise a singer or an athlete like Micheal Jackson or Wayne Gretzky ?
If I have to choose between your examples I would say number 99 and the one and only W.Gretsky. Even that I didn´t played ice hockey I love to watch him and his awesome skills.
I said I like soccer, but I think i´ve never really had a idol there.

Daily Routine

What is your typical daily routine (Gaming and Non-Gaming days)?
We usually play Sunday-Thursday, so we can consider this days as gaming days. I go up about 1 pm try to fresh up with some food(after approximatly 10 hours sleep) if the car is home Friday and Saturday are our "free days", these days seldom look the same, maybe I go to club with my friends, or just relaxing.
I often go to city to meet friends, if not I play some public or aimmaps. The practice starts about 6pm, and we play scrims til 11pm, after that I might play some poker or watch movies.
Gaming
When did you first get in contact with computers ?
on´t remember the exact dates, but let´s say when I was 12 years old. The game I played before CS was Quakeworld CTF, I was acually pretty good on that!

Do you have any good memories from consoles like Nintendo or Sega ?
Oh yes, of course I had these console machines before I start using the computer. If I remember right, i had Sega Master System 8 bit. And I overplayed the game "Alex Kid" which you can consider as the SEGA´s Mario Bros

Why did you buy a pc ?
I think it worked as everything else did during your younger years, you find out that one friend own a PC, and you told your parents that "everyone else" has one so you also should.

What were the other games you played on a pc ?
Quake, Duke Nukem, Warcraft 2 and Starcraft which I still enjoy playing.

When did you get in contact with CS ?
I think when I was about 15-16 years old, the nerds if you can call them that played it in the school and I found it intresting so I start playing and became a nerd myself.

Tell us how your first few times went when playing CS, did you have allnighters or teamkilled a lot because you didn’t know who were the good guys etc etc ?
Haha not really, since I played Q1 CTF before I was abit into this what you are calling teamplay. I think i adapted the game pretty fast, but I really remember I enjoyed the zoom weapons that days. I barely went eco rounds til i could afford an awp.
These days I seldom played the AWP, but back in the days I consider myself very good with the sniper rifles.

Did you enjoy playing publics just running around and fragging ?
First I just played public, but after a while I started my own clan and start challenging other teams on the old school "Clanbase Ladder". I think I played my first CB matches 2001.

Did you just play matches with your first team or were there already training sessions with tactics etc ?
The game back in the days didn´t looked the same as today, when I start playing matches you didn´t play Chargers only, you played with timelimit. And the tactics was very trivial, if they even excisted.

How long did it take before you were the better player in the team or were you never the better one ?
In my first clans I think I was the best by far, I think I had the most motivation at this time to practice much.
However the skill level today is way higher than 2001 and you have to just accept that if you don´t perform well you jeopardize your spot in your team. But what has helped my career is that I´ve been a ingame leader since day one, and there aren´t many good ingame leaders today so i would say that´s why I still play on this level.

How soon did you get to know about eSports and major events with money ?
I think when the first Swedish teams attended the CPL. It was under this time a new dream was born, to be able to play in this league in future. I attended my first CPL 2004 with Gamers.nu with pretty bad results, but still I was happy that I could attend this prestigious tournament.
Today the scene has become bigger, and there are many events you can attend. Today my gaming dream is to win the ESWC

Did this change your playing habits when hearing about this or did it take a while for you to realise that it was closer than you thought ?
To be honest I didn´t thought about the professionalism, it was more of gaining respect as player. What i´m trying to say; I just wanted to become a successful player one day, not earning cash from it.
But today it´s another world, I just turned 22 and I can´t just blind myself from the fact that you need money to live.

When you started playing CS did you ever feel a bit embarrassed for spending all that time behind the PC ?
Nah not really, but to be honest I don´t really try to brag with my current occupation as pro-gamer. Cause generally older people will never accept gaming as a real sport, for them it would be ok to say you are a soccer pro, but not CS pro.
I consider myself successful, so I don´t regret or feel embarrassed about the time i´ve spent in front of the PC.

What hardware did you start playing with ?
Some early stage optical mouse with bad polling rate. During the first year I was a poor student so I couldn´t really afford buying stuffs, so I had to attend tournaments in my city to be able to win new hardware such as mice and mousepad.

Were there any people that influenced your gaming career and how?
In a way there is much luck about being successful in whatever thing you want to do. I think you have to get in touch with the right people to be able to grow as player/person, I had lucky I was picked up by ArchAngels, it was my first good clan. So this guy "Raphael" who trusted my skills I have to thank today, cause maybe my route would have been different if he didn´t.

When did you start taking notice of your HZ, FPS etc ?
Pretty late, I´ve never consider myself as a player relying on settings and equipment, but back in the dates it was pretty ridiculous.
I played with a mousepad from AMIGA era(1980´s) and a bad optical mouse, my computer gave me about 60 FPS and I didn´t knew you could change your Hz on monitor.
But after getting to know more skilled player they teach my those things and of course I improved from this

Did you ever ask other players for advice or for some training ?
ot really, but of course I watch demos of the players who was consider as the best. And sometimes I was cocky and tried to challenge them for aimmap or matches, but I was pretty unknown at that time and I don´t blame them for ignoring me.

Do you think you were talented or did you just play quite a lot and on a high level ?
I think I was talented, but I also think I had the right way to approach the game. I just loved the game, or well i still love it. But I can´t see players will reach their goals if they don´t enjoy playing the game.

Is there any scene or match which you remember from your early days when you weren’t known yet ?
I remember my first official match with ArchAngels, it was a lousy online leaugue without prizes but I was sooooo nervous it made me shake and not be able to play my a-game. Of course we lost it but, that is one of the matches I remember.
I also remember some Rendezvous(famous CS lan in sweden) when I went with my IRL friends and just owning etablized teams,i went like 20 frags each half, and during this time you played MR 12 and without +3 frags for plant/def

What made you decide to build up a career in gaming?
As I mentioned before I didn´t decide to go for a career in gaming, it just turned out this way. My goal has, and hopefully will always be to have fun.

What do you think of 6th man rotations? Do you feel this is healthy for a world-class side and who do you feel, if anyone, is going to be held back as the 6th if you recruited another member?
I will never believe that a 6th man rotation will be more useful than 5 man rotation, to be successful as team you need good team spirit and good relationship with each and every player in your team. It´s only 1 more player, but I would say there is 100 times harder to get this bond you can get when you are a team of 5.
What do you feel it takes to become a real phenomenom of success in eSports today? Do you have it and most importantly do you feel your team has it?

What do you feel it takes to become a real phenomenom of success in eSports today? Do you have it and most importantly do you feel your team has it?
If I have it? I hope so! At least I know my team has it, we having so much fun together and everyone is adding their special attributes to the team which makes us good. The most important for a team to be successful I think is to have fun together and build up good team spirit, if you succeed in this you will have an easier time practising together and travel together in harmony.

Describe each of your teamates in three words?
dsn: Monster Awp/Zerg
archi: Fast AK47 clown
ins: Best LAN deagle
forest: Best in world

What for you makes CounterStrike the game you play? Why Counter Strike and not others?
I like the teamplay aspect, you win/lose as a team. I would say Counter-strike is the electronic soccer, I mean many of the aspects in soccer you can easly find in the CS, except you don´t burn as many calories while playing CS

How does it make you feel to see another professional player cheat?
Fortunatly this isn´t happening on daily basis, but I can´t respect a player which is caught with cheating. It´s their decision yes, but they can´t never believe that people will ever trust them again.

How would you deal with cheaters?
I´ve no idea, maybe we should deal with them the same way as they would be dealt if CS was a real sport, forbid them to attend major tournaments.

What is your view on female gamers and in particular female CS gamers?
I look at CS as a sport, so of course CS should be seperated in male and female gaming.

Well this is end, I thank you for this interview; bye bye and have nice day