This interview was exclusively translated for SK Gaming by rekrut.ru’s active admin and reporter Andrey "Xeo" Yatsenko.

It sounds like you have a really nice staff for the NGL, which makes the work cool and fun! Many people call the year 2009 as the year of Changes. There have been a lot changes in the NGL system and while it may look very simple with 1on1 tournament and minor 3on3 team battle, do you think that you'll have much more work to do now?
As a head referee I have more work to do, that's for sure. The amount of matches will increase too, but - as you guessed - I have a really great and well-rehearsed staff team so I don't think we will have any problems with the daily business.

How hard is it in general to keep up such league as NGL? How many admins do you have and *attention, here comes the question-that-one-would-like-to-know!* if they earn any money for their hard work?
We don't talk about money, do we? To keep up the daily business for such a league is in general not very hard. Normally you have smart players and a team manager who just do their business and play games. But sometimes you have problems with the hosts or the teams/players are angry about your decisions, delaying the match for hours. That can get on your nerves if you are not used to these problems. But as I said my staff is very experienced to handle this.

Now there will be basically no organizers for players in the solo competition. It is no secret, that some players are not the best managers even of their own and some problems in terms of scheduling, postponing, turning up for matches may occur. Did you think about these problems and if you did, how are you going to cope with that?
I don't think there will be any "solo-agent" when the league starts. Every player will have an organizer (orga) behind his back. Furthermore these guys are almost all professional players. So they should be able to arrange match dates. If they some have problems with even things like that, maybe they are not professional enough for NGL ONE.

In previous seasons you had fines from the prize pool for those teams that earn penalty points. Will this system be implemented in the upcoming season as well? and if so, how will it scale with the two NGL formats - solo and team battle?
With participating in the NGL and NGL ONE they agree to our rules and regulations and in return they can win a lot of money. If they break a rule why should we give them the same amount we would give a team which didn't break any rule? It would be unfair for the other teams. The detailed list of penalties will be released together with the rules and regulations for the upcoming season.

That sounds reasonable and good motivation for conscious play. Let's move to the 1on1 competition. Six invitees are announced, two to come. Can you tell us how did you pick players who got the direct invite and those who get into the community pools?
Yes sure, I printed pictures of hundred random professional players, pinned them on my wall throw a dart and..... We had a pool of about 20 players who absolutely deserved it to get a direct invitation to the NGL ONE. Than we looked up at who had performed the best in the past year and specifically their performance in the NGL one finals. We definitely didn't want one race to be favored over others as well and had to keep in mind the equilibrium. That's why for example WhO wasn't directly invited even though he played impressive on the last finals. After the six direct invitations it was easy to appoint the 12 Community-Vote-Players.

About the last 2 invitations, can I assume you are going to invite two players who did the best in the qualifiers but still didn’t manage to qualify?
Yes, that's exactly our train of thoughts. In the past you always had some players who performed really great but dropped out due to for, example a bad matchup but really deserved it to participate in the league. In the NGL ONE we don't want to exclude players who just had bad luck in the qualifier.

The number of times a player can try to get into the league is limited right? Can a player who didn't qualify in the 1st or 2nd qualifier play the 3rd?
Yes, this is possible for sure. We have 13 players in the Community Vote, nine won't get voted. If they all play the first qualifier only four could qualify. If the other five weren't able to get another chance it would be really stupid. We want the 24 world's best players in the NGL ONE and if they need three chances to qualify it's fine for us.

What about those, who are not in the Community Vote list and won't get direct spot in the qualifier? How hard will it be to apply for a qualifier and if they will need to do it for every tour?
If the players you are speaking about belong to the top 50 players in the world they won't have problems to play at least one qualifier. But with 32 slots only we can't make a first come first serve qualifier for sure. Every player will have the chance to apply for the qualifier and I will pick the top 32 out of this applications.

More about 3on3 team battle format. The first question that comes to the minds of every fan from Eastern Europe - how come there are 3 Russian teams are in the same group?
That was really surprising for me. I had three pools: the two NGL TWO teams, the two from the upper bracket of the qualifier and the two from the lower bracket. I drew them in one group. I didn't even recognize that all three teams from group A were from Russia before I read the news on a German scene site which had flags before the teams. But I mean there was a 50% -- 50% chance to have two or three Russian teams in one group so it's not that surprising.

Now let's go to the invited teams - the list is very decent but the only question that may arise is concerning Serious Gaming. As far as I know, it's only Rotterdam and DowaQ who represent the flags of srs - this obviously isnt enough to play in NGL 3on3. Would you please comment?
What about Neytpoh and Kowi? But if they won't have enough players at the beginning of the league they will be replaced for sure. Like every team without enough players.

What is the policy against drop outs? Because that's the worst thing ever for both the league and spectators. And now we don't speak about srs alone.
We will handle this as the case arises. If a team drops out for example on the second playday, I'm kinda sure we will replace them. If a team drops out at the end of the regular season it will probably get handled like in the past. But you always have to look on the circumstances, there is no panacea for every case.

Can you tell us about next seasons playoffs, prize money and its distribution, please?
The NGL ONE will have 17,500$ in prize money. Eight players will participate at the offline-finals. The distribution isn't official yet, but I can tell you that the first will get a fat lump of money. In the NGL the amount of prize money is 3,000$ recoverable at the online-finals.

Before we end the most interesting question about the NGL which you highlighted to me, the decision was to appoint the 12 Community-Vote-Players. But on your page it shows 13 players and not 12, how come?
On a Chinese tournament some days ago a little Russian player we hadn't on our list played somehow really impressive. So just some hours before we started the Community Vote, we decided to enlarge the number of players to thirteen. We hadn't even the chance to inform him before like we did it with every other player. And now he is leading with such an advance. A good decision, wasn't it to make someone “Happy?”

Source: Xeo from rekrut.ru