We sat down for a heart to heart with Team Tinker’s Dominik “Black^” Reitmeier, at StarLadder StarSeries XII. We talked about the TI invites, his ViCi Gaming history, differences in mentality between Eastern and Western players, his back-up plans in case his Dota career doesn’t work out.
According to Black^, Team Tinker is not expecting to get a direct TI invite: “I can only say for sure that EG is getting invites. We’re not expecting to get invited, we’re currently preparing hard for the qualifiers. Obviously, if we were to get invited, we’d be very happy about it, but it’s not something you can expect when you’ve only been a team for one month. In case we would be not be in the North American qualifiers, we would just all move to Europe for like a week or two, to take part in the EU qualifiers.”
When asked about why ViCi Gaming didn’t work out for him, Black answered:
When I got to VG, I was a very unaccomplished player. I don’t blame them for their decision. It seems to be working out for them, so I’m happy for them. (…) In China, we definitely practiced a lot harder. Most teams in the West don’t really care much about training. In China, we’d practice for eight hours, seven days a week. In the West, many players demand free days. It’s completely different.
Watch the StarLadder XII Black^ interview, in full:
Photo and production: Xander.Pictures
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