Evil Geniuses Captain ppd: "I think we can beat anyone"

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

Evil Geniuses won their debut tournament this weekend with their new roster, taking home $10,000 at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Gaming conference in Austin, Texas. After losing to Cloud 9 in the winner's finals, EG came back through the losers bracket to sweep Team Liquid and force a rematch with C9 for the championship. Led by captain Peter 'ppd' Dager, EG took C9 to a full five games and eventually the title.

Prior to the event, Dager was interviewed on Live On Three about joining Evil Geniuses and how he plans to lead them as they go into the next wave of tournaments from ESL, DreamHack, MLG, StarLadder, and The International 2014. Dager says that not only is he fully confident in his team's abilities, but that they can take on the best teams in the world right now.

"As a team, I think we're really, really, confident. I think we can definitely beat anyone", Dager said. "I think I'm the type of captain that can win tournaments, and I think we have the type of team that can win tournaments."

Dager said the team, with both its young stars and experienced legends, is the right mix for the team going forward, with a lot of potential still to come.

"We have incredibly young players in Zai and Arteezy. I think, like our potential is just getting started, which makes me so confident in our ability to succeed. I think we're already pretty good, I just can't see us not improving. Zai is 16 years old. He's been playing support for two months now. He joined the team and switched his role. We have a ten year spread in our team, between Fear and Zai. 26 to 16. It's pretty crazy."

"I think we have incredibly talented individual skills players. I'm probably the weakest in individual skills in my team, which is awesome – so my team gets to carry, I just tell them what to do. I think we look at the game a little bit different than everyone else does right now, which is kind of an advantage for us. But it also works against us, like – people know that we're the team that gets the most Midases, that we farm the most and get the most gold, and it's all about if people can shut that down or not. But I do think we have the capability to adjust our playstyles and adapt many playstyles, which is crucial to win these big two-week-long tournaments."

Although still a young squad, Dager hopes to bring a major international Dota 2 title to the United States. Something which he believes previous teams were not ready to do.

"Honestly, in my opinion of previous American teams, I don't think they've been hungry enough to compete at the highest level. I don't think any of them have really wanted to win the way I want to win. I've been playing for three years – what do I have to show for it? I don't have that much. But I think this year would be a big year for me."

Dager expressed disappointment with The International 2014's current schedule to come just weeks after DreamHack, MLG, and ESL are scheduled, resulting in back-to-back-to-back tournaments. Dager says that teams experiencing fatigue and lack of practice is a real concern, and that MLG's Anaheim event is the most likely event to get the axe for them.

"I think it's really disappointing, because DOTA's so young and all the teams and players are so thirsty to compete against each other and be the best. Everyone wants to play in every single high skill tournament that has a high prize pool", he said. "All the teams want to play, not just like certain teams. It's getting to the point where teams are gonna have to start to choose which tournaments they want to play and I'm not sure DOTA fans are ready for their favorite or top teams to not be in certain tournaments. Right now DOTA fans watch every tournament because all the teams are always in them."

[Event fatigue] is a problem, and it has happened in DOTA before. I think Alliance really struggled over the last half of last year – there were like three tournaments in a row. I think it was Dreamhack Winter... there was the D2L LAN in Vegas... And there was one more tournament. And they really struggled because they didn't have time to practice and make up new strategies, and other teams just got ahead of them."

"[MLG] would be the tournament to skip if teams were to skip a tournament. If you skip that tournament, you can just stay in Europe straight from Dreamhack to ESL and then go to America for TI and you can worry about that jetlag when you get there. I think that would probably be the realistic thing to happen, especially since most teams are European."

Image Credit: Monster Gaming