"No[o]ne played rap from Kherson in a van!" 7 unknown stories about Virtus.pro

Virtus Pro's general manager Roman Dvoryakin shares some insight on Ramzes's transfer, meme “Excuse me, sir” and Lil's mortgage.

Ramzes's presidential suite

I was just starting to work with Virtus Pro: I arrived to french resort Biarritz. Anton Cherepennikov was having a vacation here, and guys from CS team were about to arrive here, followed by Dota guys. I wasn't too familiar with the players yet, so I had to take a reminder with me not to switch them up. Vova was first to come down to hotel lobby, followed shortly by Ramzes – who was euphoric after seeing his room. August is the highest season in Biarritz, which means hordes of tourists and little room left. Because of that, Ramzes managed to snag the luxury, almost presidential suite: two floors with breathtaking view on the Atlantic ocean. Guys went to this place like on a field trip.

Excuse me, sir!

After acquaintance we called a 6-seater taxi, which took insanely long to arrive. What arrived was a mini-van with backseats in the trunk. I and Ramzes were the smallest, so we had to take them. It was boiling, and I was asking the driver to turn on the AC as politely as possible: "Excuse me, sir! Can you turn on your air conditioning?". I kept repeating that like a broken record, but the driver simply ignored me. Ilya, Pasha and Vova started shouting: "Air conditioning! Air conditioning! Air conditioning!" as well. But the driver didn't manage to turn it on anyway. In the end Leha turned it on by himself. That's how we acquired our favorite inside joke: "Excuse me, sir!".

Ramzes's Transfer

– During my few months of work I still couldn't grasp the reality: looking at one of the best CS:GO players in the world, pashaBiceps, in real life. I can't forget the way we debated Ramzes's transfer with Team Empire, and how difficult it was. I was arriving to their office in Kuntsevo with our lawyers, and their lawyer kept telling me: "Roman, do you understand that we're discussing transfer of one of the most ambitious players in his position? There are no other people like that in CIS”. To think that a 17-year old boy is a subject of such backbreaking debates!

ArtStyle's request

– We met with Vanya in March of 2017. He lives in Charkov, which was about few hours drive to our bootcamp in Krasnodar. But because of certain political reasons, we had to abandon that mean of transportation. So in the end Vanya had to take a train to Moskow, and after that a plane to Krasnodar.  I was just returning from business trip and agreed to meet Vanya in the airport. To ensure that things go smoothly, I asked my wife to meet Vanya at the railway station and call an Uber for him.

I call my wife and ask her: ”Alina, everything OK? How's Vanya?” She says: ”Everything's fine, just one funny moment”. His first words after exiting the train were: “Can you buy cigarettes, please? I've got no rubles, just hryvnyas!”. I was impressed by Vania's calmness and quick thinking from the very beginning.  And the best part is that it wasn't your average high horse like: “don't bother me, I know what I'm doing”.  He was cool and polite, surrounded by aura of certain reliable confidence. Vanya is that person whose experience and victories you can respect. When he's saying something, you'd better be listening.

Karaoke in Boston

– In Boston, we were eliminated much faster than expected.  Discussed everything with our team, and on one of the last days found ourselves in Karaoke – Solo really wanted to come here, for some reason. Masha Ermolina, our host, was with us. She's a good singer and even used to work in karaoke club. I knew that, but our team had no idea.  So imagine this – we arrive to some average american karaoke, see some suspicious guys in cardigans howling something unintelligible. Masha comes on the scene and orders music. I turn around to see our guys with jaws on the floor. Masha sang a couple of songs, and some chinese guys came to us with a bucket of icy beer: “She's with you, right? Can she keep singing? Drinks on us!”. Tough luck though, not everyone was 21 years old.

Lil and mortgage

– Lil lived with his mom near Moskow, in an apartment they bought in mortgage. So, when ruble devalued, they took a big financial hit. But thanks to his performance on The International, Ilya managed to fully clear the debt.

Rap from Kherson 

–  After Summit 6 our guys went to bootcamp on Nvidia's office. The tournament was in Los Angeles, and bootcamp – in San Francisco. It was about 600 km journey, so we decided it would be cool to rent a van and travel with our whole team like this. It was a fun road, partly because Vladimir Minenko revealed his musical tastes to the team. When I went to meet with our guys after the road and asked how was the trip, they almost unanimously said: “Vovan pretty much shocked us. He played rap from Kherson, what in the world?”.

Author: Gleb Chernyavskiy