[Patch 4.6] Twitch VU General Discussion - Page 109

Today we are forced to announce that on May 1st Alexey "Alex Ich" Ichetovkin made a decision to leave Gambit Gaming. In this statement we would like to clarify the given outcome.

Back in March 2014 Alex Ich got in touch with our management. The point behind his request was that he wanted to avoid constant flights that had a negative impact on his physical state and the time available for him to spend with his family. It is important to note that he didn't intend to leave our organization and to step aside from competitive League of Legends. Given his marital status, we decided to accommodate his request, and both sides began considering possible options. The only condition was that he will continue playing for our core roster until the conclusion of LCS Spring Split.

1) The primary option was to create a secondary Gambit Gaming roster with Alex Ich in charge of it. That would allow him to resume his gaming career as well as to develop upcoming players, while suffering minimal negative consequences. On top of that, Alexey could rejoin our core roster in case of a dire need in order to accomplish our formulated goals, to be more specific, to qualify to and to successfully perform at Worlds.

2) The most complicated solution was for Alexey and his family to move to Cologne. We don't want to overburden you with the details required to carry this option out, but it is manageable.

In the end, Alexey decided to leave Gambit Gaming. Our common journey has lasted for more than two years, and Alexey proved to be a top-notch player, his skills aided us in securing multiple victories. We would like to thank Alexey for his contribution to the development of our team and organization as well as to wish him luck in his future endeavours.

Statement by Alexey "Alex Ich" Ichetovkin:
"My time in Gambit Gaming has come to an end. I crave to tell you about the number of reasons that induced me to make this decision.

It all began one and a half years ago, after S2WC. At least, then I noticed the first changes, even though it could have begun much earlier. Suddenly we stopped listening to each other. Everyone considered himself to be grand and mighty, aware of all the in-game nuances. We didn't listen to advices from other lanes, because we considered ourselves kings in our respective roles.

Afterwards we lost our zeal. The exact same youthful zeal that accompanied M5's victories. Crazy dives, risky moves. We started playing like veterans, carefully and tediously. If only it yielded good results... But no, everything was getting even worse. Due to our lack of discipline and the lack of common opinion in our team, we stopped trusting each other in making moves and preferred to avoid taking risks.

Our attempt to hire an analyst yielded minor results: everyone in our team was so used to listening to himself that it was difficult and by no means immediate to embrace his suggestions. His role was important though: he provided an outsider's opinion, paid attention to our problems and tried to solve them with picks, realizing that it's impossible to alter our characters.

We had ignored a lot of his suggestions in our match against Roccat and have consequently paid for it.

In our match against Wolves I did what I could to assist the team in saving their spot at LCS, even though at that point I was already aware that our paths will split. Nevertheless, I did my best in these two games.

Over the past year Gambit has brought me only frustrations. After Katowice in 2013 we haven't showed anything of worth, as we were playing for playing instead of winning.

We have spent the past year in constant flight and travelling. We couldn't practice decently over the course of two days that we had between play days and flights. I have barely seen my family and didn't have a chance to spend time with them, since upon coming home I had to immediately commit to training: time is money. All of it has exhausted me and took away a lot of energy. I could deal with it as a long as we had good results. But since Spring 2013 our play was only getting worse and got worse to the point that we had to prove that we are worthy of an LCS spot.

Of course, it didn't come down only to flights, even though they played a significant role. We lacked motivation. You could easily notice that victories didn't bring joy as much as they used to. As I've said earlier, there was no zeal that is instrumental for winning.

Thanks to all of you who was supporting Gambit and myself. I did in fact wanted to win World Championship with a team that I was a part of for more than two years.

It ended up being like a family for me. It's hard for me to leave my friends, Konstantin and Edward - people who motivated me to play lately. Thanks to them for what they did for myself and Gambit. They are truly great people who deserve a lot of respect.

Sometimes you have to make a choice, a tough choice. I found the strength and the courage to make it now, even though I've been thinking about it for a while.

I might have been the weakest link and my departure may lead to Gambit winning the World Cup, who knows. Whatever happens is for the best, remember it."