Insider Gaming spoke to Tundra Esports’ Neta ’33’ Shapira at ESL One Birmingham 2026, as they prepare for their Upper Bracket Final vs Yandex.
33’s wide hero pool and reputation for adaptation have meant many commentators believe the patch favours the Offlaner, but what does 33 think as Tundra pursue their fourth trophy of the 2025/26 season?
I saw there was a patch, and I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m not sleeping anymore tonight.’
33 on the 7.41 patch
/how are you feeling at ESL One Birmingham?
I feel good, I guess. I haven’t gotten to play in front of the stage yet. So, so far it’s just been kind of chill.
But yeah, I’m excited to play on the stage.
Kind of a normal tournament except for the patch?
The patch definitely makes things more interesting, but I like it because we play so many tournaments all the time, and they all end up kind of the same. So it’s interesting that you have a patch now in the middle.
Maybe people don’t really know what’s wrong anymore. Yeah, it should be interesting.
Coming against Aurora, in the upper bracket, it felt like they had a lot of momentum. How did you stop them?
We didn’t do anything special. I guess we just came, we played our game, and I think we had a good matchup against them. Maybe our ideas of the patch were a little bit better. Maybe we just had the better form that day.
I think we won pretty convincingly because we threw the game too, but it was basically a win for us.
So yeah, we were confident and ended up well for us.
Do you feel like you have a good understanding of what they want to do and how to prevent it?
I wouldn’t say it’s like something special like that. Yeah, we know how they want to play, but at the same time, they know how we want to play.
We beat them also at DreamLeague, but again, it’s just how it goes sometimes. Maybe next time they’ll get us.
I wanted to ask about patch notes because one thing that I’ve heard everyone say is, ‘This is 33’s patch.’ Why do you think that people think that this will be a very good patch for you?
Honestly, I have no idea. We’ll see. I mean, Bat and Doom got big buffs, which are heroes I already liked playing last patch, but that also means they’re probably going to be banned every single game, so I won’t even get to play them.
Other than that, I don’t really know. We’ll see how it goes. When I was reading it, I didn’t feel like, ‘Yes, this is so good for me. Every hero I want to play got buffed.’
I didn’t feel like it at all. So we will see.
Speaking of heroes that got nerfed, we saw you play Largo against Aurora. Do you think he’s still obviously viable?
Yeah, honestly, it still felt really strong, but I had Alchemist giving me ags [Aghanim’s Scepter], so it wasn’t really a fair game, I guess.
So need to see how it will be, maybe without getting a 4k gold item for free. But I think it’s still fun.
How do you approach it when it happens mid-tournament? What does the morning after look like?
I woke up at like 4 a.m. I went to sleep before the patch came out because everyone kind of knew it’s going to come out, but I didn’t know when, and I didn’t want to stay up for it and ruin my schedule.
Then I just randomly woke up at 4am, I saw there was a patch, and I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m not sleeping anymore tonight.’ Yeah, I read the patch for like an hour, and I lost like four pubs in a row. And that was the morning after for me.
Were you just solo queuing?
Yeah, I solo queued at 6am, and I had two junglers against two junglers. That was a good 6am game…
Then I had a that went 0-10-0, and that was a good start to the day.
It must have made you very happy to get back to playing with your teammates then?
Yeah, for sure.
We’re here in the UK, and Ari is British. Would it be special to win ESL One Birmingham with him?
I think he really wants to win. Well, he always wants to win, but now I guess even more because for him it’s like a home tournament.
I hope we’ll be able to help him win.
How much are you looking forward to playing in front of the crowd?
Honestly, I don’t care at all about the crowd. No offense, but I’ve gotten used to it, and I don’t really care about it.
Well, that’s a testament to your career and how much you’ve achieved.
You can discuss ESL One Birmingham 2026 on our community Discord!
For more ESL One Birmingham interviews, see our interview with Aurora’s Nightfall.
Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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