Alimzhan ‘watson Islambekov is the spearhead of Yandex’s meteoric Dota 2 rise that has already secured them two Tier 1 trophies in the 2025/26 season.
Insider Gaming spoke to watson about the 7.41 patch, Yandex’s run at ESL One Birmingham, and what the team learned from Dmitry ‘DM’ Dorokhin’s successful stand-in showing at PGL Wallachia Season 7.
What’s your first feeling on the patch?
I don’t know, it felt kind of weird. Like we are playing. We played, I think last game in our group, and it’s a new patch, so we just read it all night and then just play.
I like some updates, but not in tournaments.
We saw you play Beastmaster in the Upper Bracket Semi Final. In terms of your own heroes, what are you kind of feeling? Do you feel like they’re in a good place, or do you feel like a lot of them got nerfed?
Some heroes got buffed. I played Beast because it was a good Beast game, but Beast got a bit nerfed, but I also played TB (Terrorblade), Ursa; Ursa is like fully the same, they didn’t touch Ursa.
But they buffed TB a bit, so I played TB, and I’m still trying to find some new heroes on carry.
Okay, so you know obviously next year you’re going to play against Tundra. How are you feeling about Tundra?
They are strong, but we are also not weak, so I think it will be an interesting match.
So speaking of like your own strength, I feel like you’re one of the best in the world, mechanically. Which players would you say stand out to you in terms of mechanics?
I think Satanic is pressing buttons very good. So yeah, Satanic.
You’ve stepped up very quickly to winning Tier 1 events. What kind of principles within the team make it so that you can make such rapid progress?
We have our discipline, structure, how we watch replays, how we prepare for games, how we like even we play pub before our officials.
Everyone should play pubs and we always try hard in pubs, so we don’t have these negative feelings after pubs, and then we play officials with a fresh head.
So you feel like taking pubs seriously has helped you focus on the actual games?
I mean we talked, I remember we had bootcamp before we won DreamLeague. We didn’t like try hard on pubs, everyone was screaming, and we started to play bad.
So then we made a rule that everyone should at least, maybe not full try hard, but at least not screaming in pubs, like not like, oh f**k this guy…
It can be hard to not tilt sometimes in pubs, right?
Yeah.
You’re playing with your full roster. Would it be bad for your chances at TI if you did not play a lot of events this year with your full roster?
It will be very hard, I think, if you miss one player. Every player is important in our team.
You won PGL Wallachia Season 7 with DM as stand-in. Is there anything you learned from DM?
From me, I’m not sure, because I played my game at Wallachia and I’m playing my game here.
Maybe the coach said to notice some maybe things about DM, what he did in-game, so the game was a bit easier, because DM was more experienced.
What kind of things do you think the coach picked up on from DM?
He was talking a lot and he was trying to connect very early. He’s not that greedy in game, so like in Wallachia, me and CHIRA had more space.
And DM was talking a lot, because I’m not talking before minute, I don’t know, 15 something like this.
DM was calling like non-stop early game, so yeah, maybe this.
Playing in front of the crowd, is that something you think is going to be good for the team?
I don’t know, but I think maybe we will be shaking a bit, so yeah, we will just try hard.
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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