American star player reinforces Brazilian roster

While Europe and Asia are well-known for their DotA achievements, South America lacks some history. Possibly, that's about to change.

Brazil, the country that holds most of the DotA players in South America, has almost no international recognition. Their largest achievement was entering MYM PriDe's phase 2, the most recent team to have done so: Detachment, around april 2008, in MYM PriDe #10.

Months have passed and sponsors came. Multi-gaming took its place in the DotA scene. The counter-strike powerhouses created DotA sub-divisions and hired the best players there were. These elite-teams were then recognised as the best in the country. Things started to change when an international signing happened.

Jason 'Ken-' Wong, former mainLine player - also known as iceiceice, as a form of idolization of singapore's star player - recently joined CNB-Gaming, currently the best ranked brazilian team.

Gosugamers got an exclusive interview with Ken- regarding his recent transfer.

Hello, Ken-! Well, let's start from the beginning: Can you summarize all of your dota achievements/career details before joining CNB?
I've been playing competitive dota for about a year or two. For 2009, 4th in cevo-pro, 5th in cevo-pro season 2, Cal-o 2nd, IDEC earthleague 4th, 1st in Cevo holidays, 1st in USA American qualifiers and 4th in playoffs.

How did you join this Brazilian powerhouse?
It was rather a rush/risky but paid off decision from me, our team M| disbanded like 1/2 weeks ago when real life issues plus some internal problem between certain teammates occurred. And then when the decision was officially made, I decided to join a non-American team as we all know the American teams always have roster changes every 2/4 weeks. And to solve the time zone difference issue, I looked toward south American teams and CNB came to mind. I talked to their manager kzO and that's how it all started.

Taking into account the fact that not all players in CNB can speak English correctly, how do you and your team communicate?
Actually, 3 of them can speak English pretty decently. The 1st few games were rather difficult, mainly due to me not recognizing which voice is who etc (I still can't differentiate now though). But I told them afterwards that from the next games onwards, just call my name in vent 1st and use simple words like go, miss, back, tp, etc.

Regarding international DotA, do you think CNB can achieve some higher places than previous Brazilian teams did?
To be honest and no offense, I'm a bit unfamiliar with the south Smerican scene or the previous Brazilian teams. But I know for sure that there're a couple of south American teams that we see in dota pride (sick, LAB etc) that deserve more credit. As for CNB, we are currently in CMStorm, PL and BEL etc and I believe there will be a lot of surprises from us in the international scene in the near future.

Any shoutouts?
Shoutout to NgJianYang from MJC, team EDGE (dshady, power.net, nano, etc), Former M|, brax, bulba, phinx, black, link, durum, yulath (wf), and those people that I played with in SAP, kevinsalu2 from venezuela, my team CNB and GG-khev !! :D

Thanks for the interview, Ken-, and best of luck to you and your team!

CNB-Gaming is currently playing CMStorm, Pick-League and some brazilian leagues, and is expected to be one of the international surprises. One might see a lot from this team in the next few weeks, particularly when a name like Ken-'s is building up strength for the tag.