Interview: The Story Of Snappi
Our partner GamerPay recently had the opportunity to speak with Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer. Building on the interview and incorporating numerous quotes, we'd like to tell the story of the 31-year-old Dane, who qualified for his second Major on October 9th, 2021. More on that in a moment.
Snappi's career
The start of his career dates back to 2008 and therefore four years before the release of CS:GO. Snappi played in various teams in this time and already attended his first S-Tier events, such as the IEM IV European Championship Finals in January 2010. Snappi was an emerging talent, but when CS:GO was released he already was 22 years old, which caused him to rethink at that time.
Since his return to Counter-Strike, Snappi has been a stable name on the professional scene, participating in a total of approximately 120 S to C-tier tournaments. Of these, he won 11 in total. However, he is yet to win an S-Tier event. To the question if he is already satisfied with his career he answered:
His biggest event so far was probably the FACEIT Major: London 2018 with OpTic Gaming. As a spectator, however, he was attending every major since 2015. The victories on the part of Astralis were special for him.
Another crucial point in his career
After Snappi, along with the entire lineup, was benched at the end of 2020 at c0ntact Gaming, the next unclear phase of his career began. Snappi described this time about a year ago as a moment in which he might have even given up without new offers.
"After c0ntact I would have probably given up, but luckily I got three offers, one of them was from ENCE.”
Together with Spinx, however, the 31-year-old Dane decided to move to ENCE and lead another international lineup as IGL. How does communicating in English effect the teams performance?
However, the newly formed team did not have an easy start and was finally completed in June with the signing of Olek "hades" Miskiewicz. Unlike many others, the team around captain Snappi therefore did not receive any points out of the previous year in the RMR-cycle and ENCE was also not qualified for the first RMR-event of this year, Flashpoint 3. At IEM Fall it consequently came down to EVERYTHING for the multinational team. The pressure was great, but the team exceeded all expectations and took the sensational second place. ENCE therefore finished fifth in the overall RMR ranking and qualified as "Challenger" for the PGL major in Stockholm.
On the question if this lineup is perhaps the best he has ever played in, Snappi replied:
Which role does age play?
The average age at ENCE is currently 24.8 years, with Snappi in the role of the veteran. However, the Dane is not thinking about retiring by any means.
However, the main challenge for Snappi will be to prepare his players for their appearance at the biggest event of the year. Hades and Spinx are both 21 years old, and for the Israeli, IEM Fall was the very first LAN event in his career.
Snappi on the latest updates
Shortly before the last RMR event, IEM Fall, valve decided to release a significant update. Alongside countless new skins, the M4A1 was improved and the utility was changed, among other things. Snappi on the M4 update:
This statement definitely hints that Snappi was not necessarily satisfied with the update and would like to see a balance between the two weapons.
Also the new way of handling utility is not quite to his taste:
Five final questions:
Favorite international CS:GO players:
Neo, f0rest, ZywOo
Dream Lineup:
“Gla1ve (IGL), ZywOo (AWP), f0rest, Neo, NiKo, can´t pick s1mple because of ZywOo”
Favourite Map:
“Nuke, it has the most tactical depth”
How many hours are you investing in mental and physical training at ENCE?
“I´m doing sports from time to time, playing soccer. I walk around 5-6 kilometers daily. We don’t have a mental coach at ENCE right now, but I´m looking forward to get one."
Is there a team that is going to surprise at the Major?
“Well I hope we can, it would still be a surprise if we go far despite our result at IEM Fall. I think Virtus.Pro can surprise, they have LAN proven players and could go far.”
A montage of the entire video can be found on GamerPay's Youtube channel: Snappi Interview.
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