An Interview with Tapout

I wanted to do more interviews as I felt that as a community we weren't really highlighting the characters and people that populate it. One person I felt should have some spotlight is no other than Max 'Tapout' Anders, who is part of the former dzs Black Ops team.

A genuine nice guy, you would struggle to find a person that'll say a bad word about him. I had the pleasure of meeting him at EGL Manchester when his team came over for the event, and despite missing one of their crucial players, there was no excuses made by him or his team when they got knocked out in 5th/6th place.


I sat down for a quick chat with Max to talk about everything to do with his team, his life in gaming and of course how angry his girlfriend was that we were hijacking time with him.



Emotion: Can you introduce yourself to Decerto?

Max: My name is Max Anders and I am 19 years old. I was born in Ireland but live in Hamburg (Germany) since I was 1 year old. At the moment I go to school and make my "Abitur", I think you would call it my college grade.



Emotion: Can you tell us an interesting fact about yourself that no one in the gaming world knows?

Max: In order to compete in Judo Championships I had to take hormone drugs in order to make me taller. I only stopped last year but altogether I grew 12cm.



Emotion: That's an interesting fact. Would you take any drugs to help you game better?

Max: No, never. To be honest I even can't understand sport athletes who do performance enchancing drugs, I had to take mine so I was healthier in general and not just for Judo. When I fought my tournaments U did it for me and I did it to be proud of me and if someone wins because he takes drugs he didn't win fair.



Emotion: You recently joined back to the former dzs squad and helped them win the first major online tournament which was the My Liga SteelSeries Challenge. Why did you originally leave the team and why did you rejoin?


Max: I didnt enjoy playing MW2 and I became worse at school and I also had a lot of problems with my girlfriend so I decided to quit gaming to get my life sorted again. Shortly before the release of BO I decided to comeback and to give it a try. This game is not CoD4 but it is much better than MW2. When dzs offered me to rejoin them I took it. I am very happy to play with QuiCky, miniQ and Raiden again and I see us getting very far in this game.



Emotion: Can you tell me each players role in the team?

Max: QuiCky is the team captain and is a beast supporter. miniQ is our mainslayer and Raiden and me are our Objective players. MiniQ and Raiden switch their roles on some maps. I think everyone could play each role but with the this setup it works best.



Emotion: You have recently left the dzs organisation, what was that down to?

Max: dzs is a great organisation but the last months the very good managemant got overshadowed by inactivity and the communication between our team and the managemant was hardly existing. We are looking for new challenges and we want to see what the future brings us as a team without an org.



Emotion: What makes you work as a team?

Max: Through our CoD4 times QuiCky, Raiden and me became very good friends and miniQ just fits perfect into our "small family". No one in our team plays for himself, everyone plays for the team. So we really are very good friends and that is very important for a team to work.



Emotion: Most of the team went to EGL Manchester with H2K. Do you think you'll be more prepared than at the next event?

Max: Yes 100%. We work much better as a team now. Before EGL we had a lot of trouble with our lineup because ChriZ, who was a very important player in our team, dodged the Lan.



Emotion: What will the next event be that you will be attending?

Max: We are looking forward to the ECL events and we hope that we can attend as many LAN events as possible. We hope that Reflex will make another event in 2011 because we are really sad that we can't attend in January.



Emotion: What stopped you attending Reflex?

Max: QuiCky has an operation and Raiden and me have very important exams the following week after the event.



Emotion: What do you think of Black Ops? Have you had the chance to play it offline instead of just Xbox Live?

Max: Not yet, but the fact that Treyarch listened to us with making a good LAN System is very good for competetive gaming. I think this game will be great on LAN.



Emotion: What do you think of the game compared to MW2 and CoD4?

Max: CoD4 was, is and I think the best CoD title ever, but compared to MW2, BO is a huge step forwards in so many ways.



Emotion: Out of all the teams on the game at the moment, not including your own team, who's your top 4?

Knockout, VYE, Royalty and Fnatic if they played.



Emotion: Where do you rate your team in Europe?

Max: If we play constantly as we do it at the moment we are Top3 for sure.



Emotion: What do you think of Decerto rules and how would you change them?

Max: I think the rules council did a good job with the ruleset. It would be nice if we add Domination asap and as a SMG player I would prefer to play without AK47.



Emotion: Germany doesnt have many big teams at the moment with only yours and Apex really making any kind of impact. Is there anymore German teams hiding that pose a threat with Decerto rules?

Max: Yeah, fortunately some teams realised that the only way to get a name is to play the DE rules. For example the new formed team myQ has a lot of potentital and if they stick together they could have a good chance at becoming a big name.



Emotion: How can we get more teams from Germany playing Decerto rules?

Max: I tried alot to get more teams playing Decerto rules but it is not easy because the most prefer to play SnD only. The only way would be to reduce the amount of SnD leagues. CSL GER will never do that so there is not really a big chance. The only thing is that we can hope that more teams realise that Decerto rules are that what you need to play if you want to get forward.



Quick Questions


Girlfriend or Black Ops?

hahaha, that's what she asks me every day.


Favourite type of food?
Fast food


Did the ball cross the line in the World Cup?

Haha yes.


Are you religious?

Catholic


Esport or Real Sport?

Real Sport


Person you dislike most in Decerto community?

UTD/Pacino. Big headed much?


Person you like most in Decerto community?

Except my team, RyMz


Favourite band?

Far East Movement


Favourite Film?

Avatar and Inception


On a scale of 1 to 10, how mad is your girlfriend that we are keeping her away from you to do this interview?

9.5. No sex tonight haha.



Emotion: On that note we'll let you get away. Thanks for taking the time out to do this, would you like to give a shoutout to anyone?

Max: Want to give a shootout to my Dutch homies, United and Pacino and the love of life QuiCky. Also shoutout to Raiden, miniQ and qntm.