On the first day of the 2023 Mid-Season Invitational bracket stage, Gen.G defeated G2 Esports and moved on to the winner's bracket. The first two games were quite one-sided, as Gen.G easily destroyed G2 Esports’ Nexus. Games 3 and 4 were closer, and although G2 Esports won game 3, Gen.G came back to take game 4 to seal the deal. After the match, Han “Peanut” Wang-ho joined Inven for an interview.

You started MSI 2023 with a win. How do you feel?

I was a bit worried since we had to play earlier than I thought, but I felt good. I guess it’s just regretful that we lost game 3, where I played Nidalee.

Gen.G arrived on the 6th, and you had to play after 3 days. How’s the team’s condition?

We did come here late, but T1 and JD Gaming also arrived on the same day or one day before. I was surprised that we played this early, but that was just the luck of the draw, and it doesn’t really matter now that we’ve won. We’re doing well with jet lag — Delight, Chovy, and I see each other every day at breakfast.

To come to think of it, since this MSI game time is earlier than before, it would be better to wake up for breakfast.

It is. Game time is 12-1 o’clock local time, so I wake up early to deal with jet lag and have breakfast. I don’t know if the other two do have the same thought, but I believe they do.

How’s practice? Some people say that Champions queue isn’t that active.

I haven’t played it yet. A lot of play-in teams are eliminated now, and MSI doesn’t feature as many teams as Worlds in the first place. Since there aren’t as many teams, I thought it would be better to play solo queue. Also, we only had scrims for one day. There really hasn’t been enough time to play Champions queue.

How would you rate today’s win over G2?

I think our performance wasn’t bad, but we should have won 3-0 in game 3. When we got the second Rift Herald, we should have taken the dragon too and made a global gold difference of about 6K, but we lost the teamfight there and lost the game. That was regretful.

You overextended several times in game 3. Do you think that was because games 1 and 2 were easy?

It’s true that we got to 2-0 very easily, and I thought there were a few angles to go for. Since we were ahead, I played aggressively and boldly.

You didn’t Draven from the blue side but banned him from the red side. 

We knew Hans Sama was good at Draven, so we prepared a sure way to deal with it. What we thought was difficult was how to deal with the Lv. 1 invade. As for game 1, we had a way to deal with it, but we didn’t think they would dive at Lv. 2 right away. The start was shaky, but we had a definite way to cope with Draven.

How about the Nautilus ban? Do you think Nautilus mid is difficult to face?

We haven’t played that many scrims, so we don’t have enough data. Only they had data, so we wanted to ban it, at least for today.

Your next matchup will be decided tomorrow in T1 vs. MAD Lions match. Most predict that you’ll have to face T1. 

I also think T1 has a better chance of winning, so I’m like, ‘Why are we meeting this early again?’ However, the condition on game day is important, and since MAD Lions is also a team that won a championship, we’ll have to see.

Obviously, your goal is winning MSI. Any other things you’d like to achieve?

Not losing helplessly. Even if we were to lose, if we lose because the opponent was good, I don’t think it’ll be as regretful.

“Let’s go, G2” chants filled the arena, but there were many fans that still cheered for Gen.G. Any last comments to the fans?

There were many G2 fans, but I was able to spot Gen.G fans right away. I’d like to say thank you. At the last interview, the EU fans also sent us a lot of applause and cheers. I think it’s a great fan culture, and I felt really good.