Evening Juha! For the benefit of those who do not know who you are, could you please introduce yourself?
Good evening! I'm Juha "aNgeldust" Kurppa, hailing from southern Finland, currently finishing my studies, and playing some professional Counter-strike: Source meanwhile in Insignia Cadre CSS-Squad.

Video games have fast become a profession for many people, including yourself, but many of us still play them as a form of entertainment. Was entertainment your initial reason for playing video games? How did you come into contact with them?
When I started gaming in general like a decade ago, it was purely a form of entertainment to me, but soon the entertainment factor faded away and I started playing competetively, of course still having fun whilst doing it.

And how did you begin gaming almost ten years ago? Console gaming? Any games in particular?
I played games like Need for Speed for fun at first, then me and my friends got into playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 in the MSN Gaming zone in the internet, we played that 'seriously' for a year and a half or so, and after that discovered the wonderful world of Counter Strike.

I remember the days where I'd spend hours with friends on Need for Speed but they seem so long ago now! I too was drawn to the world of Counter-Strike, what aspect of the game made you stick with it?
Propably the fact that it is quite endless, you could play it for days and not to get bored with it. All the tactical aspects of the game, the skill and luck factors, playing against so different people and always having fun, it was just so clutch combination that it hit me hard, and still does!

If I'm not mistaken, you played Counter-Strike 1.6 since beta 3.2, which is a long time! How did you progress through Counter-Strike from just another player to the point where you are now?
At first I played just publics for fun. Then I started playing more seriously and got into teams, started attending lans with them and finding out the another aspects of the game, the more community related activities in the game, and that just got me
playing more and more. It's been a long way but I don't regret a single day spent on the servers.

You no longer play Counter-Strike 1.6! You now compete in the latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source with Insignia Cadre. What made you decided to start playing CSS over CS 1.6?
I stopped playing 1.6 competetively a year ago. I just couldnt find a team after parting ways with sYnck, and I decided to take a step forwards to try playing competetively the game I heard was a total bugjob, but when I started it, all the good memories from back in the day started coming to my mind and that made me stick with it.

Who are Insignia Cadre and how did you become involved with them?
Insignia Cadre is a Finnish multigaming team that was formed after the management and CSS squad left from astralis 10 months ago. We have been playing with the same core lineup in CSS ever since. Currently Insignia Cadre multigaming consists of CSS, DoD:S and DotA squads, but we have had succesful CoD2 teams too. We're sponsored by Globalcash.fi, Nordicbet, Qpad and Level7, Shuttle, Intel, Sennheiser and Kingston.