Kevin is no stranger to China, as he competed some months back in the KODE5 championships and he has also been a strong finisher at the ACON5 tournament he attended a few years back.

This time Kevin will try to make a stronger comeback to the main international scene after a slight hiatus. He will attend the CEG and the GGL DigitalLife.

Mini interview with Kevin van der "RotterdaM" Kooi -

So Kevin, now that you will embark on your mission soon enough, the most important question is, where you been the last few weeks?

At home ^^, nah got holidays now since a week of 2/3 so I'm playing more again even though i took it easy first 2 weeks now I'm playing a lot, last 5 or 6 months I wasn't able to practise much at all and the only tours I went to were tours I qualified for ( ngl finals/eswc ) etc, with ASUS in Russia being a exception to that where i went for several reasons, but now I got all the time in the world again so I am just playing a lot again and hopefully play on the level i had before my internship started this year.

We've heard a lot about your DOTA stint, did you really get struck bad by it?

Hahaha, nah not at all. Just first 2 weeks of my holiday I was kinda bored since I had nothing upcoming tournament wise which made me wonder if I should put nearly all my time in practise this summer if i don't even know for what I am playing, so I did some random stuff with one of them being DOTA and it's quite addictive and fun actually and not that easy as you think ;p, but it's just a other form of wasting time, you won't see me much playing DOTA in the upcoming weeks, that's for sure.

What are your expectations from the trip to China? Why aren't you staying for a longer duration?

I expect to have a great time and just 2 really nice tournaments and hopefully i can play my best and do good in at least one of them, I don't expect to go there and win since I know the players are so good there, It will be very hard to do even decent but it's a challenge and I will practice hard and do my best for it, after the tours I gotta go back unfortunately because my school starts and I really have to finish this last year, else it kinda closes opportunity's for me in the future which is just something I can't do, if this wasn't the case I wouldn't mind going for a longer period and play Warcraft 3over there instead of here, but at least there is a bright side that this year won't take as much as much time of me as my previous 5 months of school did so I expect to be able to practice as much as I want to.

You are the only European player aside from SaSe at the GL DigitalLife Championships, is there more pressure in that tour?

No I don't see it like that, they don't expect me to win anyway since there will be top players attending in any case and if they are European, Korean or Chinese that doesn't matter so much i guess, I will just do my absolute best and hopefully it can mean anything ;p.

Any final words to close the interview?

I wanna thank fnatic for giving me this chance and the people who wish me good luck, hopefully I can do well but whatever happens I will try my best and more than that I can't do. I'd also like to thank our sponsors Razer and EverGlide!

China E-Games:

Venue - WuHan, China Duration - 25th August - 27th August Prize Money - 1st: 20,000 RMB (~2,644.98 USD) 2nd: 8,000 RMB (~1,057.99 USD) 3rd: 5,000RMB (~661.244 USD)

GGL DigitalLife:

Venue - Chengdu, China Duration - 8th September - 9th September Prize Money - 1st: RMB80,000 (~10,579.91 USD) 2nd: RMB40,000 (~5,289.96 USD) 3rd: RMB20,000 (~2,644.98 USD) 4th: RMB10,000 (~1,322.49 USD 5th-6th: RMB4,000 (~528.996 USD) 7th-8th: RMB2,000 (~264.498 USD) 9th-16th: RMB1,000 (~132.249 USD)

What's interesting to note is that in the GGL DL tournament, RotterdaM will be only one of the two Europeans competing in that tour with names like MYM]Moon, MYM]Lucifer, BET.FoV, BET.Sweet and Mouz.SaSe. There will also be some top names like WE.Sky and wNv.Th000 from China who will be present making it a very intense and hard fought tournament for anyone!

With so much in hand and so little time, RotterdaM departs for the Orient in a little over a week, we wish him the best in this sojourn and that he will return with a lot of experience and money too! There will also be coverages provided for these two tours on the fnatic website so stay tuned for more updates from your favorite Orc Champion!

If you are a resident of China and you want to support fnatic and RotterdaM's stay in China then you can by voting for him at the GGL DigitalLife website where you can vote for him!

Vote for RotterdaM