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My CSL Experience

Blogs > KawaiiRice
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KawaiiRice
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
United States2914 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-02-18 19:52:01
February 18 2013 10:34 GMT
#1
Pre-Finals

Last CSL season my team narrowly lost 3-4 in the finals at University of Florida, where I lost in the ACE match against fellow teammate binski[LighT] from the University of North Texas (ruining my perfect 23-0 record). I was extremely depressed and cried later after my CSL All Stars loss to Qxc because I was very tired of always being mediocre and not even winning a college league was depressing as hell to me. However, in hindsight, we deserved to lose because we focused completely on winning by having me and Caliber[LighT] win two games while praying someone else on the team wins so I can win the ACE match. Due to this, my teammates hardly took it seriously at all and it cost us the victory.

As we approached this season of CSL, everyone decided to take it much more seriously with the upped prize pool, competition and format. We also picked up three new players in the form of SentrY from Georgia, Chemist, the 2v2 god from Utah, and Hwangpo. $40k first place sounded amazing and we believed we had an excellent shot at making the finals once more. As playoffs came around, our team held a week long bootcamp in my basement to focus on training over winter break, and four other bootcamps in January/February each weekend.


Video tour of the UW bootcamp


After qualifying for the live finals, the CSL paid flights for us to fly six? players to LA. We chose to fly an extra three people to the event, including Tilea who spent so much time coaching us.

Setting up the bootcamps took a surprising amount of effort in of itself. We planned for loose practice schedules (8+ hours), food, seating arrangements and such to ensure that all the players could focus on the game. In later bootcamps we would focus on specific matchups and maps. In our bootcamps Tilea[LighT] would also come over and help me coach and play with the players. All of our regular lineup players (Salgoud, Hwangpo, Gom, SentrY) made great progress in their play and it showed.

By the end of the bootcamps each Zerg had taken a long macro game off me convincingly. We had all assigned maps that each player would have played on in the semis and finals matches, and worked on specific builds and scenarios if a map were vetoed. I learned an extremely strong new build from Tilea[LighT] for TvZ and was 100% sure I could take down Suppy if we ended up playing in the finals. Caliber and I also worked with our 2v2 team to make builds for our 2v2 matches.


I personally spent a massive amount of time scouting the Berkeley and Chunnam schools; we found all the Berkeley smurf ids and Chunnam didn’t bother smurfing (probably assuming we wouldn’t check them cross server). I wrote notes and map predictions for each player based on their match histories and straight up got the builds for several of their players. This was shown as we held build order advantages all of our 1v1 games against Chunnam.

While we were scouting Berkeley, we also found that Berkeley discovered our smurf ids. We promptly stopped laddering on all of the accounts and used various GM smurfs and barcodes to ladder and custom. One humorous moment was at the last bootcamp when we heard them say on Suppy’s stream that one of our accounts had 155 bonus pool. We laughed pretty hard since we knew then that they still watched our old smurfs.
As always, things aren’t always as great as they sound. I had a lot of experience growing amateur players through my time with the Kiwiclone Army and team LighT which proved useful in coaching them. However, of course, my CSL teammates had various other commitments and interests which made it hard to focus completely on SC2.

It was also hard to motivate some of them or get them to work on new things at times, but I was pretty satisfied nearing the finals. Our zergs, I felt, had the potential to play at a top NA level despite being only high masters.

Finals

Thursday
After class at about 7:10 I left home with Tilea to go to the Seatac Airport. We met up with the rest of the team by the gate and boarded the plane.

[image loading]
Waiting at the gate

[image loading]
UW CSL’s best chef Hwangpo

[image loading]
Gom playing some placement matches at the airport

After getting the cars we reserved, we checked into the hotel for our two rooms and went out to get food at a local 7-11.
[image loading]
Unbeatable Matt “Cream Cheese All Over His Body” Sax trying to catch up from the airport restroom


Friday

Today we went in to the CSL venue at the Peterson Automobile Museum to check it out and take some of the required pictures, including some individual and group photos.

[image loading]
Caliber and Salgoud checking out the main room

[image loading]
Checking out the player room pre-setup

[image loading]
Getting ready to pose for CSL pictures

[image loading]
Eating at Johnny Rockets


After that we went out to find a PC café to practice for our match on Saturday. The first PC café we found was called… King Kong or something? Run by a Korean guy. But Aarhus was already using most of the computers, so we asked the owner for another place and he gave us another address which was way farther called Zeu7 Café or something in K-Town. We ended up dropping $270 paying for about 9 hours for each person.

[image loading]
Renting a third of the PC café like true ballers

[image loading]
Another shot

[image loading]
Coaching SentrY?


Between 4 and 6:30 PM we also had to take more pictures for CSL and go eat.

[image loading]
The Danish God of War, Steinbagger

[image loading]
COME AT ME BRO!

[image loading]
Chunnam team posing on the balcony

[image loading]
Swagpo flexing his swag

[image loading]
TossBoy feeling the love tonight

[image loading]
Tilea[LighT] forced to pose with a hammer

[image loading]
Gom showing Tilea a pose

[image loading]
Tilea showing some swag

[image loading]
Korean BBQ


Half of the group ended up going back to the hotel before nine, while the last five of us went back to sleep at midnight.

Saturday

[image loading]
Me without glasses

[image loading]
Tilea trying to sleep


Our team drove to the Peterson Automobile Museum around 10 AM to catch the opening ceremonies which ended up getting delayed to some random time. Instead of waiting, we went downstairs to the food trucks to eat lunch.

[image loading]
Getting some breakfast at Starbucks

[image loading]
Waiting for the eternally delayed opening ceremony

[image loading]
Getting food at CSL’s food trucks

[image loading]
Rawr

[image loading]
Rawr O_O

[image loading]
Eating on the sidewalk

[image loading]
Random text blows my mind


After finishing our food we returned to the venue and watched Aarhus inevitably lose to Berkeley. They had a good run and had massive amounts of swag, so it was sad to see them lose.

[image loading]
Loser777 made a cheerful for me \ o /

[image loading]
Hate the back side though / o \

[image loading]
Chemist ready to fight.

[image loading]
Randomly playing footsies

[image loading]
Me against the world


Going into the match against Chunnam, our team had a lot of confidence. Caliber gave our team a small pep-talk and we broke after yelling, “YOLOBOIS!” We basically got exactly what we wanted in terms of draws. Some people I’ve read were wondering what idiot decided to put me and Caliber last. However, I felt that if my team played to their potential we should have won 4-0 easily. I had even scouted the builds of the first four Chunnam players which we countered early on.

[image loading]
YOLO BOIS – shamelessly jacked from CSL site

[image loading]
Salgoud vs llllllllllll


First off was Salgoud against the barcode Protoss. According to my notes the Protoss preferred a phoenix robo into late third opening, so Salgoud was going to max out and attack with roach ling. The protoss did basically what we had predicted but cancelled his third to do a colossus allin, which promptly got surrounded and killed by Salgoud’s attack. He ended up losing 20 drones to warp prism harass, didn’t replace them and ended up losing the game to a second two base allin with five colossus.

Our second match was Gom against NosSave, who was apparently a CJ Entus B-teamer. We believed he would go for a hellion banshee opener or marine hellion medivac opener, so we had Gom practice mostly against those two builds. Gom crushed the very late pressure attack and was super ahead, then slowly threw away units doing counters and died to a late 2-2 attack. (T_T)

Our third match was our 2v2 with Rawls and Chemist on Deconstructed. We had practiced a very specific build to counter proxy marauder that could macro against standard builds, and I ended up finding their 2v2 build as well. Despite that, Chemist forgot to move out to protect Rawls so our Terran lost over half his workers, so we were forced to allin and lost.

[image loading]
Setting up 2v2


Finally we had Hwangpo against Chunnam’s second best Terran, Eins. I had worked with Hwangpo the most for ZvT and I had the most confidence that he would win. I also found eins’ build order from his match history and we knew we’d have an easy win there. Hwangpo crushed the first wave (as did our other two zerg players) even with some botched control, but after some more awful control, late baneling morphs and a manner hatch (which he says was a macro hatch since a drone was there anyway), Hwangpo also lost.

It’s hard to explain exactly how I felt when Hwangpo slowly went from winning to losing horribly. I felt that I did everything I could have possibly done for my team this season. We had more high level practice partners than the other teams, we knew exactly what our opponents would do, we weren’t jetlagged (as Chunnam flew from Korea that may have been a factor), we had practiced specific maps and scenarios that had occurred and got excellent draws. And yet we had lost. I had complete confidence in my team’s skill that we might have even won 4-0; I still believe that if Gom was playing to his full potential he would have crushed NosSave easily. Bitterness and disappointment are inadequate words to describe my feelings.

Following our loss, I threw away my notes against Berkeley and went to find Suppy and the Berkeley school to give them my notes and info on Chunnam. It was quite amusing when I told them how much I knew about their team; I knew all their smurfs and most of their builds. We then had some mini allkill match of some sort against Aarhus for the 3rd/4th place match (which had nothing at stake) and screwed around to fill content for the CSL.

[image loading]
Caliber ownin’ it up

[image loading]
The Danish God


After watching Berkeley win 4-3 against Chunnam I was happy that Suppy (and an American school) won, but at the same time, I (and the rest of my team) were a bit regretful. We knew that we could have won against Chunnam quite easily if everyone had played well. I had extremely mixed feelings as I reflected on the event to write this blog. Even to the end of Lings of Liberty, I couldn’t win a college league where we held so many advantages over our opposing teams. I haven’t done anything notable for a long time in SC2 and CSL was my last WoL tournament until my switch (barring a game or two in the IPTL which is still WoL). Getting 4-0’ed was the most unexpected outcome and the worst possible way to finish my career in WoL.

I am still waiting for confirmation on something else to blog about news, but until then; I should conclude this blog. I’d like to thank first and foremost my CSL team for believing in me as captain/half coordinator and working hard this season, my parents for putting up with 6+ people in our basement for the five bootcamps we held, and anybody that cheered for my team or just watched the CSL in general. I’d also like to thank all the people that helped our team: Quantic.SeoHyeon, binski, Moosegills, Saikou, Ranged, and fray`iaguz for sending me some replays of eins.

Also thanks to Gretorp and his girlfriend for making an hour drive out twice to see me at the finals and treat Tilea and myself to Pho tonight~
[image loading]
Andreeeeee


Thank you for reading.

****
@KawaiiRiceLighT
KawaiiRice
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
United States2914 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-02-18 10:54:06
February 18 2013 10:35 GMT
#2
Monk is swag
@KawaiiRiceLighT
Entirety
Profile Blog Joined April 2012
1423 Posts
February 18 2013 10:43 GMT
#3
Fantastic read.

I feel really bad for you KawaiiRice... to put in all that time and then to lose without even playing a game...

I have a question. How prepared were you and Caliber for your respective matches?
IMMvp (정종현) | Fan Club: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=211431
Loser777
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
1931 Posts
February 18 2013 10:47 GMT
#4
It was a rough day by any stretch of the imagination. Looking at it as the glass 1/999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999th full, your advice for Berkeley and Suppy proved to be invaluable during the final and especially the ace match.
6581
ggurface
Profile Joined July 2011
12 Posts
February 18 2013 10:50 GMT
#5
Kawaii do you plan on going pro in League of Legends in the near future? Never have to worry about not being able to carry the team by your inability to play in all the games ever again!

User was temp banned for this post.
Biktaka
Profile Joined February 2012
Netherlands35 Posts
February 18 2013 10:51 GMT
#6
Cool to see how CSL went from your perspective. Love the added photo's making the blog a lot more awesome. It seems Gretorp was having the most fun though haha
Celestial Being
Teoita
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
Italy12246 Posts
February 18 2013 10:51 GMT
#7
Sucks to lose in a playoff to a team worse than you, been there

Nice blog tho
ModeratorProtoss all-ins are like a wok. You can throw whatever you want in there and it will turn out alright.
wei2coolman
Profile Joined November 2010
United States60033 Posts
February 18 2013 11:02 GMT
#8
That Gretorp photo is priceless.
liftlift > tsm
T.O.P. *
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
Hong Kong4685 Posts
February 18 2013 11:31 GMT
#9
Did you guys prepare vs UCSD?
Oracle comes in, Scvs go down, never a miscommunication.
SpeaKEaSY
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
United States1070 Posts
February 18 2013 11:40 GMT
#10
Thank you for sharing your thoughts even after such a rough time. Great blog writing and photos, as always. I was disappointed I didn't get to watch you and Caliber play, but I guess not always being able to watch your favorite players play is something you have to accept in a team league.

Even if you didn't play up to your expectations, at least you can finally say WoL is behind you now. Wish you the best of luck in the future
Aim for perfection, settle for mediocrity - KawaiiRice 2014
WikidSik
Profile Blog Joined November 2011
Canada382 Posts
February 18 2013 11:43 GMT
#11
dayum u guys scout each other.. this is intense lol. AND THE GRETORP PIC LOL.

Iv been here for 5.5 years. My other accounts are named "Sonu" and "Dalroti" || I had some more but I cant find them XD || known in sc2 as "Sonu"
Gamegene
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United States8308 Posts
February 18 2013 11:44 GMT
#12
i totally approve of Gretorp x KawaiiRice :<
Throw on your favorite jacket and you're good to roll. Stroll through the trees and let your miseries go.
StimiLant
Profile Blog Joined July 2006
United States534 Posts
February 18 2013 13:02 GMT
#13
<3 u adrian, and gretorp, very nice csl blog breh <3
snively
Profile Blog Joined August 2011
United States1159 Posts
February 18 2013 13:55 GMT
#14
woah, you without glasses looks just like crs nyjacky!!!!111
weeeird.

^^
My religion is Starcraft
BEARDiaguz
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Australia2362 Posts
February 18 2013 14:02 GMT
#15
I got a shoutout I'm cool.
ProgamerAustralian alcohol user follow @iaguzSC2
jcroisdale
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
United States1543 Posts
February 18 2013 15:03 GMT
#16
Damn you never gave a real reason why your team didn't perform to their potential. Do you think it was nerves, or just a bad day?
"I think bringing a toddler to a movie theater is a terrible idea. They are too young to understand what is happening it would be like giving your toddler acid. Bad idea." - Sinensis
a9arnn
Profile Blog Joined July 2009
United States1537 Posts
February 18 2013 16:07 GMT
#17
Awesome blog, gonna do way better in HotS :D! UW fighting!!~
VOD finder guy for sc2ratings.com/ ! aka: ogndrahcir, a9azn2 | Go ZerO, Stork, Sea, and KawaiiRice :D | nesc2league.com/forum/index.php | youtube.com/watch?v=oaGtjWL5mZo
TylerThaCreator
Profile Blog Joined May 2011
United States906 Posts
February 18 2013 16:13 GMT
#18
good blog adrian, really was expecting uw to take it over chunnam easily..yall praticed hard
aka SethN
Complete
Profile Joined October 2009
United States1864 Posts
February 18 2013 16:24 GMT
#19
I just want to say how amazingly lame it is that match histories and build orders are so easily accessible to anybody if you know their account.



Sorry you didn't win, though I suppose I was cheering for Berkeley since they beat us
RiceAgainst
Profile Blog Joined November 2011
United States1849 Posts
February 18 2013 17:59 GMT
#20
Such practice and preparation. I remember the holiday break practice blog. I was able to watch game 1 vs Chunnam and I thought you guys had that one. Maybe the nerves. Well, shows how much potential you guys had!
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