EPTSo, when we left off we'd just played our first day of ranking matches I think. There isn't really much to say about day 2. We played on Deadwing (definitely better than Catallena for me!), but I did end up going 0-20 (Choya didn't play this time, so 2 less games). On paper, that's very disappointing, but I actually played some really good games, and took the opportunity to refine a new ZvT build that I've been working on for a bit of time. The build worked quite well and almost took games off of Center, Marineking and Gumiho. Salvation kind of stomped it into the ground, and to be fair to Center it was a bit of a Build order advantage for me, but playing close games vs them was pretty cool. Following the Panic game the day before, the Protosses successfully decided to actually make phoenixes against me, so I didn't get a repeat of that cool upset, but I played some really cool games including two 25+ minute games vs Liquid'HerO. He outplayed me hard the entirety of both games (especially in multitasking), but it was very cool to have the chance to play two long macro games vs him. The best game in my eyes was a 25 minute game vs Departure that I really should have won, but he clawed it back in a basetradey situation at the end. Going 0-20 was a bit demoralizing, but while the stats were worse on paper, I played a lot more close games vs the guys so looking at the actual gameplay, I can be pretty happy with it. Though, it is safe to assume that all the games I didn't mention were one sided roflstomps ^_^
That was it for ranking matches, as they're back on holiday now. I haven't been told outright but my best guess is that the reason they scheduled those two days in the middle of the vacation was just to make sure that there was some SC2 going on. A 3 week break is far more detrimental to skill than two 1.5 week breaks with some hardcore play in the middle. Choya says we'll be doing more ranking matches next Monday.
Moving on from there, I decided on a whim that it would be cool to attend the SPL Round 1 finals, so I had my first experience with the Seoul Subway system. I was a bit worried about finding Nexon Arena, but it really wasn't all that difficult. It took about an hour and a half to get there though. I arrived about 10 minutes after it started, so there were no seats left whatsoever. The place was incredibly packed, and the crowd was the most enthusiastic crowd I've seen since Sjow vs Life at Dreamhack Summer 2013; it was really cool to see. After hearing the reaction to the endings of one of the earlier matches, I decided I had to record the final moments of the final game, so when it looked like Dark was about to take out Maru for the win, I made a recording of it and, while not really doing justice to just how loud the crowd was, it doesn't disappoint! Here's a pretty crappy quality picture of the crowd, it does show just how packed it was though! During the match, I met a really cool American dude named Adam who's on base about an hour away from Seoul. It was nice to have somebody to discuss the games with while watching!
Afterwards, Moonglade and Brendan, being the super nice guys they are, invited both of us to join them and their friend Matt (also a really cool guy!) for Korean BBQ, which was great. We headed to a nearby bar afterwards and met up with Wolf, some Korean friends of theirs and Kenzi the journalist, who has become a friend of mine since I arrived in Asia. Daisy and JYP stopped by to say hello briefly later in the night as well. We stayed out quite late, so I officially had my first night out in Korea. Huge shoutout to all of the guys for being so welcoming to me since arriving, and for just being really cool guys in general. I'm hoping I get another chance to get out soon, but unfortunately with everybody being out of the house on vacation right now for a day or two it's kinda hard. Basically there are key cards to get into the house, and when I go out I have to borrow somebody's, but nobody is here who actually has a key card, so I'm kinda stuck here until they're back tomorrow.
I've been practicing a little less the past week, mostly because it's a little demotivating to be the only person here, so I'll need to step that up in the next days, because I really haven't noticed much improvement since the second day of ranking matches. I've been needing to wake up very early for some NA based tournaments, all of which went very poorly, thereby demovtivating me a bit further (I need to discipline myself to get up earlier to actually afford myself time to wake up and get warmed up instead of rolling out of bed onto the PC to play a competitive match), so I've been a little tired. I'm trying to make plans to go out sometime next week, but with the exception of one night out and GSL for Rain's group, I'm intending to stay in and practice a lot more than I have this week.
I think that pretty much sums things up. I did finally have a chance just now to take a picture of the sleeping room since I think somebody was curious about that last time (never really had a chance before because there is always at least one person in our room sleeping, so I've felt kinda awkward about photographing it), but here you guys go. Basically, there are three rooms set up similarly to this for a total of 18 beds. The mattresses are reeeeeeeeeeally nice too.
Thanks for reading, and as always if you have any suggestions for what I should include in my next one let me know! Sorry I didn't have more pictures this time, I kinda forgot to take many haha.
