EPT
Just before USA finals I had the chance to play in an invitational amateur tournament located in Busan, South Korea. Originally it was going to be 4 top amateur Koreans who qualified through a large tournament, Lx (Legendary the Chinese progamer), IdrA, Tasteless, and myself. Unfortunately IdrA had his flight to USA finals a couple days before, and Tasteless had to cast GOMTV that weekend. With those 2 dropping out, they narrowed it down to the top 2 Korean amateurs from the tournament, Lx, and myself.
Sadly, I hadn't been in the best shape lately from lack of practice. Still, I took one solid day and played about 6 hours against ClouD (Lx was the only person who's race I knew from the tournament.) and I felt my TvP was at least in decent shape. I left with PuertoRican from Seoul far too early in the morning on a KTX train to Busan, praying not to have to play TvZ.
When we got to the event (called the TreX Games) it was actually pretty large. People from all different countries were doing little exhibitions in all sorts of sports, etc. There was a stage area for the eSports finals with some seats, not too many people watching that though. The first matches were actually played in a computer area set up in the exhibition center. Right after I arrived we started quite quickly.
I met Lx again, and he was super nice as always. Then the Koreans came in. Some guy sat down across from me with an SKT1 keyboard bag. Thats when I knew I was in trouble. I asked the bilingual guy in charge what race he was, and he said Zerg. Damn. So a bunch of people crowded around as I got destroyed TvZ vs this SKT1 practice partner. Really gross games. I felt quite bad afterwards. It ended quite quickly, so I got to watch Lx vs a terran playing Korean amateur. After watching both them play, I felt a lot better. Both looked good but quite beatable. Lx ended up losing 1-2, and thus I would end up playing Lx for 3rd place and about 200$!!
The 3rd place match was played on stage, with a decent amount of people watching, but still nothing close to any other event in Korea. Game 1 was on Andromeda, and I lost to an endless stream of zealots because I can't micro. Game 2 I chose Othello, the map from the tournament I felt best on. He chose to not zealot rush me, and I won in a macro game. That was quite a relief. The third game was on Blue Storm. Lx once again zealot rushed me, and I lost tons of SCVs. God I'm bad vs zealot rushes. I pushed out, took half the map, he went carriers. Sadly, I paniced when I was newly maxed out, and instead of sitting still, making a few more factories, and securing my side of the map before moving out, I unsieged and 1a2a3a4a5a up some hills. Not my brightest moment. So Lx beat me 2-1 and I got 4th! (quiet you. 4th sounds much better than last).
All in all it was a pretty good time. Lx is a manner bear, and quite a good player as well.
