Photos - Code A Qualifiers. Korea Blog: Part 2

CarltonBeener

United States84 Posts

February 14 2013 11:14 GMT

The Code A qualifiers are pretty intense. I didn't realize quite how cutthroat it was until I witnessed it in person. It is easy to see the long list of names and recognize the talent, but seeing everyone there in one room is a different matter. The two day prelim happened to fall right in the middle of my trip. It was held in the Intel eStadium in Sindorim. The venue itself is pretty easy to get to, take the green circle line to Sindorim and the entrance to the building is inside the station right next to I believe the #2 exit. There is a hallway with greek columns that leads to the Technomart and the PC bang is on the 3rd floor. This will be a short blog entry as the event is fairly straight forward.

Sindorim is used for all kinds of gaming tournaments and is currently being used for Proleague on Monday and Tuesday nights. The eStadium is also where you can buy those cool Starcraft bottle caps. One nice thing about this location is there are many restaurants with both Korean and Western food. There is a McDonalds on the ground floor, and a GS25 for buying snacks to bring in with you. On the 9th or 10th floor is the food court with around 10-15 different places to eat.

The players this time around were fairly evenly split among Kespa and eSF teams. Some notable Kespa players included (Wiki)

Rain,

Bisu,

effOrt,

JangBi,

herO,

Stork,

Leta and tons more. Some of the more familiar GSL faces were (Wiki)

MMA,

Jjakji,

ThorZaIN,

Revival,

Zenio,

JYP,

Lucky,

Golden,

theStC,

Puma,

Alicia,

Oz and well you can find the whole bracket for the rest. Special mention of course goes out to Artosis and Whiplash who were also competing that day. All the foreigners were set up in a row towards the back of the room. MarineKing was hanging out at one point with the other Prime guys. Needless to say every player showing up those days had a rough road ahead of them. Everyone is separated into groups and the groups are staggered throughout the day. The first groups showed up starting at 11am and the second round started at I think 3pm. I would say that Code A qualifiers are not really a spectator event. It was really hard to follow what was going on and had to rely on reading the bracket updates online as I wasn't familiar with some of the players. There were limited fans there, I think all for Kespa players to bring them gifts, but mostly it was coaches and teammates there for support.

It was nice seeing some of the friends I had made over the past year. I went to lunch with (Wiki)

HwangSin and (Wiki)

Apocalypse at one of the upstairs restaurants on the first day and got to see Golden and theStC the second day. Golden had just recently gotten back to Korea after a week long trip back from Katowice with like 7 delayed flights and layovers and I'm sure it had an effect on his results.

These and a few additional photos can all be found on my Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/globexcorp/sets/72157632727778075/with/8459454485/
Most of the photos should be tagged by player but I know I missed a few. If you see one I missed and know who it is or if you see something tagged improperly let me know so I can fix it.

Part 3: Proleague coming soon.

WikidSik

Canada382 Posts

February 14 2013 11:49 GMT

LOL artosis' pic.
man these are really nice

CableSCES

United States367 Posts

February 14 2013 17:45 GMT

THE CarltonBeener strikes again with an amazing look into the Korean competitive world. Seriously, none of us would get any chance to see anything like this without your efforts.

Someone should really hire you to go back and do more professional pics for their organization. Everything you produce is gold.