If you've been around the Starcraft community for long enough, you remember how the Team Liquid Invitationals began. Now, over seven years after that first tournament, TL is proud to present the first ever Team Liquid Starcraft 2 Invitational.
In the past month, we've seen our share of beta tournaments. Some of us have even played in them. Now, we're carrying the mantle, just like we've done all these years. This first SC2 Invitational is our attempt at putting today's best players out there for people to see. We strongly believe that the timing, the participants and the prize pool is just right and that we will get to see some truly fantastic games next Saturday. Now, on to the players.
First off, our very own Victor "Liquid`Nazgul" Goossens and SC2 Forum moderator Jonathan "Frozen Arbiter (Jinro)" Walsh will be sharpening their jousting gear. Nazgul, a #1 in division Platinum player for much of the beta, also recently came runner up in the first ESL Invitational tournament. Jinro on the other hand, apart from being #4 in all of Europe for quite some time also made it to the semi-finals of Zotac #4, and is certainly one of the Terran's to look out for on today's SC2 circuit.
Moving on, we have Joseph "ret" de Kroon, a Zerg who needs no introduction here on TL. Boasting one of the highest winrates on the EU server, our current Liquibition champion and former progamer with Estro in Korea will be playing once again and we're pretty excited. Speaking of excitement, remember Pavel "Brat_OK" Kuznetsov? Yeah, course you do, you nerd. Who could forget his run through the Razer TSL? Well, he's back, and flying the flag for the Dominion as he takes the race into SC2 land. Will he overcome the swarm and the offspring of Aiur? Only time will tell.
While many top foreigners did dive right into the beta, none dived deeper than Ukrainian Protoss Oleksiy "White-Ra" Krupnyk, the player with the most games played on Europe at the moment. A thoroughly manner, thoroughly brilliant player, you can be sure that he will give us some great games this Saturday.
What's great about the beta though is that it's basically drawing two communities together. While all the players mentioned so far were top Broodwar players in their time, the first TL SC2 Invitational is also proud to include the likes of top Bulgarian WC3 player Zdravko "Insomnia (Omnisain)" Georgiev, winner of the first WCG War3:ROC title in 2003. High ranked throughout the SC2 Beta, Insomnia, himself once a Broodwar player, will duke it out this weekend with the beta's biggest names.
Of course, he wont be alone. We have other top War3 players joining the fray, including Benjamin "Demuslim" Baker, a Terran who not only has one Zotac win and one runner up title but is also one of the most consistent ladder performers, currently at #2 on the overall European ladder. A former member of the legendary War3 team 4K, he is definitely a must watch during this tournament, and we're sure he's going to show us some super games.
Other participants include former Broodwar players Ian "Zion" Gryncewicz and Dario "TheLittleOne" Wünsch who have been at the top of their respective Platinum divisions since the beginning of the beta - the latter being the highest rated random player currently on EU - as well as the WC3 pros (and high ranking SC2 players) Dennis "HasuObs" Schneider and Lazar "Nightend" Silviu.
Rounding out the field are Brood War stand-outs - and perennial SC2 high rankers - Stefan "MorroW" Andersson, Eugin "Strelok" Oparyshev, Marius "HoRRoR" Overhageböck, Mattias "Naugrim" Ottoson and Hayder "HayprO" Hussein.
As always, the event will be streamed live, and TL's own Sean "Day[9]" Plott will take you through the action as we watch SC2's biggest names lock horns. Be there, Team Liquid. One of foreign Starcraft's oldest tournies is back with a vengeance, and you can be sure it's gonna be a blast!
Stay tuned for more information including format and brackets.
This post was made by the Team Liquid Starcraft 2 Coverage Team. For more of TL's coverage, please visit the Team Liquid Starcraft 2 Beta Page.
FAQS 1. Where is Lucifron? Unfortunately Lucifron has a LAN event on the same day and had to decline his invitation.
2. What about US Events? Our next liquibition event will be on the US server.
3. Where is Orly? He was unfortunately unable to attend as well.
On March 23 2010 04:48 3FFA wrote: is there going to be vods posted of this or a stream? This seams like some sort of teasing for the kids(like me) who don't have the beta.
really awesome, always fun with TL run events. they're always well ran and players know they can trust you guys so they come. can't wait for this (liquipedia article has been created)
Yeah my bad there. Anyways Im still looking forward to the event. I hope TL does one for the asian servers too. Then we get to see top players like Moon and Freedom duke it out.
blocking craftcup i will play craftcup, incase it overlaps with time is there any way u can get delay on ur game or so? :/ craftcup is also very important tournament for me/us teamliquid please dont block the other tournaments like this. all way from mon-fri we have no tournament and now u pick same day as craftcup, i dont like this
maybe craftcup can play on friday or u can play on friday but please not both on saturday because i want to play both tournaments t.t
On March 23 2010 04:48 3FFA wrote: is there going to be vods posted of this or a stream? This seams like some sort of teasing for the kids(like me) who don't have the beta.
yes of course
yes of course this is teasing or yes for vod/stream?
On March 23 2010 06:07 MorroW wrote: blocking craftcup i will play craftcup, incase it overlaps with time is there any way u can get delay on ur game or so? :/ craftcup is also very important tournament for me/us teamliquid please dont block the other tournaments like this. all way from mon-fri we have no tournament and now u pick same day as craftcup, i dont like this
maybe craftcup can play on friday or u can play on friday but please not both on saturday because i want to play both tournaments t.t
On March 23 2010 06:07 MorroW wrote: blocking craftcup i will play craftcup, incase it overlaps with time is there any way u can get delay on ur game or so? :/ craftcup is also very important tournament for me/us teamliquid please dont block the other tournaments like this. all way from mon-fri we have no tournament and now u pick same day as craftcup, i dont like this
maybe craftcup can play on friday or u can play on friday but please not both on saturday because i want to play both tournaments t.t
i will try contact them and ask if they can change time...
oh yea..craftcup was awesome, overlap sucks oh well. this will be 10x better.
man craftcup was so damn good ud think it was run by tl admins id really hate to see tl saying "this is my hood" to smaller tournament organizations by doing like this, seriously craftcup has a set time every week to be that date and tl gotta pick exactly same time, whyy
On March 23 2010 06:07 MorroW wrote: blocking craftcup i will play craftcup, incase it overlaps with time is there any way u can get delay on ur game or so? :/ craftcup is also very important tournament for me/us teamliquid please dont block the other tournaments like this. all way from mon-fri we have no tournament and now u pick same day as craftcup, i dont like this
maybe craftcup can play on friday or u can play on friday but please not both on saturday because i want to play both tournaments t.t
On March 23 2010 06:07 MorroW wrote: blocking craftcup i will play craftcup, incase it overlaps with time is there any way u can get delay on ur game or so? :/ craftcup is also very important tournament for me/us teamliquid please dont block the other tournaments like this. all way from mon-fri we have no tournament and now u pick same day as craftcup, i dont like this
maybe craftcup can play on friday or u can play on friday but please not both on saturday because i want to play both tournaments t.t
i will try contact them and ask if they can change time...
oh yea..craftcup was awesome, overlap sucks oh well. this will be 10x better.
man craftcup was so damn good ud think it was run by tl admins id really hate to see tl saying "this is my hood" to smaller tournament organizations by doing like this, seriously craftcup has a set time every week to be that date and tl gotta pick exactly same time, whyy
Don't make up bullshit please. We run things on weekends because we have real lives. Theres waaay too many other little tournaments going on to consider everyone's schedule.
Saw your games in the ZOTAC - damn banelings. I was cheering for you man. Day.9 had a lot of great things to say about you as well. Well GM'd player. I'll be watching and cheering for you again bro. GL
Nice, this should be a lot of fun to see. Any chance of someone co-commentating with day? Its nice to hear a back and forth going on in the slight dead points in games.
Saw your games in the ZOTAC - damn banelings. I was cheering for you man. Day.9 had a lot of great things to say about you as well. Well GM'd player. I'll be watching and cheering for you again bro. GL
Imo nobody could be sure who are the best SC2 gamers atm. Look at the last ESL Invitational, halfe the players were/are good WC3 gamers. That's so amazing about SC2 --> Best Players of the very best RPG ESport Games of all time, come together and fighting in epic battles
I refuse to call Insomnia a WC3 player. That's fucking Mr.X and he (respectively Breeze) still owes me that third game of his series against that Korean toss.
For all you Greenhorns out there- battlereports are what you looked at when there was no such thing as "replays" or vods. (Actually there were vods but noone really had them and bandwidth was still modem style.)
On March 23 2010 08:18 Monsen wrote: I refuse to call Insomnia a WC3 player. That's fucking Mr.X and he (respectively Breeze) still owes me that third game of his series against that Korean toss.
For all you Greenhorns out there- battlereports are what you looked at when there was no such thing as "replays" or vods. (Actually there were vods but noone really had them and bandwidth was still modem style.)
While many top foreigners did dive right into the beta, non dived deeper than Ukrainian Protoss Oleksiy "White-Ra" Krupnyk, the player with the most games played on Europe at the moment. A thoroughly manner, thoroughly brilliant player, you can be sure that he will give us some great games this Saturday.
lol i can see the reading comprehension on some of the members hasn't changed much. I should really get into sc2 , not enough time right now. September needs to get here faster .
I cant believe there is already so many tournaments. TL Invitational is no ordinary tournament though. Thanks to the hard working admins and of course Day[9] who is being absolutely sick recently. Good luck everyone.
On March 23 2010 15:37 Suc wrote: I love that this is going the Korean route, knowing players by their real names :D
Can't wait for this, looks awesome!
Me too! Whenever I talk to Korean friends I always have to say progamers actual names for them to know who I'm talking about. I always thought that was cool.
Also, rooting for MorroW. You were so damn well-mannered in Zotac#4 and it really impressed me.
I hope I didn't miss it but why did you invite these exact players? Did you want to keep the balance between bw-, wc3- and unknown players (zion e.g.)? (Nightend I wouldn't have expected, neither HoRRoR) FiSheYe would have been cool, infernal already been in liquibition-ok, RAVEN (damn, why no kimchiterran :p), one of the Oger guys (Eli or Affe, they both played top notch since beta begin), Tarson, Paranoid...
well there must have been some reasoning behind your picks i guess, prolly also who is able to play at the given time
On March 23 2010 15:37 Suc wrote: I love that this is going the Korean route, knowing players by their real names :D
Can't wait for this, looks awesome!
Me too! Whenever I talk to Korean friends I always have to say progamers actual names for them to know who I'm talking about. I always thought that was cool.
Also, rooting for MorroW. You were so damn well-mannered in Zotac#4 and it really impressed me.
On March 23 2010 19:20 Ghardo wrote: I hope I didn't miss it but why did you invite these exact players? Did you want to keep the balance between bw-, wc3- and unknown players (zion e.g.)? (Nightend I wouldn't have expected, neither HoRRoR) FiSheYe would have been cool, infernal already been in liquibition-ok, RAVEN (damn, why no kimchiterran :p), one of the Oger guys (Eli or Affe, they both played top notch since beta begin), Tarson, Paranoid...
well there must have been some reasoning behind your picks i guess, prolly also who is able to play at the given time
Most important for us was whether people played tournaments and how well they did there. After that comes race balance and ladder performance over the whole beta. Affe would have been a nice choice but he needs to go out there and show himself more if he wants invites to tournaments.
On March 23 2010 15:37 Suc wrote: I love that this is going the Korean route, knowing players by their real names :D
Can't wait for this, looks awesome!
Me too! Whenever I talk to Korean friends I always have to say progamers actual names for them to know who I'm talking about. I always thought that was cool.
Also, rooting for MorroW. You were so damn well-mannered in Zotac#4 and it really impressed me.
haha tnx, it was great that a terran won that. its cool when u lose a tournament to someone u have much respect for instead of dying in the early rounds to some cheese :p
i talked to the craftcup team and try r currently trying to work their way around this tournament = they r planning to play it earlier than their original time 14cet and now he thought of starting the cup at 12cet so i guess in the end this will work out great for both the tournaments, im excited as hell man :D
On March 23 2010 06:07 MorroW wrote: blocking craftcup i will play craftcup, incase it overlaps with time is there any way u can get delay on ur game or so? :/ craftcup is also very important tournament for me/us teamliquid please dont block the other tournaments like this. all way from mon-fri we have no tournament and now u pick same day as craftcup, i dont like this
maybe craftcup can play on friday or u can play on friday but please not both on saturday because i want to play both tournaments t.t
i will try contact them and ask if they can change time...
oh yea..craftcup was awesome, overlap sucks oh well. this will be 10x better.
man craftcup was so damn good ud think it was run by tl admins id really hate to see tl saying "this is my hood" to smaller tournament organizations by doing like this, seriously craftcup has a set time every week to be that date and tl gotta pick exactly same time, whyy
Don't make up bullshit please. We run things on weekends because we have real lives. Theres waaay too many other little tournaments going on to consider everyone's schedule.
well to be honest its 2 tournaments every week, 14cet on sunday with zotac and 14cet on saturday with craftcup, its not that complicated. i dont make up bullshit i was just assuming that u wouldnt care enough to talk to them before u set a date of this because now craftcup is gently moving their time and working their way around the tsl invitational, they might even have to pp the semi or finals because they dont want to overstep 16cet. its just my opinion that i would think the tournaments would run smoother and better if the organizers talked to each other before just setting up a time. i know u didnt purposely overlap craftcup because i know ur not bm but is too much to ask for that u would communicate with each other because u might havent noticed but same ppl in the tsl is the same ppl who wanna play craftcup also
I think that when you host a weekly tournament and another organization does the same, both at the best possible times of the week, you are forcing other organizations to cross-schedule at the same time. Zotac and Craftcup are awesome great tournaments but they understand that doing a weekly tournament at 2pm on the weekend days greatly complicates everything for other tournaments. If another $100 tournament did their weekly on Friday would that force all the larger prized invitationals to Monday nights. It just doesn't work like that.
This is just the Beta and more tournaments will come a long. The larger tournaments are all going to be looking at the weekend days for their broadcasts. We don't purposely schedule against them but as you can see from ESL tournaments last a long time. ESL finished at 10pm with a 3-0 final and no complications during the tournament. There is just little time to move around. Starting later isn't realistic and starting earlier is even worse for Craftcup and viewers.
For the next EU tourny I'd be willing to add a couple of euro, say 50-100 or so, to the prize pool. I strangely find it even more fun to watch sc2 than to play
On March 23 2010 23:26 djWHEAT wrote: I'm so sad I'll be in Boston for PAX East. This is awesome. Hopefully I can avoid spoilers and catch VOD's. GL to all, players and admins alike.
Have fun, I'd love to go to PAX. I was actually just thinking about how shitty it was that I couldn't go, this eases my pain a little bit. I'm still a little sad that F91 won't be in(Why oh why do you have to break the rules?), but go FA!
On March 24 2010 07:08 NiGoL wrote: RuNa and Pulimuli should have been invited ;d
go morrow u can do this !
I really tried inviting RunA lol
Everytime I logged in he was in a game, and everytime I checked again he was offline! Eventually we gave up and asked someone else, but he was in our initial list of people to ask.
Not really up in the knowledge of pro players so probably a stupid question but is Oversky not on the same level as these or is he not european or just not invited?
On March 24 2010 09:39 Cold-Blood wrote: Not really up in the knowledge of pro players so probably a stupid question but is Oversky not on the same level as these or is he not european or just not invited?
If Oversky is Oversky then he's a korean ex progamer and therefore not European.
On March 24 2010 09:39 Cold-Blood wrote: Not really up in the knowledge of pro players so probably a stupid question but is Oversky not on the same level as these or is he not european or just not invited?
If Oversky is Oversky then he's a korean ex progamer and therefore not European.
Oversky = InReach who is American and is also "retired" from playing sc2 competively at the moment.
Therefore, no way for him to be in this in the first place.
On March 24 2010 09:39 Cold-Blood wrote: Not really up in the knowledge of pro players so probably a stupid question but is Oversky not on the same level as these or is he not european or just not invited?
If Oversky is Oversky then he's a korean ex progamer and therefore not European.
Oversky = InReach who is American and is also "retired" from playing sc2 competively at the moment.
Therefore, no way for him to be in this in the first place.
How can you be retired from competitive SC2 after a month? Link?
On March 24 2010 09:39 Cold-Blood wrote: Not really up in the knowledge of pro players so probably a stupid question but is Oversky not on the same level as these or is he not european or just not invited?
If Oversky is Oversky then he's a korean ex progamer and therefore not European.
Oversky = InReach who is American and is also "retired" from playing sc2 competively at the moment.
Therefore, no way for him to be in this in the first place.
How can you be retired from competitive SC2 after a month? Link?
On March 24 2010 09:39 Cold-Blood wrote: Not really up in the knowledge of pro players so probably a stupid question but is Oversky not on the same level as these or is he not european or just not invited?
If Oversky is Oversky then he's a korean ex progamer and therefore not European.
Oversky = InReach who is American and is also "retired" from playing sc2 competively at the moment.
Therefore, no way for him to be in this in the first place.
How can you be retired from competitive SC2 after a month? Link?
EPT
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