Hi Jonathan, and thank you for joining us. Where are you right now and what were you doing before taking a break to talk to us?

At a very nice, but overly air-conditioned, PC bang, playing Starcraft 2, obviously.


Haha, nice. So do most of your evenings look like this at the moment? In fact, why don't you give us a run through of your average day.

Hmm… it’d usually look something like wake up, shower, breakfast, play ping pong, head to pc bang to play SC2 (our computers only arrived recently). Then we'll usually head out for some Korean BBQ or some other type of dinner, and then back to playing. There has also been a lot of just exploring/shopping etc, as well as some drinking obviously (when your ID is a Soju brand, you gotta have it right? It’s not bad!). We finally got our computers just a couple of days ago.

At one point, there was a rather hilarious Internet error. For some reason, every computer except 1 could connect. After changing things around, we ended up with the reverse. No computer except one could connect. We finally settled for the all but one connected solution, since we are moving soon anyway.


Speaking of PC Bangs - what's the situ like there? Are you guys the only ones playing SC2? What other games are the Koreans around you usually playing?

There's usually someone else around playing SC2, but most people play random online games (as expected).


Nobody still playing Broodwar?

Oh, sure there are. Probably about the same as SC2, in my limited sample. Btw, speaking of PC Bangs, gotta plug the Sweet Story PC bang in Seongnam! so nice =]


You've wanted to be in Seoul since you were a teenager, and now, you finally are! What are the highlights of your Korea experience so far?

I’m not sure, it’s all been pretty great - most people seem to be pretty disillusioned by the progaming scene, but so far it’s actually been exactly what I expected, and in a good way. I guess the best part is how extremely nice everyone has been so far, really going out of their way to make us feel welcome and helping out whenever there's a problem. Korea is just overall pretty great, at least when you are in the situation I am in now - I am sure that it has its problems like every other count, but right now they aren’t really visible.


You've now been living and playing together with both Liquid and oGs for a few weeks - has the experience so far been exactly as you expected it? Were TLO and Nazgul how you thought they would be?

More or less yeah, I expected them to be really nice guys and they are, Nazgul needs a ping-pong nerf though. He’s the current house champ. So imba! TLO is a walking encyclopaedia. I’d pick him over Wikipedia any day.


What about oGs?

Even friendlier than expected actually, they've been actively helping out with everything from getting games to just making sure everyone feels welcome. The older guys really seem to take on a lot of responsibility in that regard, and it’s very nice.



So, the GSL - tell us all about it. Your loss was unfortunate, but how was it as an experience, and what did you take away from it?

Well, when I initially went I’d assumed I’d lose the first one, there was just so much to take care of and I wasn’t in very good shape. However, looking at the quality of the opponents, I kinda realized that maybe this wasn’t the case, but unfortunately the day just wasn’t very good.
It started off with me getting something like 3 hours of sleep, nearly throwing up on the way to the GOMstudios, and then spending 10 hours in a cold sweat while waiting for my games.

By the time I was ready to play, my mind was completely burned out, really. I ended up doing a build I hadn’t planned, in a way you should never play it - the first game was defensible as I though I was playing some fish, but the second was just very bad by me.

However, it turns out the guy played was actually quite good - 65% winrate on asia and somewhere in the top 20. So, even on a good day I’d probably have lost. I guess the biggest thing I took away from it is that I need to make sure I get a lot of rest before I play.


We asked TLO last week about laddering on KR. How has it been for you? What similarities and differences do you see between EU and KR?

The difference between really great players isn’t that big, but there’s A LOT more of them on KR.


So in terms of your own play - what areas do you feel you have developed the most in during these few weeks?

Hmmm, tightening up of BOs, and just paying attention to lots of little things I usually didn’t notice on my own. Naz and TLO have been really helpful with this. Also, a slight tone-down of aggression in TvT, as you can’t get away with as much when you are constantly playing a higher calibre of players. You could get a bit lazy on europe I guess. Adding to this, I wanna mention a coaching session by oGsGon that really helped me realize a lot of things I should be paying attention to. It was very nice.


So, apart from laddering, are you inhousing too? Which oGs players have you enjoyed playing with the most?

I dunno, I’ve played most of them but I usually try to ladder since I think I'll be more useful if I get better first, even though I’ve done OK. I’ve played JangMinChul a lot though.


So, how has your Korean been going? Naz and TLO both said you were doing really well!

It’s improving, drinking with Gon helps a lot =] TLO pointed out I’m like a child who just learned to read, Always reading every korean sign I see =] It’s really nice when ordering food, to at least be able to tell the dishes apart.


Awesome! Alright, we're gonna wrap it up here then, Jinro. Anything you'd like to tell TL as we continue to root for you guys in Korea?

Thanks for the support, and I hope next time I can make it through - Spunky told me that nobody who's ever been with oGs has turned out to be anything but successful, and I hope it will hold true for me as well =]

We have no doubt it will. Take care and all the best as you train hard!

TLAF-Liquid`Tyler
PoltPrime vs JangMinChul on Metalopolis. PoltPrime had a solid and exciting game plan that he executed beautifully against a very solid player in JangMinChul.

TLAF-Liquid`Haypro
The BC play by August vs Spunky was the most interesting because you could see how surprised the Protoss was when the BCs came and he had almost sentries and zealots only.

TLAF-Liquid`Nazgul
The quality has been pretty poor so far. Don't be disappointed though because this was to be expected. Some qualifier groups were not very good causing some not very good players to qualify.

The highest level games have been Polt vs JangMinChul who are both very solid players, but these games too were rather one sided (no not because of imbalance MinChul simply did not perform up to his ability). Most other games that featured good players saw them destroy their not-so-wellknown opponents rather easily. Think of Idra, Cool, Inca and TOP. Ro32 is going to be amazing but Ro64 is separating the men from the boys. I'm looking forward to every match that features top level players and of course TLO against the 18 year old ex-Hwaseung progamer should be great.

TLAF-Liquid`Jinro
I've barely seen any, and all the ones I've seen have been terrible.