EPTRed Bull Battle Grounds:
The Competitor's Experience
Red Bull has been known in the past year to put out tournaments of the highest quality. Red Bull New York had flawless production, Redbull Atlanta brought meaning to the often overused term hometown hero, but few expected the pure perfection of Redbull Detroit. Having experienced the event live himself, we let Gemini share his thoughts and experiences, from the perspective of a competitor.
After going in the first day I already knew the weekend was going to be wonderfully organized and professional. Once everyone was checked in, the staff took players up five at a time to get their pictures taken for the event (which is something I’d never seen done before, only Dreamhack seemed to do that for all the players) which made it really feel like you were an actual player at the event instead of a random nobody signing up for the open bracket. Everyone at the event itself was extremely friendly and completely willing to help you with any problems to make the first chaotic day run as smoothly as possible. You could tell you were dealing with a professional crew who had a plan and knew how to execute it.
While this may be seen as the perfect tournament, we all know that perfection is impossible. The only lousy part of the tournament was the lack of computers for people to practice on. It’s difficult to blame them, since nearly every tournament with a large open bracket has the same issues. Also, acquiring the amount of computers required to let everyone have their own would have been unrealistically expensive. Redbull made the best out of what they had. They were very organized with how they managed the groups with three different heats at specific times with practice time given before the matches were scheduled to start. Due to some computer problems and long matches there was some delay the first day so people in the last heat had to wait some time before they could play their matches. I personally was in the second heat and so I was accommodated well, but I can see how players in the later heat may have gotten annoyed.
Going into the event as a low-mid Grandmaster Protoss I had a certain amount of expectations going into the event that were obviously crushed after seeing the spontaneously updated player pool two days before the event. What looked like a Ro32 or potentially higher finish for me turned into a question of whether or not I could get out of the group stages. Luckily for me - and every other decently skilled "hometown hero" -, Redbull’s seeding was very well done. There were hardly any groups that had more than one or two highly skilled players to ensure that no one got unlucky with a group of Polt and TaeJa in it. Some were obviously easier than others, but getting into a group with Oz and two other diamonds is not something I could be complaining about.
After defending two 4gates I felt warmed up enough to give Oz a run for his money. I hadn’t known how he played PvP in the recent weeks going into the tournament, luckily Rotterdam was nice enough to give me a few ideas of what he might do so I could plan accordingly. The good part was that he did exactly what Rotti had though, the bad part was that he was still Oz. Even with a defensive two gate expand set up with immortals afterwards I was unable to stop his 3gate blink pressure, crumbling to excellent control. I had the right preparation, but that didn’t mean I could execute it well enough. That raw mechanical skill was too much for my NA GM skills. At that point I figured I would rather end the second game early with an all in so that way if I lost I could just watch the other player in my group to know how he played. Luckily (or unluckily, I’m not really sure) that’s how it went, as my 3gate 5stalker rush wasn’t enough, even after killing his stalkers mid map. I ended up getting out of my group in second place after 2-0ing the last terran in my group with some standard blink colossus openings. I advanced like I had I expected and felt good about how I was playing.
Unfortunately for me, I drew one of the worst cards I could have for the Ro64. While he may not seem like the most threatening player to others, CatZ was definitely one for me. He plays a style of zerg that is beyond standard, which is exactly the kind of zerg I lose to. I had come into the tournament fully prepared for a standard PvZ series thinking the chances of me getting a zerg that plays out of the ordinary were fairly low. Now being completely thrown off and unable to use my original planned builds I had to free form against proxy hatcheries, 2 base swarm host, mass tech switches and all manner of shenanigans from the ROOT captain. The first game was close as I nearly defended a 2 base swarm host nydus all in after killing his 3rd with a warp prism, however the 2nd game put my inexperienced builds into perspective as he was able to clean house in a one sided game on Overgrowth, thus ending my tournament run. Even though I was a bit upset about getting a bad draw, the tournament was far from over and there was still a lot to see.
The audience was something different entirely. I almost felt like I was at two different events. The difference of the quiet player room compared to the passion filled main stage was something I hadn’t experienced before. The only other big LAN event I had gone to was MLG which had the open bracket section fully exposed to the noises of the convention center. Even with my personal fan favorites like Jaedong, San and Snute being knocked out the pure energy of the crowd made it easily the best spectator experience out of all of the past tournaments I’ve attended. Something that Redbull did that raised the bar in such a simple way were the introduction of thunder sticks. Even if your voice was shot you still had a way to cheer emphatically with the thunder sticks. The noise in the venue would reach levels where the casters couldn’t be heard for minutes at a time. Add huge fan favorites to an already hyped audience and you get an event that sounds nearly as good on stream as it does in the venue.
The storyline of Polt qualifying for Redbull D.C. only added to the already incredible environment. Having come so close to qualifying time after time in the past Redbull tournaments (losing to Bomber, Scarlett and a horde of Protoss at three consecutive Red Bull events, Detroit would become the city that saw him finally win. Doing so versus TaeJa, often considered unbeatable in foreign tournaments, no less. He wanted the victory, the crowd wanted the victory and with each round that he advanced through the crowd grew more enthusiastic.
To reach the finals, Polt had went through an onslaught of American players in the early stages of the tournament before facing the trio of San, Violet and Taeja. With the nature of the tournament's line-up being less stacked than some other events, Red Bull Detroit's earlier stages instead focused on the on-fire Petraeus as he beat both Gamja and Supernova to reach the round of 16. All good things must come to an end, as they did when the ROOT Zerg had to face Taeja for a semifinals spot, but one cannot dispute that the man who beat Supernova 2-0 was a different Zerg than the one who got locked in an infamous SH stalemate with Stephano.
As the finals grew nearer, a showdown between two of the international circuit's most accomplished players seemed inevitable. And sure enough, the finals did end up pitting Polt against Taeja for the final spot at Red Bull D.C. With a history of simply not losing once he reaches the finals, Taeja had looked his usual, indomitable self for most of the tournament. Coming face to face with a smirking terror like Taeja, Polt's chances did not look good. Four narrow eliminations preventing him from reaching the finals in D.C felt too cruel, and Polt seemed to agree that three was enough. Quickly dispatching Taeja with the early/mid-game aggression that has been the name of the game in TvT recently, Polt managed to topple the international
With a positive playing experience, exceptional crowd, and a perfect storyline to round it out, Redbull Detroit will be remembered as a high standard for tournaments in the future. People were upset with MLG leaving Starcraft at first, but the hole that they left behind (at least temporarily), Redbull has more than filled with exceptional tournaments in such a short amount of time. With each event that Red Bull puts on looking better than the last, one can only imagine what’s in store for the finals - now with a line-up that could hardly have looked better - in Washington D.C.
That finals was incredibly one-sided, with Polt easily smashing Taeja 3-0 extremely quickly ^^ 
