TeamLiquid.net: Why hold the tournament?
Day9: I’ve been doing the daily cast for eight or nine months now. Three or four months into it, I recruited people to assist me because putting out regular content is so much work. We got to talking and wanted to hold a big, fun event for the release of StarCraft 2. What began as an idea for a simple cast and a happy birthday to Blizzard expanded into a gigantic event. That’s the birth of the launch party. The tournament was a natural extension.

I’ve always wanted to do a big live event where a major tournament finale takes place in America.
People love shoutcasts. You always hear Americans saying, “I only wish they had a huge OGN cast here.” Well, I couldn’t get Bisu or Boxer but I can get these supremely talented dudes to duke it out with Razer providing some nice prizes.

TeamLiquid.net: Why these specific players?
Day9: It actually worked out incredibly well.

I wanted a good mix of players. You’ll note the 3 Americans, 3 Europeans and 2 Asian players. You could even say Idra is half and half considering he’s lived with CJ Entus for a while.

With just that idea in mind, you have to get some big names. The obvious ones are people like TheLittleOne, whose creativity is renowned, Idra, who is just plain solid, Tester, who is one of the best in the world and QXC, who has just been tearing it up all over.

When I was done, I looked at the list and was surprised myself. I thought, ‘That was easy.’ It was a good mix of races and nationalities.

TeamLiquid.net: Are there any other players we should know about who aren’t in the tournament?
Day9: Well, I limited it to 8 players for a few reasons. It’s easier time wise, number one. Also, it’s nice for observers to get the chance to see people play multiple times in a row. All the players I invited are phenomenal players and I get to watch them, so I’m happy. With the daily casts, I get to see a lot of replays and think about them and all these invitees, I personally wanted to see more games with.

TeamLiquid.net: It was a great choice. The audience gets to watch and become more familiar with individual gamers, giving us a chance to form a real attachment and become serious fans.
Day9: Right.

As far as other players that everyone should know about: The folks on oGs, other than IntoTheRainbow, Tester, like Ensare, the guys on the Prime team like Check and Maka. From Europe, Haypro, Morrow, Jinro. The EG guys from America. Nony.

TeamLiquid.net: How hard is it to run a tournament like this?
Day: Incredibly hard. It’s funny, tons of people assume running a tournament is pretty easy. I’ve been in numerous tournies where I thought, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe these people are so disorganized!’ It’s funny once you are actually the organizer, it makes you really appreciate people like the Zotac and TL folks. Just being able to organize and even and get things to go smoothly is an enormous task.

Lining up time zones, playing games, replay corruption, disconnection, observers, refs and a ton of problems that are the fault of nobody but are real obstacles. It’s incredibly difficult and super time consuming. (editor's note: we often feel this about coverage too)

TeamLiquid.net: Can you talk about the skill difference between different servers? I know it’s difficult to delve too deeply about who is on top of whom with the divide but do you have any insight?
Day9: I’m not a believer in the idea that one server is particularly stronger than another but the servers definitely have stylistic differences.

Asians tend to be aggressive. They use seemingly suicidal all-in builds, like a Zerg forgoing Drones completely in favor of ‘lings and Roaches. Europeans try to execute these clever strategic plays with neat transitions and funky unit compositions. Americans tend to be passive and wait for that one big, strong push.

The distinct styles means weak players are super exploitable. Asians are often too aggressive, Europeans have no unit count and Americans are so passive that you can just take over the map expanding.

At the very top of the servers, Koreans have an edge. Obviously this isn’t some innate gene that gives them the advantage in StarCraft. Not that I know of anyway.
TeamLiquid.net: Not that you know of...
Day9: Time devoted to play by teams like OGS and Prime lead to better gamers. Devoted people with lots of time is very helpful. Over here, we have jobs and school that cuts into that time. The EG fellows are quite a ways ahead because they constantly hang out and play and chat with each other and are not afraid to experiment.

TeamLiquid.net: Do you have any solid plans for after the tournament that we should know about?
Day9: I’ve been devoting all my time and more to the live event. You know, I don’t want to think about Plan B when I have Plan A right in front of me. I’m really excited for the event and want to make it awesome, so it’s receiving my complete focus.

I am in the final phase of putting together a site with all my content on it, everything I do in one central location. And I miss playing, so I’m going to go ahead and do that. I really, really like playing StarCraft.

TeamLiquid.net: Now that's it's over, how was the beta gone for you all in all? Are you happy with where the game is at? Are you happy with where you're at?

IdrA: For me personally it started out pretty well, won a couple of the first big events on the US server and did well at Stars War, but I was a bit disappointed with the second half of the first phase. They started to nerf Zerg really hard right before some of the huge tournaments, like the Chinese World Cup, and while some of the nerfs were necessary it really threw me off my game and caused me to drop out of those tournaments early.

Obviously the second phase has gone quite well so far, the Razer King of the Beta tournament is the only large thing im playing in and it started out kind of rocky, but I've advanced and I feel im getting back into shape quickly so everythings looking good now.

TeamLiquid: Who was the strongest player you faced in the group stage? The weakest? What did you think of the overall level of play?

IdrA: Tester's by far the strongest, HuK the weakest. I think TLO's play in our match was hurt pretty significantly by the beta downtime, we played on the 2nd day back and I think he was still pretty rusty at that point. Tester played well, huk just tried to allin every game.

TeamLiquid: Do you have any insight into the difference in level of play between asia and the rest of the world? I know it's a bit tough because of the server division but you'd know how they stack up better than most.

IdrA: Pretty much the same as in Brood War. Foreigners in large part play like HuK, they look for powerful killing builds because thats the easiest way to get wins, and in a lot of cases theyre incapable of playing competently when the game gets longer and requires more multitasking. This does get them wins, but it cripples them when everyone else figures out their style, or if they come out behind from the build orders.

Koreans have no problem playing aggressively, but its less in the way of all-ins and more just aggression that can then transition into a normal game. That, in combination with the fact that they practice twice as much as foreigners, just naturally makes them stronger players as time goes on.
Also most of the really skilled foreign RTS players aren't taking sc2 seriously yet, which really hurts non korean's performance overall.

TeamLiquid: Do you have any single play during the group stage which you are particularly proud of? Any one play you remember which you wish you could take back?

IdrA: Well the Tester series was pretty bad, I'd never run in to that particular cannon rush before but I'm still not entirely sure how to counter it if you start with a 14 pool or later, then the scrap game I thought he was warp gate all-ining and didn't see the collosus switch fast enough. I was really happy with the push break on metalopolis vs TLO, when I saw his army come out I definitely thought I was dead, but managed to just barely hold it off.

TeamLiquid: Yes, everyone thought that was the end of the game. You pulled quite a few roaches straight out of thin air. Well timed.

IdrA: Ya he came right as I was starting unit production so it made it seem a bit more dramatic than it actually was.

TeamLiquid: Do you have any interesting plans for once SC2 is released or is going to be more of the same scattered tournament play for the immediate future?

IdrA: Well I'm pretty sure Korea isn't switching over entirely immediately, so for this fall at least I believe I will be flying around playing in all the big SC2 tournaments.

TeamLiquid: Good luck in that then!