The 2012 First-Half (there are 2 drafts every year) Starcraft Draft was held on 12th April at Seoul Yongsan-gu iParkmall stadium. 9 players were drafted by pro-teams and thus qualified to become progamers. This is the smallest number since the draft was first started. At the 2011 Second-Half draft, 10 players were drafted. 22 of the players who qualified for this draft, by finishing within the top 40 placings in Rookie League, registered to take part in the draft. However 3 did not turn up, leaving 19 actual participants.
The first player to be chosen was terran By.Yourosia (류다운), a former SKT trainee and the number one ranked rookie based on the Kespa Rookie League rankings. (Edit: the draft proceeded in the order of the lowest to highest ranked team in the previous Proleague season. None of the teams before SKT picked anyone in round 1. There are 5 rounds in a draft.) He was chosen by SKTelecom T1 but instead personally requested for this appointment to be canceled and was subsequently drafted by STX in the next round. (Edit: according to Fomos, Coach Park said that the reason is because Yourosia could not adapt well to SKT or harmonize well with the players.)
The team that drafted the most players was Samsung Khan. They drafted zerg BBatta_Lt (강민수), protoss Beach_Lt (박진석) and By.BigTiger (유태호). STX drafted By.Yourosia and protoss By.comet (신혜성), Woongjin drafted terran Shout[ScM] (서현후), KT drafted zerg PenguiN (남윤석) and protoss MyuNgSiK[WHITE] (김명식), while SKT drafted protoss By.ReQuiem (강기훈).
In total, 4 protosses, 3 terrans and 2 zergs were drafted. ACE and Team 8 did not take part.
After finalizing their contracts, these 9 players will attend the Progamer Education Seminar on 17th April.
On April 12 2012 20:03 GTR wrote: interesting how the guy requested not to be on skt.
Yeah this made me a little curious too. Any backstory?
No idea why. He was an SKT trainee. Anyway, this has happened before at drafts.
Edit: Okay, according to Fomos, Coach Park said that Yourosia could not adapt well to the team or harmonize well with the players so that's why he requested to give up his nomination by SKT.
On April 12 2012 20:02 BLinD-RawR wrote: Sigh only 9 this time....
Look on the bright side, 9 new BW players = long-term investment. That's actually really good news, that the BW teams expect to have these BW rookies long enough for them to pay off.
I don't quite understand these drafts. For example, does T8 & ACE not picking anyone mean they simply don't have the money to pay for another progamer or what? In theory, usually the weakest teams should get the biggest advantage in drafts, right? And here they offer the #1 player to the #1 team, which seems so weird.