EPT*** Part 1 here ***
Ok, after I almost finished this part I thought it was a good idea to close the wrong tab so I have to do it all over again .... so it'll probably a bit shorter if I don't remember everything, or at least a bit messy.
GSL Open Season 3 qualifier
It was time. I felt much more confident this time around, I got more familiar to the Korean playstyle, started figuring out my own, and planned how I would play my series in the qualifier. For the most part I was planning on playing pretty standard tho. I also obviously went to the Season 2 finals to watch it so I was pumped.. Watching a GSL finals live always does this to you, especially when it's as good as MarineKing vs Nestea series was (best finals until recently as everybody knows).
When I arrived at the venue, lot of the other foreigners were already here. For this qualifier we had Jinro, HayprO, HuK, Ret, KiWiKaKi, SeleCT, iNcontroL, IdrA, Artosis, TorcH, but most importantly this time Tasteless was here !
I met him already at the studio as him and Artosis always go talk to new foreigners who are visiting the studio during breaks, which is pretty cool as we're now all very good friends ; everyone knows it by now but Nick and Dan are amazing guys who deserve the best.
Some were standing at the first entrance to the playing area, some at the other one and some were outside by the screen that was setup for people to watch GSL stuff and some matches from the qualifiers too. I said hi to a few of the people I've already met the last time, and ended up going to say hi to HayprO and Jinro who were with the NA guys at the first entrance of the playing area, and to the rest of the foreigners there, even though I usually don't like imposing myself like this to people I don't really know. This is how I met iNcontroL, IdrA, and Ret. I remember being a bit surprised by how IdrA was, I expected him to be bit colder but he was pretty friendly.
This is also the event I met a few guys who are very good friends of mine now. TorcH, who everyone obviously knows about (that guy saving eSports everyday, who used to hide in the shadow of GOM), and some you may have heard about, GimbleB and Carefoot.
GimbleB and me
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![[image loading]](http://a8.sphotos.AK.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/75742_10150090408370189_529800188_7679424_3980253_n.jpg)
Yes, he's ridiculously tall
They both stayed in Korea for 2 or 3 months, GimbleB took a good number of videos about Korea and SC2, from interesting discussions to stupid ones showcasing my jumping skills (without my horse).
Carefoot streamed one of the qualifiers venue live from his laptop, and came here as a random player.
Anyway after I said hi to everyone, we went to get lunch with GimbleB and another friend from NA I met this day, on the 10th floor of TechnoMart. When we got back to the 7th floor, Artosis was doing interviews, and it was Tasteless time. Needless to say it was pretty hilarious :
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After this, Artosis did an interview with me .. apparently it was a good occasion for a bunch of the other foreigners around to poke here and there in the background :
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When we were done we did chat a bit with people around, and it was time for me to check-in. John took care of everything, I checked-in, and got in my spot to get ready for my games and warm-up.
The maps were the same but Xel'naga was first and Metalopolis 2nd this time.
My first game was a TvT which went pretty smoothly, my opponent was not very good. My next game would be a TvZ, which was my worst matchup by far ; my TvZ was horrendous. I remember very well how it went.
I lost the first map, Xel'naga. I didn't stick to what I've planned and practiced entirely, so I ended up losing in a disappointing fashion. Things were not looking good at all for me at this point, and I knew it so I was feeling very unconfortable ; I was counting on my win on Xel'Naga to win my TvZs as Scrap Station was the deciding map if it went to 3 maps, and I just had no idea how to win against zerg on this map at this time. It was a heavily favored zerg map back in days.
I was bit lost as to what to do in Metalopolis, but after I've seen we spawned close air positions, I decided to use the build I prepared for Scrap Station : 2 port banshee. I didn't want to play Scrap Station without this build still up my sleeves, but it was too risky since I was down 1 map. It worked out for now, I won Metalopolis without much problem, but now that my cheese was revealed, I was not confident at all.
I still stuck to my plan and used a variation of this build on Scrap Station, hoping that he would not expect me to do it twice and would get caught offguard, but he didn't. He was completely prepared for it, so I ended up losing the game.
I was obviously furious about it, because I knew the biggest reason I lost the series was that I didn't stick to my original plan, which cost me the first and deciding map.
I went out for a bit, got myself a drink, and came back an hour or so later after I calm down a bit.
I did hang around and was watching other players try to qualify. I remember the last game I saw was SeleCT playing against Naya, and I was so impressed by how ridiculously fast and precise he would play that I just did stand there watching him play the whole series without moving. I said to myself, now I have a better idea of what kind of things I have to be able to do myself if I want to be one of the best, especially since he still lost 0-2 to Naya despite looking really scary to me.
I then left the venue, thinking about how stupid was my loss.
It was a mistake that ended my run for this time, but one thing was for sure : I wouldn't do the same one next time.
Winter break ... or not
From now on there was quite some time until the next qualifier in January, which would be the first code A qualifier. As I had much more time, I decided to take the time to go the GSL studio almost every time there are games to chill out, get some inspiration and whatnot. GimbleB and Carefoot would also go almost every time so we would meet there.
I remember that one time when GimbleB brought a bunch of bananas for Fruitdealer's match, and gave them out to the crowd and gave some to Fruitdealer himself. He kept them in his booth, and after he won his game grabbed one and ate it as a ceremony, was pretty cool :p.
Beside that I was obviously practising as hard as I can for the first code A qualifiers in January 2011, and at some point GimbleB introduced SuperDanielMan and his PC Bang to me :
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![[image loading]](http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/154978_10150103687910189_529800188_7885341_6424118_n.jpg)
It was pretty cool to meet him, we talked a lot and he told us some stories about the old times when he was taking care of ElkY and Grrr.. in BW. He has his personnality, some strong opinions about eSports in general, and likes France quite a bit, so it was interesting to meet him and talk to him.
He likes to see foreigners over here in Korea for Starcraft, his PC bang was available to us for practice, so that's what we've been doing for a good part of the winter as there was a pretty good giant pizzas place a few meters away from his place.
It made it perfect for us to practice there. We would meet at lunch time, order a pizza, set up and then eat watching some NA or EU tournaments going on sometimes before starting to practice :
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As you can see he was taking videos from time to time of me while I play, so you can get an idea of what my skill level was like at this time :
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I'm pretty sure this was taken a few days before the GSL 3 Finals. For those who don't remember, it was oGsMC vs TSLRain. I went there along with GimbleB, Carefoot, as well as friends we met at the studio during this month, Eugene, Lewis and Diane.
And as usual, GimbleB took some footage from the event, so here it is for those who didn't experience it :
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Now this was also the event when the encounter I had last qualifiers with Jaeho Lee, the Blizzard eSports manager for Korea, would prove to be very helpful. He came to talk to me during one of the breaks in between games to say, chat for a bit and tell me about something that I'm touching on in the end of this video where I aggro Carefoot a bit and give my thoughts about this GSL final :
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Basically, the fOu manager at the time (not Choya) was interested in having me play some test games with the team to see how good I was and maybe join the team. Needless to say I was extremely excited about this and had a hard time sleeping that night, it was the kind of opportunity I was hoping for when I decided to take this challenge.
The next day, I was back to practising even harder.
However I didn't keep going to SDM's PC bang as often as earlier, Seoul was getting freezing cold and it was pretty far from where I live so I just kept practising from home on my laptop.
For the remainder of the time that was left to the code A qualifiers I was planning on not doing anything else than practising, and that's what I did.
Christmas in 2010, I was laddering. New years eve in 2010, I was laddering. I don't even know if I actually noticed that it was Christmas or New years eve or whatever, all I had in my mind was that I needed to be faster, to play smarter. I had to learn all was needed for me to achieve the goal I had, within the time I had, so there was no room for any distraction of that sort.
The beginning of 2011
Early January 2011 was held the GSL 2011 Opening ceremony. We went there with GimbleB relatively early. It was at the same place where the Season 2 finals were held, and they were planning on having the last code S spots decided with group play supposed to solve the ties in GSL points (if I recall correctly). All the players were there as they were needed for the ceremony :
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During one of the breaks, I talked to Jaeho as well as the fOu manager this time. We exchanged contacts so he could let me know when I would have to come over at the fOu house to play some test games with the team's members. It was going to be in the very near future but I still didn't know when, nor for how long or the details of the said trial. In any case I was still happy that things were moving.
I went back to my seat to watch the last games, and when it all ended we were waiting for the usual raffle they run after every GSL event to be done. GimbleB won a few times, and so did I : I got a pretty decent graphic card. But not this time ! We went to get dinner before going home, had to get back to practice tomorrow as early as possible.
The following days were the same, waking up, practising, lunch, back to practice, dinner, back to practice again, and sleep once I was too tired for the practice to be worthwhile. My mechanics were getting quite good at this point, I was starting to feel like my play was more solid, I was getting a hint of where I could cut corners and when. My game sense was more accurate, I was vaguely "feeling" when stuff could potentially come at me. Keep in mind at this time there was no ingame timer, so you couldn't really rely on this.
Also, maybe the biggest thing of all, I had much more stamina.
I wasn't practising in the best conditions so I probably was not improving as fast as I should, but the good thing is that yes, my schedule and conditions were draining, but it was making me much more endurant, I could play more and more and feeling fatigue less and less, and it is something that is very easily overlooked. Stamina is as important as macro, micro, or having refined builds. If you're not endurant you will not focus entirely at all times, and when your focus starts being weaker is when you can potentially start the process of losing the game.
And this is one of the good things about Korean ladder. Most games are not gonna be easy once you reach a certain level. Actually no game is gonna be easy and grinding games like this all day long is extremely draining and requires lot of stamina. This is not something you can build on other ladders as well as here, because you will very often hit subpar opponents who just won't challenge you, so you'll be able to relax in between stronger opponents and just autopilot to victory.
On Korean ladder, that just doesn't happen enough to be an issue, so you will try hard every single game.
You could compare it to when our brain command muscles to do things, it will only make them do the right amount of effort needed to get the task done safely. You're not gonna use the same strength to lift a 2kg item as the one you use to lift a 20kg one, because it's not needed.
Anyways, I finally got an e-mail from the fOu manager a week later or so : it was time.
The first big opportunity of my journey : a chance to join fOu
I was thrilled to have this chance, and I did NOT want to let it slip. I kept practising as hard as I was during the few days that were leading to my appointment with fOu, while still making sure I get enough rest to be in good shape.
On the said day, I got at the meeting place something like 30min in advance. People were probably not used to see foreigners around in here according to how they would stare at me sometimes, but even in Seoul you could feel lot of looks directed at you. After a while, the manager finally arrived and came to greet me ; we then went to get some drinks and talked for a bit while he was finishing smoking.
As we didn't really get to actually talk last times, he was asking me various things, where I was from exactly, what was my background like, why I was here, etc .. When he finished his cigaret we went to his car and he drove us to the fOu house while we continue chatting about Starcraft and other stuff. Funnily enough he was a DotA guy too so the feeling couldn't be better, and as opposed to the huge majority of koreans his english was pretty decent, I didn't have to speak broken english to make myself understood, most of the time you have to speak with extremely short sentences, very limited vocabulary and use body language to be understood by Koreans.
We arrived at the house after around 20 minutes.
The house itself was not that big. When you got in you had something like 5 computers setup in the center of the living room, a bed room on the left with more computers, a couple other bedrooms with computers on the right as well as the kitchen. All the players seemed a bit intrigued, I remember Leenock being right there when I entered the house with I think Crane. We said hi to each other, some seemed amused, and I was already feeling a little bit out of place, but I got more comfortable pretty fast as players were really friendly and trying to use the little bit of english they had to talk to me. TheBest and sC were in the middle of games, the others stood up and came to say hi too once they noticed us, including choya looking as happy as usual. The players I remember being there were Leenock, Choya, Crane, TheBest, sC, kAsyu, Inori, Soulman, Terious, Sirius and Twilight, who is now more known as Oz, and who was the coach of the fOu team at this time. More were there but I either didn't know them or don't remember well enough.
After exchanging a few words with some of the players, we went to the closer room on the right, where Oz was staying, and made me setup my gear on his computer. They would check what kind of gear I was using and comment on it, they were telling me my mouse was not really the best for Starcraft (it was a Mx518) and that it was more a FPS mouse, which was true, I played a lot of FPS before. But to this day I still don't understand how this matters as long as you're comfortable and perfectly accurate with your mouse.
I would chat with Oz, kAsyu (who had OK english and was very friendly) and the manager while I was setting up, they would ask me about my matchups, what kind of style I play etc etc .. When I was done, they logged me on Oz' account, and let me finish to configure everything.
Usually I play on low settings for everything to limit lags on my laptop, so when I was changing this they were telling I didn't need to, computers are really good etc but I was used to play on low settings, and I also think you can see things much more clearly on low settings.
However they would already teach me something very useful : I needed to have textures on High to see cloaked units easier. Fair enough, I never bothered with this but I should do it.
TvT
First, they made me play a couple TvTs against kAsyu. I played my usual banshee style in both games and kAsyu played pretty conservative, opening 111 with tanks vikings and saving scans, but he wasn't making a raven.. so even though he had lots of vikings I just kept making banshees. The game was pretty close but I ended up losing, mostly because I was very nervous I think. I was ahead but made silly mistakes and botched it, I felt like pressure got to me. The manager noticed and was telling me to relax, that it was only practice games and it's ok to lose, that I should just try to play my best and not care about the result.
They asked me why I kept making banshees and told them that I think that as long as I can burn scans and get some kills it's worth the investment if there are no ravens. They didn't seem to disagree but I don't think they thought it was the best way to do it either.
Second game against kAsyu was pretty similar in all regards, he just played safe, it was close game but I lost again.
TvP
Afterwards they made me play two protosses, Soulman and Crane. I got void ray all-ined by Soulman first and lost (fOu protosses do that whenever they can), then played him again in a macro game where I win pretty convincingly after a pretty good 6 gate defense.
Crane was next, I played 3 games against him. I lost the first one to some funky immortal all-in, as I said fOu protosses love to all-in or cheese against terran whenever they can.
I then decided I would show them that I can all-in too, and went for some build they probably never see : hellion drop into marine / banshee all-in. He went for FE and my hellions did very nice damage so it was pretty easy win. It's very funny how excited koreans can be for worker roasting action, when i dropped and went for probe massacre, every hellion shot was followed by everying shouting "WOOOOOH !!!" and all sort of noises in the same vein.
Third game I went for a variation of Polt's timing attack, and barely won thanks to some hero banshee.
What you could get from those TvPs is that my crisis management was pretty bad. They also thought my builds were a bit outdated, especially the ones I used in the games I lost where I was opening 2 rax with techlab first for concussive shells.
TvZ
Finally they made me play TvZ... My worst matchup by far. I think I played Terious and Sirius, and that was pretty painful to play and watch. I got destroyed in almost every game, I tried to 2 rax, some old poorly refined version of my build - mass hellion action into Thor/hellion if you don't know what I'm talking about - , and they even made me finally play the last one on Steppes of War .. yeah, and even thought I got incredibly ahead with a strong contain (yeah I know it's pretty tough to do, you contain your opponent by sieging at your natural t_t), or at least I thought so, I just ended up being overwhelmed because of a couple counter attacks and a third I never scouted because I simply would've never expected that in his position.
Overall
Needless to say, I was ashamed by my performance, even though I won a good part of my TvPs, and I didn't understand why I was so nervous just for some practice games. The good side at least was that I learnt quite a lot, they gave me pointers here and there to improve my play, for example that I should be much more active about controlling watch towers, have better supply depot placement, etc...
After they felt it was enough, we left with the manager, kAsyu and another player (I don't remember who exactly) to go get dinner and talk some more before the manager would drive me directly to my home. When we got out the manager told me they would like to have some more games like this at the house next month after I practice some more with the team and after the code A qualifiers. At this point I would join them.
They got me a new account that I would be able to use from PC bangs and ladder on it as well as practice with the team members ; Starcraft II is free in Korea if you play from there, but I could still use this one from home for a month before having to go to PC bangs. I found very funny that they named my account "Napoleon" because of my nationality :D.
However they asked me not to add anyone in my friend list as they do not want people to be able to find their smurfs throught my match history.
On the ride back to my home he saw I looked extremely disappointed so he tried to make me feel better about it, telling me that he knew I was nervous and that I shouldn't worry too much about it. I did appreciate the gesture so I stopped thinking about it too much and started chatting instead, about DotA, sports, food, girls, France, Korea, and whatnot. I was bit surprised to have so many things in common with someone who was considerably older than me, I guessed that's how it is in a country where gaming and eSports are an integral part of the culture ; just another thing that made like Korea more.
A couple weeks were left for me to prepare for the code A qualifiers, and this time around my chances should be much better considering I would be practising with fOu. I felt like everything was getting more and more real. I felt I was close. All I needed to do is practice efficiently and use the help I can now get from a Korean team.
I couldn't be in a better mindset at this point, I wanted to practice more and more, I was thinking about the game all the time. I was living and breathing Starcraft, even in my sleep I would dream about it.
I was feeling ready to take on those qualifiers.
*** Part 3 here ***
Thanks!
