Day[9] Daily #100 "My Life of Starcraft" Subtitled - Page 6

1:40:00

and I was just like... "Oh my god, dude, yea, good game!" I don't know what to do, I don't know how to party, I don't party, I play video games! What's a good friday night for me? How about some Settlers of Catan or the card game Dominion, ya know, so I'm in Cancún and I just won the biggest Starcraft tournament I've ever been to, and I just went back to my hotel room and I just like sat on the bed and I didn't know what to do. I was just there and I was like "Oh my god, thats it... Cool..." and I watched some stupid Johnny Depp movie and I ate the frozen M&Ms in the fridge and I remeber I just walked along the beach, just by myself just sitting there and I was like "Man, I worked really really hard at something... and it paid off. And the only person whose to blame is me" and I remember I... My mum actually messaged me on facebook beforehand before I even got home, but she messaged me on facebook she said "Oh my god Sean, congratulations! I am so proud of you, I know how hard you've been working on this and I saw the results. I heard that you knocked out Testie, twice!" How cool of a mum is that, huh? How often does your mum say "Yea, you beat Testie twice in a tournament" and get that, right! What mum knows about the Canadian famous Starcraft players but my mum, right! And my family, who just have been infinitely supportive from start to finish.

And... what was so funny about that tournament is that, like I said I'm a very private player, I don't like posting my own replays especially not replays of me winning, because it feels kind of... ya know... snarky. Like "Hey, I won a game, hurr" ya'know, just put it up here, 'cause you know the other guy didn't want me to put it up I don't wanna embarrass him maybe he was having an off day. So I very rarely release replays of myself playing on PGTour or iCCup. So for that tournament -- for the Pan American -- all the replays were lost. So I've never gotten a chance to rewatch any of those games. But that's okay, because it's always just been a really nice memory. I have this, I actually have this little medal up here, umm, hell I can get it I have Starcraft paraphernalia all around my room. Yep, here it is. Here's my awesome little gold medal, the only gold medal I've ever gotten from a Starcraft tournament. Took me 6 years of WCGs to do that, and 8 years of playing. Just commitment, just hard work and just, as my brother said, just ya'know, believing in yourself.

And after that, school was just too much. I mean, 2008: I played in one qualifer and didn't qualify and couldn't go to the finals. 2009: I qualified for the finals but couldn't go again because of school. But you know what, in that period I've always needed that Starcraft fix. I still watched all the pro matches, I actually umm... Up until recently, actually, this hasn't been true for the last 3-4 weeks but up until 3-4 weeks ago I watched every single professional Starcraft match since 2003. Every single one, and... I just love the scene. I love TeamLiquid, being able to log on there and just chat with a whole bunch of people and post a replay, 'cause you know what if you have a game with amazing mutalisk micro, it's so hard sometimes to turn to your roommate and say "Dude, there's this hard thing that I pulled off and... I'm really happy." but if you can log on to MSN and find a buddy and say "Check out this replay!" and he goes "Oh man, nice work!" that sort of support and encouragement is just what makes the Starcraft community so, so amazing and why I've just been delighted to be a part of it for so long.

And I even remember, ya'know, since I focused so much on my life as a player, in college I used to watch the matches and I would always invite as many people as I could in, and I would try to explain to them everything that was going on in these matches because I... I... thought they were so cool. And I thought that these professional gamers were so talented and I was determined to make all of them get it, and it got to the point where people actually did get it, and at Harvey Mudd which is a school of about, umm, I think it's about 900 now it was about 850 when I was there as an undergraduate. I started hosting... umm... like broadcasts of the MSL/OSL finals, where we would... I would go down to the academic end of the audoriturum, I would rent it out starting at like midnight until three in the morning and I would send out an email to the entire school trying to get everyone, as many people as I could in there, and I drew of like, a school of 800, 350 people from the school showed up. And it was AWESOME. I got the mic, and I got to help everyone understand why this game was so cool. I mean, playing is great, ya'know, I love playing and I love going to tournaments and training for tournaments but there is nothing more satisfying then looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love. And for anyone watching [NOTE: goes into 1:45:00 here]

1:30:00
That those are just loose benchmarks, the B- player could very well take out the C+ player. Excuse me, the C+ player could very easily take out the B- player and vice versa so there's no reason to claim that one is necessarrily better than one or the other so you know they are just these broad categories so you always have... It's always hard to tell if you have... improved. It's easy to say, well my rank is higher than yesterday but did you get better? And I recall in all my hours of just laddering like crazy on PGTour or iCCup, this thing would happen where you get up to someone, who would be, you'd get to like A- or A range and you'd play against some player who is just really good. Just, out of 10 games we'd play in a row I'd win 3, or maybe 4, and none of them felt good.

So what I'd do is create a new account, I would rework what I wanted to practice and I would start from the ground up. Okay, so let's see how it feels against these lower levels and let me adjust all the way up, 'cause I don't wanna do something nuts like completely change my playstyle and "Oh hey! Now I'm going to practice it against A or A+ level players" and I would just get demolished.

I'm not going to lie, it's not really being super smart or anything that gets you, like, high, man just for me I just played a lot and analyzed my games alot alot alot alot alot alot. So I just created a new account 'cause I just needed, I as a person needed, that many games to figure things out, to problem solve and to sort out what would work and what wouldn't. And, I remember I found that same guy again and he wanted to play another 10 games, and suddenly I won every single one of those games and... And his units felt predictable, and stupid. His play felt so flawed and it... it... and at no point during the game did I ever actually feel nervous or feel like I was at a loss or feel like I had to play intensely. And after all those hours of playing, I was like "Oh my god... I actually improved" and that in my eyes is why Starcraft is incredible as a game, just as a game, think about that. It is a game that requires as much mental strength as a chess grandmaster trying to figure out all the different strategies and ther ight way to respond and all the little adjusts you make in game for all the various possibilities.

On top of that, you need to have the dexterity of a musician, have your fingers be... umm, obey your brain. You want them to do what you tell them, right, hah, which is a surprisingly hard thing to do, like your brain can want it all you want but if you haven't trained your hands to do it, it's not gonna... it's not gonna come to together. So you need this brain dexterity and merge them together. That means, like, if you lose because it's a game. It's not because, ya'know, oh the russian judge was just feeling angry today or it's not because, umm... ya'know, there's this subjective rating system, it's not ya'know, this system where you agree to disagree you lost straight up purely, truly and only because you did something wrong and he had superior mental strength and defeated you that way. But that also means that when you win, it's not because you got, ya'know, some sort of cheap opportunity, it's not because your mummy and daddy had a lot of money and paid for you to do it. It's not because you had the right connections or because you were cheap or cheating or anything. It is your fault that you got that good at something that hard.

And that, I think, has been the most instrumental... uh, thing that just made me appreciate all Starcraft players as just incredible, incredible people and just that feeling of "Oh my god, I actually got better at something", that is sooooo, so important and so rewarding because that's really hard to do nowadays. Because in school, they're just like "all A's for everyone!" but in this harsh environment of Starcraft you get the chance to prove yourself to yourself.

And I continued to train as hard I could for that, ya'know, Pan-American championship tournament and I went out to Cancun and I didn't want to be there. It was wet everywhere and the humidity was high, it was so moist that the, the humidity would condense on the sheet. So I would get into a cold, damp bed at night and I had like food poisoning, ya'know, because of the water and Montezuma's revenge and whatever. And... I just felt "urgghhhh", and I went to the tournament and... I didn't... the best player at the tournament was the famous Canadian player Testie, Nick Perentesis, he is... like, a legend, he was unbelievably good with all three races he would practice regularly with all the top-named players like Stork and stuff, he was in the same clan with them. He would even show me these like private replays of him just demolishing, uhm... demolishing like Stork in these games on Gorky Island and all that stuff. Really scary player. And I thought he wasn't going to show, and he showed up so I was like "ugghhhh".

1:35:00

But what ended up happening is that we get to the finals of the Winners Bracket... Actually I ended up winning 2-0. And... I had no idea that was even possible, 'cause Testie was really good, it didn't occur to me "Well, jee Sean you've basically been playing 14 hours a day for 2 months, hardcore non-stop for this tournament, ya'know so it's bound to help eventually", but... I, I, was just blown away and he just walked up to me and he was like "Dude, yea wow, really really nice! Really well played" and I was just like "Oh my god, Testie is saying nice things to me, oh my god!" and then ya'know, uhm, I remember it was the finals of the Winners Brackets I had a one game winners advantage and Game 1 was on Py-- Gaia, which was my second best map. Games 2 and 3 were on Paranoid Andriod and uhm... Azaleiah, which are my worst two maps. But then the last game was on Peaks of Beakdu, which was my best map.

So on game 1, I executed my strategy perfectly and believed in myself, 'cause thats the thing my brother always said "Dude Sean you got this man just believe in yourself" and I will always remember those words he says 'em constantly to me, he's just like believe in yourself and I did, and I pulled the build off and I won Game 1 and it was one-sided. Then he RAPED me in Game 2, and then RAPED me again in Game 3. So we're tied up 2-2 and it's in the finals. And... again, I've never had a big win, I've never, and I remember in my head I said to myself "Oh well, second place is good. Second place is fine, ya'know, whatever let's just get this over with it's been a long tournament you feel kinda sick" and then I just went "Why did I do that? Why did I just say that in my head? No! I'm going to focus, I'm not gonna 5-pool, I'm not gonna do anything cheesy like rush for mutalisks. I'm not going to resort back to my 2001 Floating Lurkers Into The Back of His Base strategy. I'm going to play the strategy I know and trust in what I've practiced.

And I opened up, it was on Peaks of Beakdu. I'm bottom left, he's in the top right. I do an overpool build, because I want to force any early expander to build those extra cannons so I can expand actually three times and I end up with a very fast four bases on Peaks of Beakdu because you can defend them very nicely. And I saw, with my overlord, that he was actually 2gate rushing me.

And I was like "ohhh, god, okay" because at the US Open in the 2007, the reason Nony got first and I got second was because Nony had a brutally good 2gate and I hadn't practiced against 2gate. I practiced alot more after that qualifer with FrozenArbiter, who plays around with the name of Jinro in SC2 as you may have heard in one of the Day9 dailies, but he uhm... but he did this 2gate opening and I remember like, time was... sooooo slow in that game 'cause I expanded and I was just waiting for my hatchery to finish. I was starting to get Zergling speed but I knew to hold off this 2gate rush, that hatch needs to finish, I need to throw down a sunken colony immediately. Because if that sunken colony doesn't get up in time... I'm done.

So I'm just staring at my expansion, all his units just seem like their moving at one pixel at a time, I feel like I can see every frame in there as I'm looking there it's at 900 hitpoints and there 950 hitpoints and then a 1000 hitpoints and then a 1050 hitpoints and I'm just like, getting my drone ready and it's bare and it's waiting. His zealots are coming in and I'm trying to push him forward and back because I just need to get this sunken colony done. So it finishes and it starts building it takes a few hits, I'm trying to position another Hatchery to get in the way I'm trying to control this but he just has so many zealots and then... The sunken finishes! And he has to back off, and I go "Oh my god, I held the two gate rush and I'm in a decent position!" and then I look at my Overlord that's up at his base that's been inspecting this 2gate opening and I see that he threw down an expansion at his natural.

And the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life happened. My brain went "Oh my god, I won." and then... I literally stopped consciously playing. It was almost as though, I stepped out of my self and I was two feet to my right and I could feel myself... It felt like I was looking at myself from behind and I remember that my brain was totally clear and my hands were just doing everything and my eyes were just sort of going around and I thought "I know exactly how to crush this early expansion, right now. And I'm gonna do it. And it's gonna work." and my hands just did everything from then on. And then I actually won, and then that was it. That was it. That was the end of the tournament, it wasn't a qualifier, it wasn't the intermediate set between the world final, it was just the end of that tournament. And Nick comes over and is like "Hey man, good games well played" -> [TN: Goes into 1:40:00 here]

1:20:00

"Day, I do not want you to feel bad. You are such good player, and good friend." And he was just so nice and I could tell he felt bad because he and I were the two players who were battling for the second place spot because Sen he had already gotten first, there was no chance he was getting eliminated. So Android, he still came up to me and just said "You know what man, like, good games. I... I feel bad." and that was so nice for me to hear, this player who people were like "Oh yea notoriously getting pissed off at people" but he came to me and he was like "Dude, I... I appreciate your skill and you, and I think you're a good guy and I'm sorry it had to turn out this way." So that, that's always been really nice to me because I always valued trying to be as just nice, pleasant and polite as possible.

It was so nice to hear him be able to say that, and around this time in 2005, I was like "You know what, I just want to be good at Starcraft" and afterwards I hated on myself for alittle bit but then I found out about Bunny I was so upset about it, I actually took a break from Starcraft I couldn't even handle it. And I ended up coming right back and started playing, and this is when I started going hardcore into PGTour, uhm, this is when I hit A+ over multiple seasons in PGTour just mass gaming, like 6-7 accounts a season. I would work an account up and I would just reset it and work it all the way back up again. Using that Fr0z style, ya'know, like increasing the temperature, dropping the temperature, shoes on, shoes off, chair up, chair down, every single thing I could because I just wanted to get good.

I didn't tell anyone about it, I think my brother is the only person who actually ever knew about it because ya'know throughout this whole time I'm talking to him like crazy. He's the only person who ever really knew because again I didn't want winning or any of this stuff getting in the way, I just wanted to focus purely on the game. I had such a useful discussion with my mum, one of the most...eye opening discussions in my entire life, 'cause I said "You know mum, I have been working... I just get so angry after some of my games and you know I'll... I'll... I broke, I've actrually broken my keyboard multiple times. I've broken mice. Uhm, and I just get really upset and shaken up" and my mum said "You know what Sean? That is totally normal. Don't you worry about it, don't worry about those feelings, you know Sean the thing that's so important to know is that all that feeling of tension and anxiety and adrenaline that goes into your system and more importantly the adrenaline that comes out of your system after you lose an intense match. That stuff is just chemicals. And that is so easy to get sucked in by that, and to believe it, and to direct that anger at yourself." and she's like "Which I can see is what you've been doing. But Sean remember, I could give you a pill that will make you feel the exact same way. It's just chemicals, just ignore it and wait for it to go out of your system, and don't believe it. Don't think anything, just be very calm and just deal with it." Oh excuse me, "Just deal with the emotion, don't think about anything else."

From that point on, I would go on losing streaks, of course I would get angry. If any of you get angry and think "Oh I shouldn't do that after some games." Don't worry about that. The important thing, as my mum said, just don't be hard on yourself. Do not hate on yourself. If you get that feeling of anger and feeling flushed just go sit down somewhere and just calmly wait for it to go away, and then you can go back and look at your game and start thinking and analysing, then you can start working all that good stuff out.

That has been like soooo valuable to me, that's just been like the biggest help out of all my practice so I don't just like flip out or anything, 'cause ya'know I'm very low on my teacups.

But yea, so the 2006 US Open happened, uhm... My brother and I both qualified for the finals, uhm, for that one and... uh... up to this point, I hadn't... I still hadn't had a win, I mean I won 2005 USA but I mean it's the qualifer for the tournament and I got that bittersweet feeling because I played so bad against Android and all that other stuff. Uhm... And... I lost my train of thought. Allow me to sip tea and muse to regain it.

At the 2006 Finals, that... that was... one of the most stressful tournament experiences of my life, so... They did some little interview thing beforehand, "Day who do you not want to play at the finals?" I was like "I do not want to play EchoOfThunder that guy--- uh excuse me, EchoOfTerran, that guy is really really really good." and uh, obviously he's in my round robin group first round, I'm up against EchoOfTerran and Slog, just a group of three.

1:25:00

And so I lose my first game against EchoOfTerran but then I barely win the next two in order to come back. Uhm... So then I'm feeling like "Oh my god, I beat EchoOfTerran, oh my god, I... I can do this, I got this, I just gotta focus. I just gotta go through Slog and already the hardest person at the tournament is thrown out the window" Umm... and I... I... This is actually really funny, at WCG 2006 because they're on a tight schedule what they would do is cast the first game of every Best Of Three. Or, every notable Best of Three 'cause obviously they didn't have time to do all of them. So what happened is that it was me vs Slog, so Game 1 was up on stage and I lost to Slog4, the protoss player. And I was like "Oh my god" and he like crushed me it was not even close. And then, uhm, I barely barely barely barely won the next two games, but what was so funny is that everyone in the tournament was like "Oh yea, let's watch the Starcraft matches. Oh yea, that Day9 guy he lost, alright" and then uhm, then I had to play against uhm... LastGosu, who ended up beating me twice, sothat first game was shown and I lost that. So then I had to go to the Losers Bracket where I had to play Nony, and then first round game that gets broadcasted and I lose that, then I win the next two.

And then uhm, I had to play against Artosis and they didn't cast those games but then I had to be up against LastGosu in the finals. So every single game, uh, series I had played was me losing the first game and winning the next two with the exception of LastGosu who just beat me 2-0 straight up.

So in the final game, I was... I was just so tired... That in the last deciding match and this is the one that got cast... I 5-pooled. I've never 5-pooled in a practice game in my life. I just... I just 5-pooled. And... I lost because he 9-rax'd and I remember I got that same bitter feeling that I got after Android because I thought to myself "I designed my build to hold off 9-rax, and I abandoned all of that just for an easy win because I was too tired" and you know again, I was really bummed out about that. But you know, my brother, he was there and we went into a corner and I got really upset. He's... He's just been this fixture of support, that's why I think it's so important for people, ya'know, if you have siblings and parents who don't get Starcraft to just... get them into it. To just figure out ways to say these stories, to... to... umm... share your intense passion, all the amazing stuff that happens in Starcraft with them so that way you can... umm... so then they can just be supportive, because once they get it, they'll definitely just be there for you and be so nice. My mum felt horrible, I ended up, ya'know, it was just number one spot go to the grand finals so I didn't get to go so I was just like "urghhh".

And uhm... eventually LastGosu couldn't go but I had already scheduled stuff in with school so I couldn't go to the 2006 Finals. Uhm... but you know, I still just kept playing, ya'know, even though that hurt I just focused and kept playing and then 2007 came along. This is me now, I'm... still more WCGs,there was a WCG US Open and... Okay, for the US Open if you got in the top two spots you qualified for the WCG Pan-American championship which is just North and South American countries.

So I... I was invited to the open so it was top 4 from the previous year, so it was me, Artosis, Nony and LastGosu. And I trained harder for that then I ever have for anything in my entire life. I... So... There was a break at the end of school between when school finished and when my summer research began at Harvey Mudd. So, in that period of about a month, little over a month, I would wake up at 10am, I would play from 10 to Noon, take a break for lunch, play from 1 to 6pm, take a break for dinner, play from 7pm to 3 in the morning, then wake up on the next day at 10am again and just repeat.

I played countless games, like the three people I wanna personally thank right now are: FrozenArbiter, helped me with my Zerg vs Protoss, DeadMan from Croatia, for helping me with my Zerg vs Terran, and IVeeLove from Denmark I believe who also helped me with my Zerg vs Terran. And I just trained sooo much, holy cow I played a lot of games then, as you might imagine. And uhm... Nony got first at the, uhm, at the Open and I got second so Oh my god we're both going to the US Open [Pan-American?] and there's this weird thing this is perhaps the best feeling I've ever gotten in Starcraft, like far and away the best.

You'll end up in situations where... You wanna do some sort of skill measuring contest ya'know, where oh he's a C+ player and that guy got B- last season but most people know [TN: Goes to 1:30:00]

1:30:00
that those are just loose benchmarks, the B- player could very well take out the C+ player... umm, excuse me, the C+ player could very easily take out the B- player and vice versa. So there's no reason to claim that one is necessarrily better than one or the other. So, you know, they are just these broad categories, so you always have... It's always hard to tell if you have... improved. Umm, it's easy to say "Well my rank is higher than yesterday." but did you get better? And I recall in all my hours of just laddering like crazy on PGTour and iCCup, this thing would happen where you get up to someone, who would be, you'd get to like A- or A range and play against some player who is just really good. Just, out of 10 games we'd play in a row I'd win 3, or maybe 4, and none of them felt good.

So what I would do is I'd create a new account, I would rework what I wanted to practice and I would start from the ground up. You know, being like, okay, so let's see how it feels against these lower level players and let me adjust all the way up, 'cause I don't wanna do something nuts like... completely change my playstyle and then "Oh hey! Now I'm gonna practice it against A and A+ level players" I would just get demolished.

I mean, it's not like... I mean, I'm not gonna lie... It's not really being super smart or anything that gets you, like, high. Man, just for me, I just played a lot and analyzed my games a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. So I created a new account because I just needed... I, as a person, needed that many games to just figure things out, and to problem solve and to sort out what was, umm, what would work and what wouldn't. And, I remember I found that same guy again, and he wanted to play another 10 games, and suddenly I won every single one of those games. And... his units felt predictable, and stupid. His play felt so flawed, and it... it... at no point during the game did I ever actually feel nervous or feel like I was at a loss or feel like I had to play intensely. That after all those hours of playing, I was like "Oh my God... I actually improved!" and that in my eyes is why Starcraft is incredible as a game.

Just as a game, think about that, it is a game that requires as much mental strength as a chess grandmaster, trying to figure out all the different strategies and the right way to respond and all these little adjustments you make, in game, to all the various possibilities and on top of that, you need to have the dexterity of a musician, to have your fingers be... umm, your fingers obey your brain. You want them to do what you tell them, right? Which is a surprisingly hard thing to do, your brain can want it all you want, but if you haven't trained your hands to do it, it's not gonna... it's not gonna come together. So you need this, like, brain and dexterity, and merge them together.

And that means that if you lose, because it's a game... that it's not because, you know, "Oh the Russian judge was just feeling, you know, angry today." it's not because, umm... you know, "Oh, there's this subjective rating system", it's not you know, agreed to disagree. You lost straight up purely, truly and only because you did something wrong and he had superior mental strength and defeated you that way. But that also means that when you win, it's not because you got, you know, some sort of cheap opportunity, it's not because your mommy and daddy had a lot of money and paid for you to do it. It's not because you had the right connections or because you were cheap or cheating or anything. It is your fault that you got that good at something that hard!

And that, I think, has been just the most instrumental... thing that just made me appreciate all Starcraft players as just incredible, incredible people. And just that feeling of "Oh my God, I actually got better at something!", that is so, so important and so rewarding, 'cause that's really hard to do nowadays. You know, 'cause in school the kids, they're just like "all A's for everyone!" but now in this harsh environment of Starcraft, you get the chance to prove yourself to yourself.

And I continued to train as hard as I could for that, you know, Pan-American championship tournament, and I went out to Cancun and I didn't wanna be there. It was wet everywhere and the humidity was high, it was so moist that the, the humidity would condense on the sheet. So I would get into a cold, damp bed at night, and I had like food poisoning, you know, because the water got Montezuma's revenge and whatever. And... I just felt "urgghhhh", and I went to the tournament and... I didn't... the best player at the tournament was the famous Canadian player Testie, Nick Perentesis. He is... like, a legend! He was unbelievably good with all three races, he would, like, practice regularly with all the top-named players, like Stork and stuff, he was in the same clan with them. I mean, he would even, like, show me these private replays of him just demolishing, uhm... demolishing, like, Stork in these games, on, like, Gorky Island and all that stuff. Really scary player, and I thought he wasn't gonna show, and he showed up, and I was just like "ugghhhh".

1:35:00

But what ended up happening is that we got all the way to the finals of the Winners Bracket... Actually I ended up winning 2-0. And I had no idea, that that was even possible, 'cause Testie was really good. It didn't occur to me, like, "Oh gee, Sean! You've been basically playing 14 hours a day for 2 months, hardcore and non-stop for this tournament, ya'know, like... it's bound to help eventually!". But... I, I, just was, like, blown away... and he just walked up to me and he was like "Dude, yea wow! Really, really nice! Nice, well played!" and I was just like "Oh my God, Testie is saying nice things to me, oh my God!" you know, and then uhm... I remember, I was in the finals of the Winners Brackets, I had a one game win advantage. Game 1 was on... uhm, Gaia, which was my second best map. Game 2 and 3, were on Paranoid Android and uhm... Azaleiah, which are my worst two maps. But then the last game was on Peaks of Beakdu, which was my best map.

So, Game 1, I played... I executed my strategy perfectly, just believed in myself. 'Cause that's the thing that my brother always said, he's like: "Man, Sean, you got this, dude! Believe in yourself, dude!" I will always remember those words. He says them constantly to me. He's just, like, "Believe in yourself, man!" and I did, and I pulled the build off, and I won Game 1 and it was one-sided. And then he RAPED me in Game 2, and then RAPED me in Game 3. So we're tied up 2-2 and it's in the finals. And... again, I've never had a big win. I've never... and I remember, in my head I said to myself: "Oh well, second place is good. Second place is fine, you know, whatever! Let's just get this over with." You know, it's been a long tournament, you feel kinda sick. And then I just went "Why did I do that? Why did I just say that in my head? No! I'm gonna focus! I am not gonna 5-Pool! I am not gonna try to do anything cheesy, like rush for Mutalisks. I'm not gonna resort back to my 2001 'Floating Lurkers Into The Back of His Base'. I'm gonna play the strategy I know, and I'm gonna trust in what I've practiced.

And I opened up, it was on Peaks of Beakdu. I'm bottom left, he's in the top right. I do an Over-Pool build, because I wanna force any early expander to build those extra Cannons so I can expand actually three times and I end up with a very fast four bases on Peaks of Beakdu, because you can defend them very nicely. And I... I saw, with my Overlord, that he was actually 2 Gate rushing me.

And I was like "Uhhh, God! Okay!" because at the U.S. Open, in 2007, the reason Nony got 1st and I got 2nd is because Nony had a brutally good 2 Gate, and I just hadn't practiced against 2 Gate. I practiced a lot more after that qualifer, with FrozenArbiter, who plays with the name of Jinro now in StarCraft 2, as you may have heard in one of the Day[9] dailies. But he, uhm... but he did this 2 Gate opening, and I remember, like, time was SO SLOW in that game, because I had expanded, and I was just waiting for my Hatchery to finish. I was starting to get Zergling speed, but I knew: to hold off this 2 Gate rush, that Hatch needs to finish, I need to throw down a Sunken Colony immediately! Because if that Sunken Colony doesn't get up in time... I'm done!

So I'm just staring at my expansion. All his units seem like they're, just... moving one pixel at a time. I feel like I can see every frame in there, as I'm looking it, it's at 900 hitpoints, and then at 950 hitpoints, and then at 1000 hitpoints, and then at 1050 hitpoints, and I'm just, like, I'm getting my drone ready and it's there and it's waiting, and his Zealots are coming in and I'm trying to push him forward and back, because I just need to get this Sunken Colony done! So it finishes and it starts building it takes a few hits, I'm trying to position another Hatchery to get in the way I'm trying to control this but he just has so many Zealots and then... The Sunken finishes! And he has to back off, and I go "Oh my God! I held the 2 Gate rush and I'm in a decent position!" and then I look at my Overlord that's up at his base that's been inspecting this 2 Gate opening, and I see that he threw down an expansion at his natural.

And the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life happened. My brain went "Oh my God, I won." and then... I literally stopped consciously playing. It was almost as though I stepped out of myself and I was two feet to my right. I could feel myself... It felt like I was looking at myself from behind. And I remember that my brain was totally clear, and my hands were just doing everything, and my eyes were just sort of going around and I thought "I know exactly how to crush this early expansion, right now. And I'm gonna do it. And it's gonna work." and my hands just did everything from then on. And then I actually won, and... that was it. That was it! That was the end of the tournament, it wasn't a qualifier. It wasn't, you know, the intermediate step between the world final. It was just the end of that tournament. And Nick comes over, he's like "Hey man, good games! Well played!" [NOTE: Goes into 1:40:00 here]

[1:30:00] and I was just like... "Oh my God! Dude, yeah, good game!" I don't know what to do, I don't know how to party, I don't party, I play video games! You know! What's a good friday night for me? How about some Settlers of Catan or the card game Dominion, ya know? So like, I'm in Cancún and I just won the biggest Starcraft tournament I've ever been to, and I just went back to my hotel room and I just like sat on the bed and I just didn't know what to do. I was just there and I was like "Oh my God! That's it...that's... cool!" and I watched some stupid Johnny Depp movie and I ate the frozen M&Ms in the fridge and I remember I just walked along the beach, just by myself and just sitting there and I was like "Man, I worked really, really hard at something... and it paid off. And the only person whose to blame is me." and I remember I... My mum actually messaged me on Facebook beforehand, before I even got home, but she messaged me on Facebook she said "Oh my God Sean, congratulations! I am so proud of you, I know how hard you've been working on this and I saw the results. I heard that you knocked out Testie, twice!" How cool of a mum is that, huh? How often does your mum say "Yea, you beat Testie twice in a tournament" and get that? Right? What mum knows about the Canadian famous Starcraft players but my mum, right? And my family? Who just have been infinitely supportive from start to finish.

And... what was so funny about that tournament is that, like I said I'm a very private player, I don't like posting my own replays, especially not replays of me winning, because it feels kind of... ya know... snarky. Like "Hey, I won a game, hurr" ya'know, and just like putting it up here, 'cause you know the other guy didn't want me to put it up I don't wanna embarrass him maybe he was on his off day. So I very rarely release replays of myself playing on PGTour or iCCup. So for that tournament, for the Pan American, all the replays were lost. So I've never gotten a chance to rewatch any of those games. But that's okay, because it's always just been a really nice memory. I have this, I actually have this little medal up here, umm, hell I can get it I have Starcraft paraphernalia all around my room. Yep, here it is. Here's my awesome little gold medal, the only gold medal I've ever gotten from a Starcraft tournament. Took me, took me 6 years of WCGs to do that, and 8 years of playing. Just commitment, just hard work and just, as my brother said, just ya'know, believing in yourself.

And after that, school was just too much. I mean, 2008: I played in one qualifer and didn't qualify and couldn't go to the finals. 2009: I qualified for the finals but couldn't go again because of school. But you know what, in that period I've always needed that Starcraft fix. I still watched all the pro matches, I actually umm... Up until recently, actually, this hasn't been true for the last 3-4 weeks but, up until 3-4 weeks ago I watched every single professional Starcraft match since 2003. Every single one, and... I just love the scene. I love TeamLiquid, being able to log on there and just chat with a whole bunch of people and post a replay, because you know what? If you have a game with amazing Mutalisk micro, it's so hard sometimes to be able to turn to your roommate and say "Dude, there's this hard thing that I pulled off and... I'm really happy." but if you can log on to MSN and find a buddy and say "Man, check out this replay!" and he goes "Oh man, nice work!" that sort of support and encouragement is just what makes the Starcraft community so, so amazing and why I've just been delighted to be a part of it for so long.

And I even remember, ya'know, since I was focused so much on my life as a player, in college I used to watch the matches and I would always invite as many people as I could in, and I would try to explain to them everything that was going on in these matches because I... I thought they were so cool! And I thought that these professional gamers were so talented and I was determined to make all of them get it, and it got to the point where people actually did get it, and at Harvey Mudd which is a school of about, umm, I think it's about 900 now, it was about 850 when I was there as an undergraduate. I started hosting... umm... like broadcasts of the MSL/OSL finals, where we would... I would go down to the academic end, to the auditorium, I would rent it out starting at like midnight until like three in the morning, and I would send out an email to the entire school trying to get everyone, as many people as I could in there, and I drew of like, a school of 800, 350 people from the school showed up. And it was AWESOME! I got the mic, and I got to help everyone understand why this game was so cool. I mean, playing is great, ya'know, I love playing and I love going to tournaments, I love training for tournaments, but there is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love. And for anyone watching [NOTE: goes into 1:45:00 here]