Day[9] Daily #100 "My Life of Starcraft" Subtitled - Page 7

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"Day, I do not want you to feel bad. You are such good player, and good friend." And he was... 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 game. I... you know, I feel bad." and that was so nice for me to hear, this player who people were like "Oh yeah, 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, 'cause I've always valued trying to be as kind as possible, via the forums, because, I mean, you can try to be funny on forums, but the tone gets lost so easily, sometimes you come across as a jerk. So I just valued trying to be just as nice, and polite and pleasant on the forums as possible, and...

It was so... 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 wanna be good at Starcraft" like, afterwards, I'd hated on myself for a little bit, but then when I found out

about Bunny, I was like so upset about it, I took, actually, a break from Starcraft, couldn't even handle it. And I ended up coming right back and started playing, and this is when I started going hardcore into, like, PGTour... 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 just try to work it all the way back up again. Using that Fr0z style, you know, like increasing the temperature, dropping the temperature, shoes on, shoes off, chair up, chair down, every little thing I could because I just wanted to get good.

And I didn't tell anyone about it, I think my brother is the only person who actually ever knew about it, because, you know, throughout this whole time I'm talking to him like crazy. He's the only person who ever really knew, because again I just, like, didn't want winning, I didn't want any of this stuff to get in the way, I just wanted to focus purely on the game. I had such a useful discussion with my mom, one of the most... eye opening discussions I've ever had in my entire life, 'cause I said "You know mom, 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 actually broken my keyboard multiple times, you know, I've broken mice. And I just get really upset and I get shaken up" and my mom said "You know what Sean? That is totally normal. Don't you worry about that, Sean. Don't worry about those feelings." and she said "You know Sean, the thing that's so important to know is that all that feeling of tension, and anxiety, and the adrenaline that goes into your system and more importantly the adrenaline that comes out of your system after you lose a really intense match, that stuff is just chemicals. And it's 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, as you said, what you've been doing." But she said "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 then 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."

So, 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. But the important thing is, as my mom 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. Then you can start thinking, then you can start analysing, then you can start working all that good stuff out.

And that has been like so valuable to me, that's just been like the biggest help in terms of all my practice, so I don't like, flip out or anything, you know, because you know, I'm very low on my teacups. But yeah, so the 2006 U.S. Open happened... My brother and I both qualified for the finals... for that one and... Up to this point, I mean, I hadn't... I still hadn't had, like, 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 "Ohhh, I played so bad against Android and all that other stuff." And... I lost my train of thought. Allow me to sip tea in muse and regain it.

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

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And so I lose my first game against EchoOfTerran, but then I barely win the next two, in order to come back. So then I'm feeling like "Oh my God, I beat EchoOfTerran, oh my God! I... I can do this, right? I got this! I just gotta focus. I just have to go through Slog and, I mean, already the hardest person at the tournament is just thrown out the window" And I... I... So this is actually really funny, so 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. Because obviously they didn't have time to do all of them. So what happened is, 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... 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..." so then... and then I had to play against LastGosu, who ended up beating me twice. So that first game was shown, and I lost that. So then I had to go to the Losers Bracket, where I played against Nony, and then first round game that gets broadcasted, and I lose that, and then I win the next two.

And then 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 I... every single series I'd played, was me losing the first game and winning the next two. With the one 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'ed, 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. And he's... He's just been this, like, fixture of support, that's why I think it's so important for people, you know, if you have brothers and parents who don't get Starcraft, to just... get them into it. To just figure out ways to say these stories, to... to... share your intense passion, all the amazing stuff that happens in Starcraft with them, so that way you can... so that they can just be supportive, because once they get it, they'll definitely just... be there for you! And be so nice. My mom felt horrible, you know, I ended up... 'cause it was just number one spot goes to the grand finals, so I didn't get to go, and I was just like "urghhh".

And... and eventually LastGosu couldn't go, but I had already scheduled stuff in with school so I couldn't go to the 2006 Finals. But you know, I still just kept playing, you 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 U.S. Open and... Okay, for the U.S. 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 went to... I was invited to the open, 'cause I was top 4 from the previous year, so it was me, Artosis, Nony and LastGosu. And I trained harder for that than 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 10 A.M., I'd play from 10:00 to 12:00, I'd take a break for lunch, I'd play from 1 to 6 P.M., take a break for dinner, play from 7 P.M 'till 3 in the morning, then wake up on the next day at 10 A.M. again and just repeat.

And I played countless games, like the three people who 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 SO MUCH, holy cow! I played a lot of games then... as you might imagine. And... Nony got first at the... at the Open and I got second so we're "Oh my God! We're both going to the U.S. Open [Pan-American?]" and then 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, you know, where it's just like "Oh, he's a C+ player. Aww, that guy got B- last season." but most people know [NOTE: Goes to 1:30:00]

Hello ladies and gentlemen. Today is April 13th, 2010... and it is Day[9] Daily number 100. Look as my camera auto-adjusts the light. I repositioned it back to that old angle... Did number 99 with this webcam actually on top of my computer but I kept actually naturally looking down here. And I'm sure a lot of people here are familiar with the Diablo III poster. And now because I have an HD camera you can even see the Starcraft II poster there, so that's pretty awesome...

So today... Today is an unbelievably special Day[9] Daily because first of all, I just hit three digits for the first time ever. Hum, and three digits is cool ! Also, today we're not going to do any analysis of any game : no games at all. It's just gonna be my life playing Starcraft. Because, I think people just don't quite appreciate how into games that they are [?]. I have grown up playing Starcraft. The things that I have learned by playing Starcraft have helped shaped me so much. I just want to do a big dedication to the community, to just say "man, just be proud you are a Starcraft gamer." There is nothing more cool than being proud of things that you love. And it's actually... It was almost really emotional today as I'm like trying to go through all the memories I have from Starcraft and try to... boil them down to something that's, you know, reasonably entertaining. So, as you'll note, I have even been taking notes to everything to make sure I don't skip anything.

So, let's just talk about Starcraft. Let us begin at the very beginning, when I first bought Starcraft. I can still remember it. I grew up in a little town in Leawood, Kansas. Which is in the middle of nowhere. It's in Kansas right ? Well, it's part of Kansas City but still, I'm from Leawood, Kansas, where the land is flat and evolution is still a theory. It's the line I always use. We lived in this awesome little house, that was right next to this mall that Nick and I could walk across the street to every day. And of course, there was like a computer software store there, where we would buy our various electronics. And we were super pumped for Starcraft, because We played Warcraft II baby... Yes, indeed, we were Warcraft II players ! And like any kid, you just go up to your mom and you're just : "Mom ! Mom !" and you tell your mom about this genius shit you have just devised in your head. "Mom, did you know that in Warcraft II, a catapult outranges a tower ?" Ooh, baby, baby ! Now... Now, all of a sudden, I can never lose to towers. You know, just simplistic junk like that. We were your standard little newbies my brother and I...

So, my brother Nick, whose probably more commonly known as Tasteless in the Starcraft community but he shall be Nick for this story... So my brother Nick and I, we walked to the mall and we paid, like, 52.36 or something for our first game of Starcraft ever. And it was so funny because the guy at the counter was a huge nerd too. So he was just excited about Starcraft. So he even knew the price of the top of his head. I mean, that's very standard nerd type of stuff, you know... So, Nick and I bought it for the first time ever and we only owned one computer in the family. Because, you know, now we're ritsy ballers and we each have our own computer. But back then, we had to like, split time, so we would just like crowd against each other, trying to, like, get as much play time, or at the very least as much back seat playing time. You know : "Build Zerglings ! They're awesome ! Trust me !". We didn't know what we were talking about...

So, you know, I played Starcraft a lot. This was when I was in, god... it must have been fifth or sixth grade when I first bought Starcraft. I know for a fact it was in sixth grade ! And... And after a while, as I'm playing more and more, it, it, it rapidly became something that I did, right ? You know, I was known for being that guy. Because I would bring the Prima Starcraft strategy to school, and like, read it. I was just, er hum... I know what unit counters what, according to Prima, you know...
The : "How look ! Here's the easiest way to beat the second Terran single mission", right ? I was hot shit in sixth grade, man ! I got it ! Hum, and I started playing with my, with my great friends Shawn and Charlie. And we would go to each others' house and we would play. And this was
my first ever, like, network experience. I had never played against another human being. I mean, I played custom games, which, generally for me, would take like, two, three days to beat a custom game. Because, you know, I would make sure that all the units had names. If they were dishonorable in some way, they would have to be executed. I would talk to them. You know, just like : "Erm. Oh yeah. I gotta make sure that Martin the marine... you know, we gotta give him something special, because he has 4 kills." You know, because I just, would only attack with 3-4 units at a time. Anyways. First ever game I actually played against real people. And we were like god awful, and stuff. And the network eventually crashed. We want back to play single player games on, of course, Big Game Hunters. Because that was our favorite map in seventh grade. And... Oh god, was Brood War even out yet ? I guess it was just regular Hunters we were playing upon. And, to make it fair, against the computer, we would only use one cheat code. That was the rule that we created, right ? Just one. You could do anything else you want, but one cheat code. And it can't be the invulnerability cheat code. You could turn on the entire map, you could turn on the vision, you could get money. For some reason, I opted for mass level one upgrade. That's a cheat that you can just type in. I was like : "Yeah man, I want my workers to start 1-1-1, man. It's gonna be the best." So, you know...

Things sort of progressed from there and soon enough, my brother and I just started figuring out how to network our two computers together. Cause we had one really awful old computer and we also had this network laptop. And we would just like play against each others. For hours ! Erm, but I think that perhaps the most significant thing to note about our play time... was that... we had curfew. We were not allowed to play the computer 'till 3 pm. Cause one day, Nick and I were playing Syndicate Wars ! Do you guys remember this game ? Oooh my god that's old school... Open up a web browser and look up Syndicate Wars, 'cause I swear to God, I thought this game had the best graphics of any things that had ever existed, right ? And you're gonna look it up, and it's like, 320x240 and it's all pixelated. You rotate the screen and it like almost shuts down your computer, cause it's like, too hard for him. Erm. But one day, Nick and I were like fighting with each others. Really wanting you know, get on. And my mom was like : "Well look ! You guys are fighting over the computer. You shouldn't even be on the computer anyway. No video games 'till 3 !". And we were just like "Ow, why'd we fight about it ? If only we hadn't done that..." My mom also made us get up, you know, at like 8 or 9 in the morning, in the summer's to do, you know, like chores, maw the lawn. Because in Kansas, you actually have a lawn. In LA, it's pretty much concrete, you know desert, and really high gas prices. So not really much mawing going on there. And, so, we didn't have time to actually play. We would be up and, we wouldn't have anything to do ! And it's kind of weird because my mom was like a single working mother, like running her own business. So it's not like she was going to be home to see if we were gonna be there, like playing before 3, but Nick and I still, honorable gentlemen that we were, we did not play any Starcraft before 3pm... And what we would do, is that we would walk to the mall, erm, every day. That same mall we would get Star.., erm, we got Starcraft. We would look at the games. We really didn't have that much money so we would just, like, look at the games and read all the backs and covers. And occasionnally, we would have enough money for Orange Chicken and we would seat with our Orange Chicken from the, erm, from the food court, behind the escalator, and we would just talk about Starcraft and we would talk about video games.

And I really think that the beginnings of my brother and I, just, loving discussing games. Because I definitely think that, probably a majority of people who are listening to this and you know, don't have siblings, based on some random polls I've seen on TeamLiquid and stuff. And I just think it was so helpful to me to just have a brother there who just wanted to talk about Starcraft all day. We wanted to talk about strategies and everything. And just, our crazy ideas we had and everything... Erm. And what was awesome about Nick is that, like... I mean, a lot of people have asked questions like "What was it like growing up with Tasteless ?" It was awesome ! Do you watch GomTV ? How could that be bad ? My brother is hilarious ! I mean... What's actually funny is that Nick is so funny and so good at, you know, being on, I actually was the quiet younger brother growing up. Erm. And
it was, it was cool ! I would just sit there and Nick would just go and go and go and keep being funny and funnier and funnier. It was great fun, you know, for my brother, my mom and I. That was the three of us that grew up together. So, like, erm, yeah god... And we played 1v1, like everything !
You name the game, Nick and I challenged ourselves to it. My brother was like, my biggest competitor. We played Goldeneye 1v1, License to Kill pistols in the arcade... Yes, thank you ! We played Soul Calibur. I played Maxi and Ivy, and Nick played Mitsurugi, because he's cheap, right ? He's unfair ! He would just do like, the, the... What is it ? Like, the down kick erm... It was like Kick-A. He used various combinations : Back-Kick-A, Down-Kick-A... and just alternated them. And I could never beat it. What else did we do ? Like even Sega Saturn games like Last Bronx or Sonic Racing... All sorts of stuff. So I mean, I just grew up, ow, Street Fighter Alpha ! Ow, yes. We just grew up competing with each others, and just wanting, to like, one-up each other, and, in the olden days of Starcraft, Nick and I finally got on, it was weird.

Because we only played against each others, and suddenly, we were on... The Internets ! Where the big fishs swam, right ? And, I still remember, my first game of Starcraft ever, right ? It was... Ok, it was a 1v1 Free-For-All. Okay ? And I was like "Allright... This will give me ample time to build up, so that way, I can win ! Eventually... I just have to stay out of their way." You know standard Free-For-All junk and, and these two guys allied and they 4-pooled me ! So, I'm like, in this game, I'm like "Allright. Okay. Cool." You know. I was getting my cybernetics core. I was probably gonna be doing an arbiter rush, which is a strategy that I had praticed many times in my 3 days long custom games. And, erm, all of sudden, 12 zerglings run into my base, and I was just like : "Hooo..." And they weren't attacking each other, and I was like : "You guys... You guys... It's a Free-For-All ! It's a Free-For-All !" And I'm typing, and of course, I had like, 30 words per minute, so this is really cutting into my ability to play. I'm like "Y-o-u g-u-y-s" Just each little individual punch on the letters. Just like sweat pouring down my face, and I'm like "You're... You're allied... Just... Just stop it... It's Free-For-All !" That's what it said in the game title. How can you violate what the title of the game was ? Erm. So I lost that game, and I almost threw up. I swear to God ! I was so upset. It felt so vile to be betrayed by these two random strangers, that I, like, went to my mom and cried, and she was like "Never play on the internet again !" I'm like "I'm never gonna get on the internet again" I'm just gonna play Sonic Racer with my brother. But eventually, you know, I got over that. I did this same thing that every new player does : I just latched on to team games. I think "Well, it's obviously because I need a good ally, someone who respects my ability to get those arbiters really fast", right ? "Me and my [? 11:20] will definitely appreciate the use of a good ally."

So, did a whole bunch of team games, and eventually, BGH ! Oh, I learned about this. "Wait a minute ? Are you saying that I don't ever have to expand, ever ? And I have infinite money ? This seems like a reasonnable way to spend my time, right ? I'm gonna do this and I would 3v3" Okay ! I don't know if this has ever happened to you, just your history as a person... Especially for me, my life as a Starcraft player, I was an asshole ! I disconnected when I lost, right ? I would pull the plug. I would be in a BGH game, and I would be like, you know, mass hydralisks. Enough. Ain't no big deal. All I got to do is... Not hit the H key, because you know, who uses the keyboard ? This hand was busy pulling up my lip, and folding it and scratching while I thought, you know, maybe using on my chin a little bit, because I was quite the intellectual nerd. Erm. And, I would mass hydralisks. And then I would lose everything. And I would just be like "Well. Erm. Good game man". And I would actually type Good Game. And because I was playing on a laptop, I would reach behind and unplug that modem cord. And remember : I'm actually on dial-up right now, so it would take me like two minutes to call up AOL again and have to reconnect. But, you know, it was worth it because, it just wasn't fair man... I am so ashamed that I did that. I can't believe it. And it was really funny because I would join games... And erm.

I had nicknames that were stolen from the Fallout series. My brother and I made a clan, the clan was Tang, right ? Tang ? Ho, it means something fresh ! So, I was Tang Kamakazi, which is again a name from Fallout. Tang Finesse. Because again, if you ranked up too many loses on one of these accounts, you gotta create a new one that represents your actual skill. And I would have these records that looked like 10 wins, and 3 loses, and 20 disconnects. And, and I litteraly, didn't
get that that was bad. I would join these games and I would be like "Hey what's up guys ?" Ready to chat before a game of Starcraft. And they would go "Dude, do you disc ?" And of course, they mean, do you disconnect ? But I didn't make the connection. And I was like "Of course, I have the
Starcraft disc... How else do you think I'm playing idiot ?" And I was like, nudging my brother, like "Uh Uh". And he was like "Dude, you got him !" Ooh. Oh man I was such a nerd. But erm, eventually I moved away from these infinity money maps. And I began playing 1v1. Because even thought everyone was god awful and only played with one hand, only played with the mouse... That was normal, right ? That isn't considered newbie as it is right now. That was like the norm. So I said "Who are these garbage allies that I, the seventh grad, erm, Tang Kamakazi, has to put up with ? you know. I'm gonna go play 1 vs 1 games where I can actually get the good feeling for it". So I only played 1v1s on the Small Divide. And some of you have heard the stories if you've watched the ZOTAC Cup cast I did. Erm. But I would only play on Small Divide, which is like a 64 by 64 map, that you both start on islands. And I would mutalisks rush 100% of games. And by now, my alias had evolved. I was no long Tang Kamakazi, I was Sean - hyphen- P ! My name is Sean Plott... Being clever right ?

Before I even continue with this story of me, like, 1v1ing on the Small Divide, I just want to give you a picture of what I looked like at this age. So, I was short, okay ? At the start of the seventh grade, I was 5 ft 2. At the end of eighth grade, I was 6 ft 1. That hurt, that period. It was like like urgh like Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory style of growth right ? Erm. What was I talking about ? What was my train of thought ? Oh yes ! So I was really short but my mom had seen how much my brother had grown so she bought me like big, extra large T-shirts. Erm. And I really liked sweat pants
but I didn't like that the extra large T-shirt would like hang over. So I tucked the shirt into my sweat pants. So there was just like this ring of collected stuff and my sweat pants, I tucked them into my fluorescent purple snow boots with velcro. So, like, I would actually play with the velcro snow boots at school, be like [Velcro Noises] and I just enjoyed doing that. Because I just had these nervous tweaks as a kid. Erm, I also had these thick enormous glasses that I would wear, and I would use them to like, melt insects and stuff, and these things were like gigantic. And my vision was really bad, so they shrunk my eyes. So I looked all silly and stuff. And then I moosed [?] my hair. Not gel my hair, I would moose it. I would moose it directly to the left, right ? It was like a giant sheet of hair. And it would flick off in the day and my eyes were allergic to it. So I always had these bloodshot red eyes, with like, tears coming down and you know how I would socialize with people ? I would walk up to them and I would say random facts that I was pretty sure they didn't know. Ow baby, yes, I sure know how to work with the ladies... I would go up and be like "did you know that the [?] moves an average of 6 feet per second ?" And erm, I'm surprised I actually got beat up after school. Hell, I would beat me up right. That was a good formative moment for me as a youthfull nerd.

But you know, going back to these games of Starcraft. I mean this was like one or two years after this state I described. I wasn't much better right ? I was still pretty similar. I liked to, I got that idea that I was intellectual, henceway I bought the Protoss Starcraft box, because Protoss were clever. Terrans were scrappy and Zergs were bugs and uuh I still hate bugs ! Uuh uuh ! I don't want to get that. But I, but I was a mastermind. I only played 1v1s on this Small Divide. I got it ! All I had to do was make a pool at 12, I made the extractor on 12 and then I would get a lair once my pool finished and then I would get hatch when I could. Which was pretty close to optimal right ? Except, I had to it on an island because I couldn't wrap my head around rushes and I actually explained to people at my school (again, keeping in line with giving facts that you don't know), I would explain to people at my school why I was so good, right ? I would go up to, I would litteraly go up to girls I had crushes on and I would be like "Hey ! You ever heard of Starcraft ?" And they'd be like "No." Apparently they had very deep voices that would be like "No. No. Absolutely not." So I'd go "Well, it's this strategy game and I have an account Sean dash P, I'm 13-1 on it. I have another account Sean tilde P, right ? Just using different delimeters, right ? I'm Sean apostrophe P, and I'm 15-2 on that. And look, look, look... You're probably saying 'How is it that you get so good at this game ?' Well, I have discovered a trick. If you get air units really fast, you can win if he doesn't have anti-air." Allright, a lot of assumptions there. And I actually did start losing a lot of games. I litteraly did this for like, god, three-four months. Like, only playing on the Small Divide, multiple games in a row, on my 56k modem connection, one hand only, and I, I would lose to people who would get air, and I would be like "How did he know I was getting air ? Has to be cheating..." I was one of those guys ! Ow god, that was humiliating. "He has to be cheating. Because, if it's an island map, how does he know I'm gonna go air ?"

So, eventually, I ended up finding out about [?] places were good people hang out ? hanged out ? hung out ? Well where people were. And these places were known then as Clan X17 on the East server. That is where the best of the best of the best hung out all day. If you wanted a game with good people, you tried to join, normally couldn't, normally full. 40 people ! Uh ! Channel gets at its maximal capacity. Couldn't join. I would sometimes sit in an empty channel, just trying to join X17, because, I got in there and 1v1'd someone, I knew that I would, eventually, be against the best of the best of the best of Starcraft players. Erm, so eventually, I ended up getting in X17, playing all these people and I actually started using my keyboard. And this was around, erm, when I was an eighth grader, going into freshman year of highschool. I actually used the keyboard now. No hotkeys. I didn't use like Control-1, Control-3, I used S-H to help that mass hydralisks strategy I was talking about earlier. I used, erm, I didn't used S-M because, man, sure M is really far across the keyboard. Pff, I'm not going to have any of that. Erm. Happily just stuck with S-H, and S-Z, and S-D, because, you know, I was pretty set on Zerg from that point in time.

And, now, I'm actually starting to get to where the real 1v1 players are. You know, players like FirstTsunami, if you guys remember this. Rekrul existed back then, except he played under the name 88lurker. Incontrol existed back then. There were strong players like Pillars, erm, god, what was more names ? [?] Agent911, erm, Jolly, who were some other good players. Oh god, there was one, it's on the tip of my tongue. Who was that player ? BlackishRed ! That's right ! BlackishRed ! The first ever big tournament my brother and I tried to qualify for was the Worlds Cyber Games Challenge, not the first World Cyber Games that happened in 2001, but like the 1999-2001 when like the KBK tournament were running, where players like, erm, GG99Slayer and LG were very very strong foreign players. And, erm, I remember my brother was invited to the Blackish clan. He was BlackishGold, he got really far in the tournament, and he lost, and he was like horribly upset and everything. And it's so funny to think about the way that strategies worked back then. Erm, you know I was... By the way, I just want to briefly interject and note that my camera seems to be doing weird things to the colors. So I'm actually going to, erm, see if I can adjust this. Okay. Seems like it's going to be a little more stable now. So, serious apologies. But these, these were the strategies that we faced back then. Here was a standard strategy in Zerg versus Terran. I 9-pool you, and I build a hatchery in your base, and I sunken push you. Because, think about it... Terran only has marines then, and no one's gonna check their ramps. No ! You have to get a force and then move to secure your ramp. Of course, now everyone is playing Lost Temple around these days. So, erm. You do this a lot. What were some others, like weird, nutty strategies, like one base corsair, reaver against Zerg was unstoppable. Nick and I improved it to one-base, reaver, scout. Because, the scout does so much more damage than the corsair, why would you make anything but a scout ? Erm, so we did scout, corsair a lot. This is the time where my alias was SleepingDrone, if any of you were familiar with this.

And after a while, Nick and I actually started to get decently okay, compared to other people present at the time. I mean my strategies were still like one-hatch lurker versus terran, which, by the way, was standard, and... I think it's important to stop and to note how my mind sets were working at this stage. Erm, because players still experience this all the time as they, you know, join a Starcraft community. So think about my mutalisks. That was my trick ! I just had a trick ! And when someone was able to defeat my trick, I just got pissed and would try it again, and I would be like "Oww, I still hope it's working..." Erm, and as I branched out to 'more diverse' strategies, I would go "Pff I used to mutalisk rush but now, I know better" Erm, I still didn't ever deviate from that trick methodology. My question was always "What is the right strategy in this spot ?" And I would abandon everything else, that I had. The plan was gone, nothing... Just like, "hum, what do I think he would not expect now ?" So for instance, I just started out going, erm, this mutalisk rush, but then I expanded to things like : lurker-drop people. I would one-hatch lurker rush and you had just enough gas to Transport Upgrade for Overlord and two lurkers, and you lift them up and runs straight to his mineral line. That was my whole strategy. What else did I have ? I had in Terran versus Terran : building a factory and floating it in his base, without him expecting and makings vultures to kill him. Erm. I would Dark Templar rush. I would just do every sort of weird rush, gimmicky thing imaginable, and I thought that that made me a good player 'cause doing these wild different things.

And I eventually slowly gravitated towards 9-pooling every single game in every single match-up. 9-pooling with speed. And, you know, that sound gimmicky, but what I was finding with it, was that I could have a next step in the play. I had follow-ups. I was able to get mutalisks really fast, I could expand, I could snipe probes, I could distract him and all this stuff. And, I remember for the, for the World Cyber Games, like the first one in 2001, I actually got to pull all of this out to use. I had been practicing in Clan X17, where the best of the best hang out. Erm. And I, erm, and I worked on this 9-pool strategy, I even sometimes logged-on to this scary Europe server, to some channel whose name I can't remember anymore. You just had to somehow know that these channels existed. And what I would do is, erm...

When the 2001 World Cyber Games was announced, they had this online tournament brackets system, and the top 3 of the entire qualifier would be flown out to Los Angeles, to compete in the finals. And once again, remember that I live in Kansas. And erm, other than that, anyone who wanted to participate in the qualifying finals could. All you had to do was show up. But, you could get these tickets out. So Nick and I trained, and trained for days. And I remember : I played three games. I had to go to my friend's house, because, erm, Nick and I didn't have two working computers. We had like one and a half working computer. So it was pretty much that laptop that I mentionned earlier, and other times, you know my, erm, my, our main computer just sort of bit the dust. So I did drive to a friend's house and I remember : I had 3 Protosses in a row. I, I... The first player, I can't even remember his name but I 9-pooled him and I went straight up with a 9-pool. The second player I played was actually BlueWolf who was one of those names that stuck around in the Starcraft, erm, in the competitive RTS scene for ages, I mean. He's been like in Dawn of War, and like Age of Empires and all this kind of stuff and now, he's been in Starcraft II. I remember : I beat BlueWolf with my 9-pool and I was feeling really good. And then I had to play against Jolly, who's one of those players that, if you go to the BattleNet, erm, old tournaments write-ups, he's there ! In these starting tournaments that had like XDSGrrr, and BeeBladeLeader [?], these legend names : he was in some of these tournaments and I had to play him. And I remember, I just, I was so focused with my little 9-pool, my stupid little gimmick and I microed around his base and I even counted : I killed ss... I killed like sixteen of his probes with the initial 9-pool, erm, and of course I kept these lings alive in his base forever. And then I got mutalisks and killed another 12-13 probes,
just darting in and out. And then, when I did my final push, I rushed all my lurkers to his expo and I killed 25 probes in one shot. I litteraly won by harassing him to death, and I thought I was so clever, and I qualified for the second day of play. Erm, and of course I played against a guy named Wizard who was really good and just demolished me. It wasn't even close. But, erm, you know. It, erm, it was just a really good experience for me that, erm, you know, get that excitement, you know ? get that adrenaline. And, oh my god, I had a strategy, I executed it, and it worked. It wasn't well developped at all, it was just [Crossing fingers] "Uuuh, I hope I get up his ramp, because if I don't, I guess I lost, and I guess I'll have to find another opponent".

Erm, but I started doing something, at that point in time, that has always stuck with me, as one of like the center pieces of my mind set, which is : there is a player named JelloOne, and there was a Jello Clan who had players like JelloPud as well. And the Jello Clan were ultra notorious hackers, oh my god did they ever hack at times. Some of them are probably still around, hacking as well.
But they started this sort of like, erm, now you know, you see this all the time, but it was like new era trolling where, erm, they would blatantly hack, you know, like : you would move a dropship along the edge of the map and they would just have no observers, take 12 dragoons, went over right over there, kill it, and then moved back. You would be like "How did you see it ?" He's like "I thought it was coming" You know, just like always, always, never ever saying to anyone that they hacked, just always be like "No dude, I'm totally innocent in here !", you know. And, back then, if you maphacked, I mean, as your hero would mean [?] to describe these strategies, I mean : 9-pool, to hatch rush in your base. If you have a maphack, where you can see what someone is doing, you get an unbelievable advantage. It's obviously gonna be the biggest help in the world. But I remember, I played against him, and erm, this is a little bit my gullibility then. I remember saying "Well, you know what ? If he says he's not hacking, then I'm just gonna believe that he's not hacking" And, erm, we ended up playing a lot of games together. Just a ton, a ton, a ton of games. And even though he did a ton of stuff that was really suspicious, I still wanted to beat him. Because I was really competitive, you know ? I've been playing all these other games with my brother competitively. I liked competing with someone, as a friend. Why not do it with this JelloOne player ? And that has been so helpful to me, the idea that a good strategy and solid play, doesn't revolve around tricks. It doesn't revolve around surprises. It doesn't revolve around having hidden information. It revolves around very solid, strong timing, and crisp execution. And that was such a valuable lesson, that I couldn't try to sneak a little drop in there. My gimmick of sneaking the overlord with lurkers into his base never worked ! I had to just have more units and I had to have better timings. And erm, I wasn't able to go... So, right now, I was a... oh my god, I didn't even finish this story !

Yes, so this is, I'm, I'm a sophomore in high school, it was 2001, and I don't qualify and I'm all bumped out, but my mom, erm... I want to just spend a little more time talking about her, erm, in this, because having a supportive family, have a Starcraft family, has been instrumental to like, everything. My, erm, my mom saw how bumped out Nick and I were, she heard us talk about Boxer, she had seen that this Starcraft game wasn't just another game that we bought and played for a month, and then never played again. We were still chattering about it for years. She said "You know what ? We don't have much money, but we're gonna get these tickets, we're gonna fly out to Los Angeles and you're gonna play into this tournament." Which was just like so nice, to have like, my mom being so supportive. And, erm, the problem is that we show up and we're the two kids whose mom came with us. Ow god, ow ! How revolting to be cool at that age, to be, you know ? have your mom be the chauffeur, you know, the chaperone for the event. But you know, she was really polite, she didn't try to like step in, like, you know "I'm, I'm..." Nick was know as Tasteless then, I was still SleepingDrone. She wasn't like "I'm SleepingDrone and Tasteless' mom" No, she was very low key and went off, you know, just like read a book erm. And I remember Nick got eliminated first round. He got knocked to the losers bracket first round and, you know, he advanced four at once and then he lost then, and it was just "Rrr", it was just sopainful, 'cause I remember, in his first game, he was playing against someone whose name I can't remember anymore. He built like four, five creep colonies and had an overlord outside the guy's base, so he would morph them into sunken when the guy moved out. But Nick wasn't watching the minimap at that exact instant, so the guy just got to his base, with like five creep colonies in it so he ended up losing. But I was like in a bracket with, I wouldn't call it easy people but I would call it people who I 9-pooled... 9-pooled everyone right ? I 9-pooled seven straight matches, and then somehow, erm, I'm getting pretty deep into this tournament.

Lot of famous players there. Maynard was there, he was, you know, the best American
player at the time. Erm, Whear was there, Wizard was there, BlueWolf was there, Fr0z was there. That was his first tournament appearance. Erm, really strong players. Requiem was there. I think I said Dream was there as well. Dream was a Zerg player who was like, really into the game. You know, he played on the Game I server, with the koreans you know, and there was this epic series between Requiem, who was completely unknown and Dream. And, I mean like, it was first like this 20 minutes game but then everyone's else tournament games had finished, so they were the ones clogging up the brackets, right ? So everyone just crowded around them and watched their games. They played this 45 minutes game on Lost Temple where Dream builds up a hatchery outside Requiem's base. And you guys have seen this on games that Great has played and this kind of stuff, but, back then "Holy shit ! He does play on the Korean server ! Look at this ingenuity !", right ? He was like building a ton of sunken colonies and getting mass zerglings, oh my god, and Requiem is like getting 10 shuttles and like trying to expand everywhere. And they played this dramatic game that had stasis and storms, and Maelstrom and Guardians and Defilers, and every single unit you could imagine, and, erm, and Dream loses and this unknown kid Requiem wins. And then they play next game and they get 10 vs 3 on Lost Temple, which, as you know, you hate 10 vs 3, if you're a Zerg player. So Dream was the Zerg, erm, he was at the 3 o'clock position. Requiem brings two probes early on to harass, kills a drone and Dream forgets his first Overlord, because he's trying to deal with this harrassment. So there's just this like huge upset, and everyone's like "Ho my god", getting really excited because, I knew I would lose to Dream if I played him. But my Zerg versus Protoss was my strong match-up cause I knew how to do a 9-pool. So, I ended up playing against this Requiem guy and I actually won, and I was like "holy..." freaking out and everything. And then I had to play against Maynard, but we had to wait a day to play it. And the winner of that match was in the semi-finals. But the winner of the game between me and Maynard was going to the WCG grand finals in Korea. And erm, I, I played against him, and I was so nervous, and my mom was trying to figure out, you know, in between "Well if you do end up winning and we end up going to... We end up going to Korea, I want, I want to fly out to this, I want, I think, you know go out as a family" And, I just batched the first game and I lost. And the second game I won with Hold Position lurkers, in like two minutes, and then I lost the third game, and I was "Uuh" and ended up in the losers bracket up and was eventually eliminated. And you know, I was really bummed out and sad, but you know, I actually got to tell people that I went to a Starcraft tournament. So that, you know, that story was probably a bit long, but it was cool : I gotta meet all these people, who were just names, I actually got to see the faces of people. I mean, nowadays, we have Facebook and, and people are just happy to like, send each other photos around on Skype and all this stuff, these forums, but there was actually no way to meet people who you played with. I actually got the chance to do that. And Fr0z blew everyone's mind then. Fr0z, erm, who, later I became pretty good friends with... At that tournament, this is in 2001. When people went back and watched these replays, Fr0z had 300 actions per minute. No one could believe how quickly Fr0z played. And like, the second highest was like, 140 or something. Fr0z was mind-numbingly fast and crushed everyone at that tournament and it was not close. Erm. Now it was cool to see some one who was just so cool.

So there's WCG 2002 comes along, and I can't go because the qualifiers were spread around the country, and nowhere near Kansas, 'cause it wasn't exactly the buzzling [?] esports community in Kansas, so... We waited until, we waited till like 2003 before we were actually like able to, you know, participate in any more, any more tournaments. Erm. Oh man, 'cause that's weird. Yeah, I'm actually checking up my notes to make sure I'm right, so I don't forget anything. But you know, throughout this all period, I was still the guy who played Starcraft. And, back then through these early highschool days, there was still a lot of tension in the family. Because, as you can tell, Nick and I are sort of, you know, talkative, big personnalities. We really liked to, you know, have our own space, be independent. And it was hard because we lived, erm, we had to share a room together. And we argued a lot, 'cause we still had one computer. So there was that whole debate and you know, mom, as supportive as she was, erm, you know, we were playing this one game all the time and that was so weird back then, so there was all this family tension, but I was still known as that, and I was still into it. And I remember even dating girls in high school and telling them about Starcraft, and trying to explain it to them. Because, I just, I was so excited about it. I thought that it was so cool, that I was playing this game. What really pissed me off was that that girl I dated, I explained to her gg, when you say Good Game, and she would type it to me on AIM but she would g.g. I'm like "That's not how you abbreviate it, it's gg, that's the thing". So she would like do it to like poke-make fun at me. Uuuh. I'm so glad, so glad that ended. Clearly, she wasn't respecting the important things in life. So, erm.

2003 was actually where, where cool stuff started to happen, right ? Where Nick and I, where...
WCG was still going stronger than other tournaments. For WCG 2003, there were actually 23 qualifiers locations across all of the United States. Erm. And the winner of the qualification process would advance to the finals, and win a pimped out gaming computer, right ? The sickest gaming computer you could think off that had like XP and you know, like glow... It was awesome, it was a sick deal. You even got travel stipends to fly out. No actually I think they straight up paid for the ticket. That tournament was organized by Joe Moss. And I'm going to say that name, because if you're listening Joe Moss, you're the man ! That tournament was awesome. But anyways. So my brother and I, we had to drive to Saint Louis. But we don't own a car in our family. I mean, my mom owns a car but she's like : "I still need it, so you can't exactly drive to Saint Louis with it". So, our friend Dane, who's very famous, who, I was really good friend with Dane as well. For any of you who don't know Dane, please watch Day[9] daily number 50 and number 65 for some epic 2v2v2v2 BGH action. God, Dane is hilarious. Anyways... So we convinced him to drive us to Saint Louis... Oh no, it wasn't that time. Okay. No, no : this is what happened.

So, the qualifica... the qualifier for Saint Louis happened in two phases : you showed to the first phase, and if you get top 8, you qualified for the final. And then you'd have to drive back out to the final and the winner of the final goes to the, you know, to the national tournament finals. So we didn't have a ride. So what did we do ? We thought of everyone at our school who owned a car. And we found about this guy named Clint who we were friends with at the time. Erm. We tried to convince him to like, go out to this tournament : "Yeah man, come on, let's like go out there". And we just conviced him "Yeah and just 4-pool all of your games, you'll be fine, you'll easily qualify. I mean, not that many people will show up". So we had to like, drive out there and it's like a 4 hour drive from our house, and we got pulled over by the cops, because we tried to like exit at this one thing and they pulled us over. They like, opened up the trunk, and there was like only computer equipment in there, like mice and keyboards. "No, no, we're going to a video game tournament". He's like "It smells like pot in here" And we're like "No, we're actually just going to a video game tournament. We're nerds. We don't do any of that. We only play video games". So we'd like
get there and like, our hotel got cancelled, so we like, tried to sneak into like a hotel room but we got caught and they were really nice. My brother was really tackle[?] "Look, we're just here for a video games tournament. We've been driving all night. We're really tired. Can we please sleep ?" And they're like "Video games tournament ?" and then we got to spend a really long time explaining that to them. But finally, we end up, you know, getting there for the tournament. And Clint 4-pools everyone but screws up and loses. So of the nine people that show up and the top 8 qualified, Clint gets 9th. Allright. He really didn't play Starcraft but he was pissed, man. And on the car ride home, he just blasted Insane Cloud Posse for 4 hours. And we were like "Clint, could you please turn down the Insane Cloud Posse, so I don't lose my mind". And he's like "Dude, look, I drove all the way out here, I just wanted to get top 8 in this tournament and I just want to listen to some of my music. I didn't have a good trip, man. I got knocked out of the tournament". We were like "Well, you don't even play this game, man. We were just hoping you'd have a good time". We had to endure that but, eventually, we went back.

Since only one could qualify, I had to knock my brother out of the tournament, so I got first for there. And, then, I flew out. And that's one of the worst things that has just has been in like, my life of Starcraft. I hate it whenever there's a qualifier and my brother and I both happen to go there and there's just like one spot. And only one of us can go. And that would happen a lot early on, like the WCG stuff, the World Cyber Games challenge, that he had to be the one to take the spot, because he would knock me out. So. Moving on forward.

2003 was a really nice finals for me. I was a senior in highschool. I just qualified over the summer, I was really excited for it. I went in to school a week early. This was starting to be pretty big in my life, that I actually played Starcraft, a lot. I mean, it was a bit past time, but even the teachers at school knew I'd like, have done this tournament in 2001. And I went in to the dean's office. And I was like "I will be missing school for the first week because I'm going to a video games tournament". He was like "No, you won't. I'm not letting you do that" And I was "No please ! Can I, can I ? I really, this is really important" He's like "No, probably not". And I'm still trying to work out the fact that I'm a little bit awkward and goofy, back then. So I couldn't articulate it, and I just remember that I left and that I was really bummed. I mean, you know, it's just... I was still this
quiet, quieter person, just like "Ow, I'm really bummed out" and I called my mom and I was like "Man, mom, you know. Erh. They're not gonna let me do it" And she's like "What ?!" She got like really pissed, she's like "They're what ?!" I'm like "They just won't let me do it. They said they're not gonna let me do it. They just say it's a video game and they're not gonna let me, you know, get excused absence for a video game" And my mom said "Sean, this isn't just some game you're gonna go play. You're not gonna go play Mario Kart out in LA for a fun week. This is something that you work on. I'll take care of this" First of all, my mom referenced Mario Kart. I didn't know she knew that shit. Cool, Mom, allright ! So, she, she's gone for like 15 minutes. I called her at work to let her know but when she got back, she gets back 15 minutes later, she gets back and she's like "You're going Sean. It's all taken care of, don't worry about it, I took care of it". I was like "Oookay. Allright man" And that... Things like that, that's just like "Wow... Thank you mom", right ? And I mean, part of what was so helpful about like getting to that stage was that, I treated Starcraft not like this goofy hobby that, you know, was just some way to pass the time and not really mention. I thought it was so cool that I played it and I would just always go down to my mom, I'd be like "Mom, it is so cool that I do this" And I would try to convince her that it was cool. And that has been, you know, in addition to, you know, talking to my brother under the escalator as kids over at the mall. That act of making my mom understand, because I was just so excited, I wanted to share my excitement with her. The act of trying to articulate it, in some clear fashion, has been so helpful for me, because, you know, a lot of the ways I learned to explain it to my mom back then, I've used throughout my whole life. When trying to, you know, make people get right to the point, right away with Starcraft. Erm. 2003 didn't... the tournament didn't go so well. I got knocked out. I would tell you the whole tournament experience but it's very sad and I've been going for 43 minutes now, and I'm at 2003, so I still have 7 years to go. But I got eliminated by a guy named Pyrrhus[?], who, no one really knew of. I played like an idiot, and I was like, all embarrassed about it but I got to meet a lot of cool people there as usual. The best part of going to any tournament is just that you get to see the people you've been chatting with. So erm.

2004 rolls along. This was like when I was a freshman in college. It's actually the summer in between that were the qualifiers and, and... It was weird because erm, it was around this time that I actually stuck with the name Day[9]. I wanted a cool one word name. Cause there were players like Reach, Yellow, Boxer and it was like A Word ! And I was like "I'm gonna do that : Day !!" Allright ? So, that was taken, so I had to think of something cool, and I always thought that the 9 Clan was cool : 9Everlast, 9Kane, and this it wasn't really around, I was like "I guess I'll be 9" So I just pust Day[9] there, with the brackets. Yeah ! Somehow, this guy named Paul got our AIM, and he'd just like... And by our, I mean my brother's AIM and my AIM and he would just like message us constantly, leading up to this WCG 2004. And it was weird because he would just lie, like incessantly. He would just make a [?] story about what he'd done in Starcraft and about all this stuff, that like, like... For me : he told me like he was a 22 years old 250 pounds ripped football player, who had a football scholarship. And then he told my brother that, he was like a 16 years old highschool student who was into debate. Just like, completely non-sensical. What was so funny is that like, we drove up to the WCG 2004 qualifiers, which were in Chicago. He wanted to be picked up because he, like, wanted to go to this tournament as well, so right...

[1:20:00]
"Day, eu não quero que você fique triste. Você é um ótimo jogador, e um bom amigo." E ele... ele foi tão legal, e eu pude perceber que ele se sentiu mal, porque eu e ele éramos os dois jogadores que estavam lutando pelo segundo lugar, porque Sen já tinha garantido o primeiro, não havia chances dele ser eliminado. Então Android, ele ainda assim veio até mim e disse: "Quer saber? Bom jogo. Eu... sabe... me sinto mal." e foi tão bom ouvir isso, esse jogador que as pessoas diziam "Ah é, conhecido por ficar com raiva das pessoas" mas ele veio até mim e disse "Cara, eu... eu aprecio você e suas habilidades, eu acho que você é uma boa pessoa e sinto muito que as coisas tiveram que acabar assim." Então isso, isso sempre foi muito legal pra mim, porque eu sempre valorizei ser o mais legal possível, nos forums, porque... você pode tentar ser engraçado nos forums, mas o tom se perde facilmente que algumas vezes você pode parecer um babaca. Então eu sempre valorizei ser o mais legal, educado e comportado possível nos forums, e...

Foi tão... foi tão bom ouvir ele dizer aquilo. E nessa época em 2005, eu pensava "Quer saber de uma coisa? Eu quero ser bom no Starcraft", tipo, depois disso eu me odiei um pouco, mas quando eu descobri sobre o Bunny, eu fiquei com tanta raiva que dei um tempo no Starcraft, porque não conseguia aguentar. E eu acabei voltando e comecei a jogar novamente, e isso foi quando comecei a jogar pra valer no PGTour... Isso foi quando eu alcancei A+ em várias temporadas da PGTour, jogando muito, tipo 6-7 contas por temporada. Eu iria trabalhar em uma conta e depois eu simplesmente a resetava e tentava conseguir tudo novamente. Usando o estilo do Fr0z, sabe, aumentando a temperatura, abaixando a temperatura, com sapatos, sem sapatos, cadeira mais alta, cadeira mais baixa, cada coisinha que eu pudesse fazer, porque eu realmente queria melhorar.

E eu não contei a ninguém sobre isso, acho que apenas meu irmão sabia disso, porque, vocês sabem, durante todo esse tempo eu conversava bastante com meu irmão. Ele é a única pessoa que realmente sabia, porque novamente eu simplesmente... não queria vitórias, não queria essas coisas me atrapalhando, eu só queria me concentrar puramente no jogo. Eu tive uma discussão tão proveitosa com minha mãe, uma das discussões mais... esclarecedoras que eu já tive em minha vida, porque eu disse "Sabe mãe, eu tenho tentado... Mas eu tenho ficado com tanta raiva depois de alguns dos meus jogos, sabe? Eu... eu... quebrei, na verdade quebrei meu teclado diversas vezes, e já quebrei vários mouses. E eu fico com muita raiva e abalado" e minha mãe disse "Sabe, Sean... Isso é completamente normal. Não se preocupe com isso, Sean. Não se preocupe com esses sentimentos." E ela disse "Sabe Sean, a coisa mais importante a saber é que todo esse sentimento de tensão, e ansiedade, e a adrenalina que entra no seu sistema e, mais importante, a adrenalina que sai do seu sistema depois que você perde uma partida muito intensa, isso tudo é apenas química. E é tão fácil ser sugado por isso, e acreditar nisso, e direcionar toda essa raiva em você mesmo." E ela continuou "Que pelo que você me disse, parece ser o que você está fazendo." Mas ela explicou "Mas Sean, lembre-se: eu poderia te dar um comprimido que te deixa da mesma maneira. É tudo química. Simplesmente ignore isso e espere que saia do seu corpo, e não acredite nisso. Não pense em nada, só fique calmo e lide com isso." Ou melhor "Apenas lide com a emoção, não pense em mais nada".

Então, daquele momento em diante, eu iria perder consecutivamente, claro que ficaria com raiva. Se algum de vocês fica com raiva e pensa "Ah, eu não deveria fazer isso depois de algumas partidas" Não se preocupe com isso. Mas a coisa importante a se lembrar é que, como minha mãe disse, você não deve ser duro demais consigo mesmo! Não se odeie! Se você tiver aquele sentimento de raiva, aquela sensação de calor, apenas vá se sentar em algum lugar, e calmamente... espere que ela desapareça, e então você pode voltar e olhar para sua partida. E então você pode começar a pensar, e começar a analisar, e começar a trabalhar em cima disso.

E isso tem sido sempre tão valioso para mim, isso foi tipo, a maior ajuda que eu recebi em termos de prática, para que eu não, endoideça ou coisa do tipo, sabe, porque eu... tipo, eu estou tomando muito pouco café. Mas sim, a 2006 U.S. Open aconteceu... Meu irmão e eu nos classificamos para as finais... para essa vez e... até esse ponto, sabe, eu não... Eu ainda não tinha tido uma grande vitória. Quero dizer, eu ganhei o 2005 USA, mas, sabe? Era a classificatória para o torneio, e eu tive aquele sentimento amargo porque "Ohhh, eu joguei tão mal contra Android e tudo mais." E... eu perdi minha linha de pensamento. Permitam-me tomar chá em meditação e recuperá-la.

Nas finais de 2006, foi... acho que... foi uma das experiências em torneios mais estressantes da minha vida... Eles fizeram uma pequena entrevista antes do torneio, tipo "Day, quem você não quer enfrentar nas finais?" e eu respondi "Eu não quero enfrentar EchoOfThunder, esse cara - me desculpem, EchoOfTerran, esse cara é muito, muito, muito bom!" e aí, claro, descobri que ele era meu primeiro oponente do meu grupo. Eu iria enfrentar EchoOfTerran e Slog, um grupo de apenas três.

1:25:00

E aí eu perco minha primeira partida contra EchoOfTerran, mas depois eu venço as duas seguintes por muito pouco. Daí eu me senti tipo "Meu Deus! Eu venci EchoOfTerran, meu Deus! Eu... eu vou conseguir, não é? Eu vou conseguir! Só preciso me concentrar. Só preciso vencer Slog e, tipo, o jogador mais forte do torneio eu já venci!" E eu... eu... isso na verdade foi muito engraçado, pois no WCG 2006, eles estavam com o cronograma muito apertado, então o que eles fizeram? Eles mostraram apenas o primeiro jogo de cada Melhor de Três. Ou, apenas as mais notáveis Melhores de Três. Porque obviamente eles não tinham tempo para mostrar todas. Então o que aconteceu foi que, era eu contra Slog, então o Game 1 foi mostrado no palco e eu perdi para o Slog4, o jogador Protoss. E eu pensei "Meu Deus!" e ele, tipo, me esmagou, eu não cheguei nem perto. E então eu... venci por muito, muito, muito, muito pouco os outros dois jogos. Mas o que é engraçado é que todo mundo no torneio fazia, tipo "Ei, vamos ver umas partidas de Starcraft. Olha só, aquele cara, o Day9, ele perdeu, beleza..." e então... então eu tive que jogar contra LastGosu, que me derrotou duas vezes. Então o primeiro jogo foi mostrado, e eu perdi. E aí eu fui para a Losers Bracket, onde eu joguei contra Nony, e a primeira partida foi mostrada, e eu perdi, e depois ganhei as duas seguintes.

E então eu tive que jogar contra Artosis, e eles não mostraram esses jogos. Mas daí eu tive que jogar cona LastGosu nas finais. Então, para cada jogo que eu... cada série que eu joguei, foi eu perdendo a primeira partida e depois vencendo as duas seguintes. Com exceção de LastGosu que me venceu por 2-0.

Então, no último jogo, eu estava... estava tão cansado... que na última partida decisiva, e essa foi a partida que foi mostrada... eu fiz uma 5-Pool. Eu nunca fiz uma 5-Pool na minha vida, nem durante as práticas. Eu simplesmente... Fiz uma 5-Pool. E perdi porque ele fez uma 9-Rax, e eu lembro que eu senti aquele mesmo amargo sentimento que senti depois da partida com Android, porque eu pensei comigo mesmo "Eu criei a minha build para segurar uma 9-rax, e depois abandonei tudo em troca de uma vitória fácil porque estava muito cansado" e daí novamente, eu fiquei muito arrasado por isso. Mas daí meu irmão, ele estava lá, e nós fomos para um canto, e eu fiquei extremamente nervoso. E ele... ele sempre me ajudou e apoiou, é por isso que eu acho que é tão importante para as pessoas, sabe? Se você tem irmãos e pais que não entendem Starcraft, simplesmente... os traga para dentro desse mundo. Encontre maneiras de contar suas histórias, de... de compartilhar com eles sua paixão intensa, todas essas coisas incríveis que acontecem no Starcraft, para que dessa maneira você possa... eles possam te apoiar. Porque depois que eles passarem a entender, eles definitivamente... irão estar lá por você! E será muito legal. Minha mãe se sentiu muito mal, sabe, eu perdi... porque apenas o primeiro lugar iria para as grandes finais, então eu não tive a chance de ir, e fiquei meio "uurrghhh".

E eventualmente LastGosu não pôde ir, mas eu já tinha marcado algumas coisas com a escola, então também não pude ir para as finais de 2006. Mas sabe, eu continuei jogando, apesar de ter machucado muito o que aconteceu... Eu só me concentrei e continuei jogando. E então 2007 chegou. Esse sou eu... mais WCGs, houve uma WCG U.S. Open e... Ok, para a U.S. Open, se você ficasse nos dois primeiros lugares você se qualificava para o campeonato WCG Pan-Americano, que era apenas com países da América do Norte e América do Sul.

Então eu... eu fui para... eu fui convidado para o Open, porque eu estava entre os 4 melhores do ano anterior, então era eu, Artosis, Nony e LastGosu. E eu treinei mais para isso do que para qualquer outra coisa em minha vida. Eu... Então, eu tive umas férias no colégio, entre o fim das aulas e o ínicio dos estudos no verão lá na Harvey Mudd. Então, nesse período de aproximadamente um mês, pouco mais que isso, eu acordava de 10 da manhã, jogava das 10:00 às 12:00, parava para almoçar, jogava de 1 da tarde às 6 da noite, parava para jantar, jogava das 7 até as 3 da manhã, então acordava no outro dia às 10 da manhã novamente e repetia tudo.

E eu joguei incontáveis partidas, e três pessoas que eu quero agradecer pessoalmente neste momento são: FrozenArbiter, me ajudou com meu Zerg vs Protoss, DeadMan da Croácia, por me ajudar com meu Zerg vs Terran, e IVeeLove da Dinamarca, eu acho, que também me ajudou com meu Zerg vs Terran. E eu treinei TANTO, minha nossa! Eu joguei muitas partidas... como vocês devem imaginar. E... Nony ficou em primeiro no... no Open, e eu fiquei em segundo, então ficamos tipo "Oh meu Deus! Nós dois vamos para o U.S. Open [Pan-Americano?]". E então aconteceu essa coisa muito estranha, esso foi provavelmente a melhor sensação que já senti no Starcraft, tipo, de longe a melhor de todas.

Você acaba em situações onde... você quer alguma maneira de comparar habilidades, sabe, onde você pensa "Oh, ele é um jogador C+. Aww, aquele cara era B- na temporada anterior." mas a maioria das pessoas sabem [NOTA: Vai para 1:30:00]

1:10:00

In the tournament but it was, it was just so nice to have him just be there between every round. I didn't have to call him, he was just like,he was just right there ya'know I could just easily ya'know, he would be like "Awesome man, you played well!" and I'd just high-five him. Uhm... What was I talking about, oh yea but that was so cool because Nick got eliminated first round, he had nothing to do and the commentators were up on stage. and they were Radio ITG and they were doing all the events and their guy on up on stage just didn't play Starcraft at all. And I mean, it was so funny because he was on stage, there was like a 60ft screen behind him. It was almost as big as my pit-stains, whoopsie daisies!

So I mean he, it was this huge screen -- honestly the 2005 USA finals was one of the best run tournaments I've ever been at. But I remember, uh, so he's up there and he has the mic and he's watching a game and he's like "Wow!" he literally is like, turned sideways looking at his computer and he's going "Wow! That guy, he is making marines! Those marines, man! He can -- They can shoot up, down, and he's gonna keep making them", hah, it was just this non-sensical completely randomly directed commentary. And Nick went up to them right after that game and said "Okay look, I understand your guy doesn't have that much experience, give me the mic I'll take care of all this." Nick walked right up on the stage there, absolutely no preparation, sat down and commentated beautifully. He said everything right, anytime his -- the, the cocaster said anything at all that seemed ridiculous, Nick would totally just save him, would not do any sort of thing to embarrass and Radio ITG hired him right on the spot, and that's what began his casting career.

So I mean, it ended up working so nicely for him, it was so funny I even remember there was this game on Astriah again, because for some reason WCG wants to have an Island Map in every single tournament, and uh... I remember the guy, the guy, the radio ITG guy, says... Ok so, I need this hand here so you can see this, "So Nick. It's an island map, do you think we're gonna see... Drops?" and he like "Uhhh" like "Don't you think?!" and Nick likes "Yes, I definitely think that's a possibility here, ya'know, big variety of ya'know things we can do here." Just completely picked it up. I mean, I'm not gonna lie 99 people out of a 100 would've been like "Well Gee, yea I think he might get drops if he's ever into attacking in this war game, yea, I think he'll maybe get drops if he's interested in winning EVER" Ya'know, but Nick just completely just crisp, noooooo dropping the ball at all there. So that ended up working out just great.

But Uhm... Now comes the 2005 Grand Final in Singapore that I flew all the way out too. And I wanted to do better than I did last year, I got in the round of 16 against XellOs, I lost, so of course I say "Ohh, I got 9th, right, Ohhh!" and I wanted to get into the Top 24, Round Robin groups of 8 instead of 4. And I was in the group with Sen, and Android. And... They're both really good, hah. And this is also the period where I started playing alot on The Abyss which later became PGTour , oh excuse me, I was playing on PGTour and then later on I played on The Abyss which eventually became ICCUP. But my major practice partners during that period were uhm... FrozenArbiter, on the TeamLiquid.net forums, tons of the Russian players: Advokact, Android, Deadman from Croatia, I mean just a lot of really awesome guys. They were all in the ORKY clan, pretty much, for any of you familiar with that.

Now, Android is notorious for having 'funky' manner in tournaments. I wouldn't call it bad manner, but just alittle... alittle off. Like he would lift, like, he'd be dead but instead of saying gg he'd like lift his buildings and float them around the map to try to just like delay the game which is kind of funny, right? But ya'know technically bad manner, and people would sometimes be like "Oh that Android guy is bad manner!" but ya'know we always played together, and ya'know there was a language barrier obviously but we played a lot a lot a lot of games leading up to that tournament, so I was feeling confident against him. It was on the map Paranoid Android and I hadn't practiced against Sen, who terrifies me! God, Sen! Okay, Sen was scary in the TSL2 that just happened not long ago, but also he was terrifying in 2005, right. He is just a scary beast at uhm, RTS games. So, with Sen there I was like "Okay, gotta practice a lot of Zerg vs Zerg, gotta practice it!" and when I got to the tournament, he said "No no, we're playing on Astriah and I'm gonna play Protoss" and I was like "Ohhhh man" so I lose my first game and I'm 0-1, right, seven more to go! Oh wait excuse me, six more to go. So I have to pretty much go, uhm, 6-1 or 5-2 in the group.

1:14:57

So, uhm... So I kept playing and I was winning all my games until I got to Android and... I was in that game and I was playing and I was even... playing better then I did in practice but... All of a sudden, he comes out with his first push, I have lurkers and zerglings there, they were ready and positioned behind the fat bridge on Paranoid Android, and all of a sudden I felt my muscles just starting doing things that I didn't want to them to do. And in my head I said "Oh my god, I'm about to send in a full control group of my lurkers, and they're all gonna die. And I have no idea why I'm gonna do that." and I just choked and I watched myself do this and I like, felt no control over my hands, right. Just none , I was just like "Oh my god..." and I just lost all my 12 Lurkers so I had 3 Control Groups of Zerglings and no Lurkers, that's not going to do very much good.

And I remember, like, after that plan I got this boost of adrenaline and my focus just like peaked but I mean it didn't matter at that point, ya'know, it's like the perfectly orchestrated symphony but ya'know all the instruments are out of tune. I just couldn't pull it together, and I remember I lost that game and I... I... I was so mad at myself. I was SO angry because I practiced so hard now I wasn't going to get out the group, I was 4-2, the best I could do was 5-2 which meant that Sen was gonna go 7-0 and Android was gonna go 6-1, and... I remember I just left the game and I just punched my keyboard SO hard that I actually cut my... my pinky, I just slammed it and uhm... GosuGamers, the crew uhm, Mazer, he was running the tournament for the Grand Finals and I remember he came over and he uh, he said "Dude look, I, I know your upset. If there's anything I can do to help, I'll let you know. I'm not gonna give you a yellow card. But ya'know, I'm going to let you stay in here, ya'know, just, just take some time to cool off."

I've been so grateful for that, a lot of the players after they were done with their games they had to go to the booths and sign some stuff but he was like "Ya'know what man, just stay here, I understand." And... Uh god... I mean, a lot of nice things happened there in retrospect but I was still so angry at myself, I was so mad. Ahhh. 'Cause what ended up happening was that I lost, and that I couldn't... I was so angry at myself, how could dumb could you be Sean?! How could you have choked like that, and send your Lurkers in there? You were playing perfectly, exactly to plan, on such a hard map it would've been such an unbelievable win against this great player who knows your style in and out, but you just choked. Why did you do that Sean? And I remember I went in the bathroom and I just cried, and I was just so mad. And I, I brought my stuffed animal to the tournament, my bunny named Bunny. Like, the dearest sentimental object I've ever owned in my entire life.

And, I mean, it's because ya'know, everyone has a lucky, ya'know, I wear lucky pants to my tournament, oh this is a jewel or an angel that I got from so-and-so event. For me, I just brought my little bunny that I had since childhood and I when I scheduled my flight to leave early and I just hated on myself for a 14-hour flight back from Singapore. I realised that I actually left my bunny in the hotel, like, the most dear sentimental object in my entire life. And... I tried to get the hotel to ship it back, but I gave them the wrong address. So, my bunny was forever lost in the mail. And, I mean, It was after that, that like, I was just like, ya'know... All of that happened just because I was being too hard on myself. I liked being hard on myself, I loved being hard on myself, it's one of my favourite things. You hear me watch my, ya'know, you see the Day9 dailies here's a game of me, LOL I'm awful! Ya'know? But I was just too hard on myself then.

The winning, I was valuing it too much. I loved learning, I loved figuring things out, I was generally a very quiet gamer, I didn't post much on forums, I didn't publish my replays, I just trained in private. But just because I didn't win this tournament, didn't mean that I was somehow a bad player, that somehow I had sold myself short. And...It was... I mean, it, it, it still hurts dearly to this day to know that I left Bunny there in Singapore and wherever Bunny is... ya'know. It's because I... I spent too much time focusing on myself and focusing inward and not... and just not trying to, to just be reasonable to myself, to be good to myself. I mean I like this high benchmark that I put myself to, but ya'know when one of the, the greatest things that happened after that loss, is that, is that Android came up to me after that and of course he, again, is notorious for bad manner but he said... I'll do the russian accent, to hell with it!

[0:00:00]

Hello ladies and gentlemen. Today is April 13th, 2010... and it is Day[9] Daily number 100. Look as my camera auto-adjusts the light. I repositioned it back to that old angle... Did number 99 with this webcam actually on top of my computer but I kept actually naturally looking down here. And I'm sure a lot of you here are familiar with the Diablo III poster, and now because I actually have an HD camera you can even see the Starcraft II poster there, so that's pretty awesome...

So today... Today is an unbelievably special Day[9] Daily because first of all, I just hit three digits for the first time ever... And three digits is cool! Also, today we're not going to do any analysis of any game: no games at all. It's just gonna be my life playing Starcraft. Because, I think people just don't quite... appreciate how in the games that they are. I have grown up playing Starcraft. The things that I have learned by playing Starcraft have helped shape me so much. I just wanna do a big dedication to the community, to just say "Man, just be proud you are a Starcraft gamer. There is nothing more cool than being proud of the things that you love." And it's actually... It was almost really emotional today as I'm like trying to sort through all the memories I have from Starcraft and just try to... just boil them down to something that's, you know, reasonably entertaining. So, as you'll note, I even have taken notes to everything to make sure I don't skip anything.

So, let's just talk about Starcraft. So... let us begin at the very beginning, when I first bought Starcraft. I can still remember it. I grew up in a little town in Leawood, Kansas. Which is in the middle of nowhere. It's in Kansas right? Well, I mean, it's part of Kansas City but still, I'm from Leawood, Kansas, where the land is flat and evolution is still a theory. It's the line I always use. We lived in this awesome little house, that was right next to this mall that Nick and I could walk across the street to every day. And of course, there was like a computer software store there, where we would buy our various electronics. And we were super pumped for Starcraft, because We played Warcraft II baby... Yes, indeed! We were Warcraft II players! And like any kid, you just go up to your mom and you're just like "Mom! Mom!" and you tell your mom about this genius shit you have just devised in your head. "Mom, did you know that in Warcraft II, a catapult outranges a tower?" Uuh, baby, baby! Now... Now, all of a sudden, I can never lose to towers. You know, just simplistic junk like that. We were your standard little newbies my brother and I...

So, my brother Nick, whose probably more commonly known as Tasteless in the Starcraft community, but he shall be Nick for this story... So my brother Nick and I, we walked to the mall and we paid, like, 52.36 or something for our first game of Starcraft ever. And it was so funny because the guy at the counter was a huge nerd too. So he was just excited about Starcraft. So he even knew the price off the top of his head. I mean, that's very standard nerd sort of stuff, you know... So, Nick and I bought it for the first time ever and we only owned one computer in the family. Because, you know, now we're ritsy ballers and we each have our own computer. But back then, we had to like, split times, so we would just like crowd against each other, trying to, like, get as much play time, or at the very least as much back seat playing time, like: "Build Zerglings! They're awesome! Trust me!". We didn't know what we were talking about...

So, you know, I played Starcraft a lot. This was when I was in, God... it must have been fifth or sixth grade when I first bought Starcraft. I know for a fact that was in the sixth grade! And... And after a while, as I'm playing more, and more, and more... It, it, it rapidly became something that I did, right? I was known for being that guy. 'Cause I would bring the Prima Starcraft strategy to school, and like, read it. I was just "Er hum... I know what unit counters what, according to Prima" you know... The: "Oh look! Here's the easiest way to beat the second Terran single mission", right? I was hot shit in sixth grade, man! I got it! And I started playing with my, with my great friends Shawn and Charlie.

And we would go to each others' house and we would play. And this was my first ever, like, networked experience. I had never played against another human being. I mean, I played custom games, which, generally for me, would take like... Two? Three days? To beat a custom game? Because, you know, I would make sure that all the units had names, if they were dishonorable in some way, they would have to be executed, I would talk to them, you know, just like: "Erm. Oh yeah. I gotta make sure that Martin the marine... you know, we gotta give him something special, because he has 4 kills." You know, because I just, would only attack with like 3-4 units at a time. But anyways, first ever game that I actually played against real people, and we were like God awful, and stuff, and the network eventually crashed. So we want back to play single player games on, of course, Big Game Hunters, because that was our favorite map in seventh grade, and... Oh God, was Brood War even out yet? I guess it was just regular Hunters

[0:05:00]

that we played on. And, to make it fair, against the computer, we would only use one cheat code. That was the rule that we created, right? Just one! You could do anything else you want, but you're allowed one cheat code. And it can't be the invulnerability cheat. You could turn on the entire map, you could turn on the vision, you could get money. For some reason, I opted for mass level one upgrades. That's a cheat that you can just type in. I was like: "Yeah man, I want these workers to start out 1-1-1, man. It's gonna be the best." So, you know...

Things sort of progressed from there and soon enough, my brother and I just started figuring out how to network our two computers together. 'Cause we had one really awful old computer and we also had this network laptop. And we would just, like, play against each other. For hours! But I think, perhaps the most significant thing to note, about our play time, was that... we had curfew. We were not allowed to play the computer untill 3 pm. 'Cause one day, Nick and I were playing Syndicate Wars! Do you guys remember this game? Hooo my God that's old school! Open up a web browser and look up Syndicate Wars, 'cause I swear to God, I thought that game had the best graphics of anything that had ever existed, right? And you're gonna look it up, and it's like, 320x240 and it's all pixelated. You rotate the screen and it like almost shuts down your computer, cause it's like too hard for him.

But one day, Nick and I were like fighting with each other, really wanting, you know, get on... And my mom was like: "Well look! You guys are fighting over the computer. You shouldn't even be on the computer anyways. No video games 'till 3!". And we were just like "Ow, why'd we fight about it? If only we hadn't done that..." But my mom also made us get up, you know, at like 8 or 9 in the morning, in the summer's to do, you know, like chores, maw the lawn, because in Kansas, you actually have a lawn. In LA, it's pretty much concrete and deserts, and really high gas prices. So not really much mawing is going on there. And, so we didn't have time to actually play. We would be up and, we wouldn't have anything to do!

And it's kind of weird because my mom was like a single working mother, like running her own business. So it's not like she was going to be home to see if we were gonna be there, like playing before 3, but Nick and I still, honorable gentlemen that we were, we did not play any Starcraft before 3pm... And what we would do, is that we would walk to the mall, every day. That same mall where we would get Star.. er, we got Starcraft. We would look at the games. We really didn't have that much money so we would just, like, look at the games and read all the backs and covers. And occasionnally, we would have enough money for Orange Chicken and we would seat with our Orange Chicken from the... from the food court, behind the escalator, and we would just talk about Starcraft and talk about video games.

And I really think that was the beginnings of my brother and I, just, loving discussing games. 'Cause I definitely think that, probably a majority of people who are listening to this, and you know, don't have siblings, based on some random polls I've seen on TeamLiquid and stuff. And I just think it was so helpful to me to just have a brother there who just wanted to talk about Starcraft all day. We wanted to talk about strategies and everything. And just, our crazy ideas that we had and everything... And what was awesome about Nick is that, like... I mean, a lot of people have asked questions like "What was it like growing up with Tasteless?" It was awesome! Do you watch GomTV? How could that be bad? My brother is HILARIOUS! I mean...

What's actually funny is that Nick is so funny and so good at, just like, being on, I actually was the quiet younger brother growing up. And it was, it was cool! I would just sit there and Nick would just go, and go, and go, and keep being funny, and funnier, and funnier, and... It was, it was great fun, you know, for my brother, my mom and I. 'Cause that was the three of us that grew up together. So, like... yeah God, and we played 1v1, in like everything! You name the game, Nick and I challenged eachother to it. Man, my brother was like, my biggest competitor. We played Goldeneye 1v1, License to Kill pistols in the Archives... Thank you! Yes, we played Soul Calibur. I played Maxi and Ivy, and Nick played Mitsurugi, because he's cheap, right? He's unfair! He would just do like, the, like the... What is it? Like, the down kick erm... It was like Kick + A.

He used various combinations: Back + Kick + A, Down + Kick + A... and he would just alternated them. And I could never beat it! What else did we do? Like, even Sega Saturn games, like Last Bronx or Sonic Racing... All sorts of stuff. So I mean, I just grew up, ow, Street Fighter Alpha! Oh, yes! We just grew up competing with each others, and just wanting, to like, one-up each other, and... in the olden days of Starcraft, Nick and I finally got on, it was weird.

'Cause we only played against each others, and suddenly, we were on... The Internets! Where the big fishes swam, right? And, I still remember, my first game of Starcraft ever, right? It was... Ok, it was a 1v1v1 Free-For-All. Okay? And I was like "Alright... This will give me ample time to build up, so that way, I can win! Eventually... I just have to stay out of their way." You know standard Free-For-All junk and, and these two guys

[0:10:00]

allied and they 4-Pooled me! Alright? So, I'm in this game, I'm like "Alright. Okay. Cool!" You know. I was getting my Cybernetics Core. I was probably gonna be doing an Arbiter rush, which is a strategy that I had praticed many times in my 3 days long custom games. And... all of a sudden, 12 Zerglings run into my base, and I was just like: "Oohhhhh!!!" And they weren't attacking each other, and I was like: "You guys... You guys! It's a Free-For-All! It's a Free-For-All!" And I'm like, typing, and of course, I had like, 30 words per minute, so this is really cutting into my ability to play. I'm like "Y-o-u g-u-y-s !" Just each little individual punch on the letters. Just like sweat pouring down my face, and I'm like "You're... You're allied... Just... Just stop it! It's Free-For-All! That's what it said in the game title!" How can you violate what the title of the game was?

So I lost that game, and I almost threw up. I swear to God! I was so upset! It felt so vile, to be betrayed by these two random strangers, that I, like, went to my mom and cried, and she was like "Never play on the internet again!" I'm like "I'm never gonna get on the internet, I'm just gonna play Sonic Racer with my brother." But eventually, you know, I got over that. I did the same thing that every new player does: I just latched on to team games. I think "Well, it's obviously because I need to have a good ally, someone who respects my ability to get those Arbiters really fast, right? Me and my marine Martin will definitely appreciate the use of a good ally."

So, did a whole bunch of team games, and eventually, BGH! Oh, I learned about this. "Wait a minute? Are you saying that I don't ever have to expand... ever? And I have infinite money?" This seems like a reasonnable way to spend my time, right? "I'm gonna do this" and I would 3v3 and... Okay, I don't know how often this happens to you, in just your history, as like a person... But especially for me, looking back my life as a Starcraft player, I was an asshole! I disconnected when I lost, right? I would pull the plug. I would be in a BGH game, and I would be like, you know, mass Hydralisks. Nope, ain't no big deal, right? All I gotta do is, you know, not hit the "H" key, because, you know, who uses the keyboard? You know, this hand was busy pulling up my lip, and folding it and scratching while I thought, you know, maybe musing on my chin a little bit, because I was quite the intellectual nerd.

And... I would mass Hydralisks, and then I would lose everything, and I would just be like "Well. Err... Good Game man". And I would actually type "Good Game" and because I was playing on a laptop, I would just reach behind and unplug that modem cord. And remember: I'm actually on dial-up right now, so it would take me like two minutes to call up AOL again and have to reconnect. But, you know, it was worth it because, it just wasn't fair man... I am so ashamed that I did that. I can't believe it. And it was really funny because I would join games...

And... I had nicknames that were stolen from the Fallout series. I was... So, my brother and I made a clan, our clan was Tang, right? Tang? You know, "Oh! It means something fresh!" So, I was Tang Kamakazi, which is again a name from Fallout, or Tang Finesse. Because again, if you ranked up too many losses on one of these accounts, you gotta create a new one that represents your actual skill. And I would have these records that looked like 10 wins, and 3 losses, and 20 disconnects. And, and I litteraly, didn't get that that was bad, right?. I would join these games and I would be like "Hey what's up guys?" You know, ready to chat before a game of Starcraft.

And they would go "Dude, do you disc?" And of course they mean "Do you disconnect?" But I didn't make the connection. And I was like "Of course, I have a Starcraft disc... How else do you think I'm playing, idiot?" And I was like, nudging my brother, like "Uh Uh". And he was like "Dude, you got him!" Ooh. Oh man, I was such a nerd. But... eventually I moved away from these infinity money maps. And I began playing 1v1. Because even thought everyone was God awful and only played with one hand, only played with the mouse...

That was normal, right? That isn't considered newbie as it is now, that was, like, the norm. So I said "Who are these garbage allies that I, the seventh grade, Tang Kamakazi, has to put up with? you know. I'm gonna go play 1 vs 1 games where I can actually get the good feel for it". So I only played 1v1s on the Small Divide. And I'm sure some of you have heard the stories if you've watched the ZOTAC Cup cast I did. But I would only play on Small Divide, which is like a 64 by 64 map, that you both start on islands. And I would Mutalisks rush 100% of games. And by now, my alias had evolved. I was no longer Tang Kamakazi, I was Sean - hyphen - P! My name is Sean Plott... Getting clever right?

Before I even continue with this story of me, like, 1v1ing on the Small Divide, I just want to give you a picture of what I looked like at this age. So, I was... I was short, okay? At the start of the seventh grade, I was 5 ft 2. At the end of eighth grade, I was 6 ft 1. That hurt, that period. I just "Urrrgh!!" just like Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory

[0:15:00]

style of growth, right? What was I talking about? Lost my train of thought... Oh yes! So I was really short, but my mom had seen how much my brother had grown so she bought me like big, extra large T-shirts. And I really liked sweat pants, but I didn't like that the extra large T-shirt would, like, hang over, so I tucked the shirt into my sweat pants. So there was just this, like, ring of collected stuff. And my sweat pants, I tucked them to my fluorescent purple snow boots with velcro. And I... So, like, I would actually play with the velcro snow boots at school, be like [Velcro Noises] and I just enjoyed doing that. Because I just had these nervous tweaks as a kid.

I also had these thick enormous glasses that I would wear, and I would use them to, like, melt insects and stuff, and I mean, these things were GIGANTIC. And my vision was really bad, so they shrunk my eyes, so I looked all silly and stuff. And then I moosed my hair. Not gel my hair, I would moose it! And I would moose it directly to the left, right? It was like a sheet of hair. And it would flick off in the day and my eyes were allergic to it, so I would always had these bloodshot red eyes, with like, tears coming down, and you know how I would socialized with people? I would walk up to them and I would say random facts that I was pretty sure they didn't know. Ow baby, yes! I sure know how to work with the ladies... I would go up and be like "Did you know that the tree sloth moves an average of 6 feet per second?" And... I'm surprised I didn't actually got beat up after school. Hell, I would beat me up, right? That was a good formative moment for me as a youthfull nerd.

But you know, going back to these games of Starcraft, I mean, this was like maybe 1-2 years later, after this state that I just described. I wasn't much better, right? I was still pretty similar. I liked to... I liked that idea that I was intellectual, hence why I bought the Protoss Starcraft box, because Protoss were clever. Terrans were scrappy and Zergs were bugs and... Uuh I still hate bugs! Uuh, uuh! I don't wanna get that. But I, but I was a mastermind, right? I only played 1v1s on the Small Divide. I got it! All I had to do was make a Pool at 12, I made the Extractor on 12 and then I would get a Lair once my Pool finished, and then I would get Hatch when I could. Which is pretty close to optimal, right? Except, I had to it on an island, because I couldn't wrap my head around the rushes...

And I actually explained to people at my school - again, keeping in line with the facts that you don't know - I would explain to people at my school why I was so good, right? I would go up to... I would litteraly go up to girls I had crushes on, and I'd be like "Hey! You ever heard of Starcraft?" And they'd be like "No!" Apparently they had very deep voices then... They would be like "No. No. Absolutely not." So I'd go "Alright, well... it's this strategy game, and I have an account Sean "dash" P, I'm 13-1 on it. I have another account Sean "tilde" P, right? Just using different... delimeters! I'm Sean "apostrophe" P, and I'm 15-2 on that. And look, look, look! You're probably saying 'How is it that you get so good at this game?' But I have discovered a trick, if you get air units really fast, you can win if he doesn't have anti-air." Alright, a lot of assumptions there.

And I actually did start losing a lot of games. I litteraly did this for, God, like 3-4 months. Like, only playing on the Small Divide, multiple games in a row, on my 56k modem connection, one hand only, and I... I would lose to people who would get air, and I would be like "How did he know I was getting air? Has to be cheating!" I was one of those guys! Oh God, how humiliating! "He has to be cheating! Because, if it's an island map, how does he know I'm gonna go air?"

So, eventually, I ended up finding out about cool places were good people... Hang out? Hanged out? Hung out? Where good people were! And these... these places were known then as Clan X17 on the East server. That is where the best of the best of the best hung out all day. If you wanted a game with good people, you tried to join, normally couldn't, normally full. 40 people! Uhhh! Channel's had it's maximal capacity. Couldn't join. I would sometimes sit in an empty channel, just trying to join X17, because if I got in there and 1v1'd someone, I knew that I would, eventually, be against the best of the best of the best of Starcraft players.

So eventually, I ended up getting in X17 and playing with all those people and I actually started using my keyboard. And this was around... when I was an eighth grader going into freshman year of highschool. I actually used the keyboard now, no hotkeys! I didn't use, like, Control-1, Control-3... I used S-H, to help that mass Hydralisks strategy I was talking about earlier. I used... I didn't used S-M because, man, "M" sure is really far across the keyboard. Pff, I'm not gonna have any of that. Happily just stuck with S-H, and S-Z, and S-D,

[0:20:00]

because, you know, I was pretty set on Zerg at that point in time.

And, now, I'm actually starting to get to where the real 1v1 players are. You know, players like FirstTsunami, if you guys remember this. Rekrul existed back then, except he played under the name 88lurker. iNcontroL existed back then. There were strong players, like Pillars... God, where are some other names? Agent911... Jolly, who were some other good players. Oh God, there was one I... it's on the tip of my tongue. Who was that player? BlackishRed! That's right! BlackishRed!

The first ever big tournament my brother and I tried to qualify for was the World Cyber Games Challenge, not the first World Cyber Games that happened in 2001, but like the 1999-2001, when like the KBK tournament were running, when players like... GG99Slayer and ElkY were very, very strong foreigners. And... I remember my brother was invited to the Blackish clan. He was BlackishGold, he got really far in the tournament, and he lost, and he was like horribly upset and everything. And it's so funny to think about the way that strategies worked back then. You know, I was...

By the way, I just want to briefly interject and note that my camera seems to be doing weird things to the colors. So I'm actually going to... see if I can adjust this. Okay. Seems like it'll be a little more stable now. Sinceres apologies. But like, okay, so these... these were the strategies that we faced back then. Here was a standard strategy in Zerg versus Terran. I 9-Pool you, and I build a Hatchery in your base, and I Sunken push you! Because, think about it... Terran only has marines then, and noone is gonna check their ramp. No! No, no! You have to get a force and then move to secure your ramp. And, of course, everyone is now playing Lost Temple around these days.

So... You know, you do this a lot, where's some other, like, weird, nutty strategies... like one base Corsair-Reaver against Zerg was unstoppable. Nick and I improved it to one-base Reaver-Scout. Because, the Scout does so much more damage than the Corsair, why would you make anything but a Scout? So we did Scout-Corsair a lot. This is the time where my alias was SleepingDrone, if any of you were familiar with this.

And after a while, Nick and I actually started to get decently okay, compared to other people at the time. I mean, my strategies were still like, one-Hatch Lurker versus Terran, which, by the way, was standard, and... I think it's important to stop and to note how my mind sets were working at this stage. Because players still experience this all the time as they, you know, join a Starcraft community. So think about my Mutalisks thing, that was my trick! I just had a trick! And when someone was able to defeat my trick, I just got pissed and would try it again, and be like "Oww, I still hope it's working..." And as I branched out to 'more diverse' strategies, I would go "Pff! I used to Mutalisk rush, but now, I know better" I still didn't ever deviate from that trick methodology.

My question was always "What is the right strategy in this spot?" And I would abandon everything else, that I had. The plan was gone, nothing... Just like, "Hum, what do I think he would not expect now?" So for instance, I just started out going... this Mutalisk rush, but then I expanded to things like: Lurker-drop people. I would one-Hatch Lurker rush and you had just enough gas to get the... the... Transport Upgrade for Overlords and two Lurkers, and you lift them up and float them into his base and runs straight to his mineral line. That was my whole strategy. What else did I have? I had in Terran versus Terran: building a Factory and floating it into his base without him expecting and makings Vultures to kill him. I would Dark Templar rush. I would just do every sort of weird rush, gimmicky thing imaginable, and I thought that that made me a good player, 'cause doing these wildly different things.

And I eventually slowly gravitated towards 9-Pooling every single game in every single match-up. 9-Pooling with Speed. And, you know, that sound gimmicky, but what I was finding with it, is that I could have a next step in the play. I had follow-ups, I was able to get Mutalisks really fast, I could expand, I could snipe Probes, I could distract him and all this stuff. And, I remember for the... for the World Cyber Games, like the first one in 2001, I actually got to put all of this to use, right? I had been practicing in Clan X17, where the best of the best hang out. And I... I worked on this 9-Pool strategy, I even sometimes logged-on to this scary Europe server, to some channel whose name I can't remember anymore. You just had to somehow know that these channels existed. And what I would do is...

When the 2001 World Cyber Games was announced, they had this online tournament brackets system, and the top 3 of the entire qualifier would be flown out to Los Angeles, to compete in the finals. And once again, remember that I live in Kansas. And... other than that,

[0:25:00]

anyone who wanted to participate in the qualifying finals could. All you had to do was show up. But, you could get these tickets out. So Nick and I trained, and trained for this. And I remember I played three games. I had to go to my friend's house, because... Nick and I didn't have two working computers. We had like one and a half working computers. It was pretty much that laptop that I mentionned earlier, and another times, you know my... my... our main computer just sort of bit the dust.

So I had to drive to a friend's house and I remember I had 3 Protosses in a row. I, I... The first player, I can't even remember his name but I 9-Pooled him and just won straight up with a 9-Pool. The second player I played was actually BlueWolf, who was one of those names that stuck around in the Starcraft, er... in the competitive RTS scene for ages. I mean, he's been in like in Dawn of War, and like Age of Empires and all this stuff and now, he's been seen in Starcraft II. But I remember I beat BlueWolf with my 9-Pool and I was feeling really good. And then I had to play against Jolly, who's one of those players that, if you go to the BattleNet... old tournament write-ups, he's there! In those starting tournaments that had like XDSGrrr, and BeeBladeLeader[?], these legend names. He was in some of those tournaments and I had to play him.

And I remember, I just was so focused with my little 9-Pool, my stupid little gimmick, and I microed around his base and I even counted, I killed... I killed like 16 Probes with the initial 9-Pool... and of course I kept these Lings alive in his base forever. And then I got Mutalisks and killed another 12-13 Probes, just darting in and out. And then, when I did my final push, I rushed all my Lurkers to his expo and I killed 25 Probes in one shot. I litteraly won by harassing him to death, and I felt so clever, and I qualified for the second day of play. And of course I played against a guy named Wizard who was really good and just demolished me. It wasn't even close. But, you know. It... it was just a really good experience for me to... to... you know, get that excitement, you know? Get that adrenaline of "Oh my God!" I had a strategy, I executed it, and it worked. It wasn't well developped at all, it was just "Uuuh, I hope I get up his ramp, because if I don't... Ohh, I guess I lost, and I guess I'll have to find another opponent".

But I started doing something, at that point in time, that has always stuck with me, as one of like the center pieces of my mind set, which is: there is a player named JelloOne, and there was a Jello Clan who had players like JelloPud as well. And the Jello Clan were ultra notorious hackers, oh my God! Did they ever hack at times! Some of them are probably still around, hacking as well. But they started this sort of like... now, you know, you see this all the time, but it was like... new era trolling. Where, you know, they would blatantly hack, you know, like: you would move a dropship along the edge of the map and they would just have no Observers, take 12 Dragoons, wander right over there, kill it, and then moved back. You would be like "How did you see it?" He's like "I thought it was coming" You know, just like always, never ever saying to anyone that they hacked, just always be like "No dude! I'm totally innocent here!", you know.

And, back then, if you maphacked, I mean, as you're hearing with me describing these strategies, 9-Pool to Hatch rush in your base, if you have a maphack where you can see what someone is doing, you get an unbelievable advantage. It's obviously gonna be the biggest help in the world. But I remember, I played against him, and I mean, this is a little bit my gullibility then. I remember saying "Well, you know what? If he says he's not hacking, then I'm just gonna believe that he's not hacking." And... we ended up just playing a lot of games together. Just a ton, a ton, a ton of games. And even though he did a ton of stuff that was really suspicious, I still wanted to beat him. Because I was really competitive, you know? I've been playing all these other games with my brother competitively. I liked competing with someone, as a friend. Why not do it with this JelloOne player?

And that has been so helpful to me, the idea that a good strategy and solid play, doesn't revolve around tricks. It doesn't revolve around surprises, it doesn't revolve around having hidden information. It revolves around very solid, strong timing, and crisp execution. And that was such a valuable lesson, that I couldn't try to sneak a little drop in there. My gimmick of sneaking the Overlord with Lurkers into his base never worked! I had to just have more units and I had to have better timing. And... I wasn't able to go... So, right now, I was a... Oh my God, I haven't even finish the story!

Yes, so this is, I'm, I'm a sophomore in high school, it's 2001, and I don't qualify and I'm all bummed out, but my mom... I want to just spend a little more time talking about her... in this, because having a supportive family, having a Starcraft family, has been instrumental to like, everything. My... my mom saw how bummed out Nick and I were, she'd heard us talk about Boxer, she had seen that this Starcraft game wasn't just another game that we bought and played for a month, and then never played again. We were still chattering about it for years. She said "You know what? We don't have much money,

[0:30:00]

but we're gonna get these tickets, we're gonna fly out to Los Angeles and you're gonna play into this tournament." Which was just like so nice, to have like, my mom be, like, that supportive. And... the problem is that we show up and we're the two kids whose mom came with us. Oh God! Oh! How revolting to be cool at that age, to be, you know? Have your mom be the chauffeur, you know, the chaperone for the event. But you know, she was really polite, she didn't try to like step in, be like, you know "I'm, I'm..." Nick was know as Tasteless then, I was still SleepingDrone. She's like, you know, "I'm SleepingDrone and Tasteless' mom" No! She was very low key and went off, and you know, just like read a book.

And I remember Nick got eliminated first round. He got knocked to the losers bracket first round and, you know, he advanced four at once and then he lost then, and it was just "Arrr", it was just so painful. 'Cause I remember, in his first game, he was playing against someone whose name I can't remember anymore. He built like 4-5 Creep Colonies and had an Overlord outside the guy's base, so he would morph them into Sunkens if the guy ever moved out. But Nick wasn't watching the minimap at that exact instant, so the guy just got to his base, with like five Creep Colonies, so he ended up losing. But I was like in a bracket with, I wouldn't call it easy people, but I would call it people who I 9-Pooled... 9-Pooled everyone right? I 9-Pooled 7 straight matches, until somehow... I'm getting pretty deep into this tournament.

And there were lot of famous players there. Maynard was there, he was, you know, the best American player at the time. Whear was there, Wizard was there, BlueWolf was there, Fr0z was there. That was his first tournament appearance. Really strong Protoss player named Requiem was there. I think I said Dream was there as well, Dream was a Zerg player who was like, really into the game. You know, he played on the Game I server, with the Koreans, you know, and there was this epic series between Requiem, who was completely unknown, and Dream. And I mean, like, it was... it was first this like 20 minutes game, but then everyone's else tournament games finished, so they were the ones clogging up the brackets, right? So everyone just crowded around them and watched their games. So they played this 45 minutes game on Lost Temple where Dream builds a Hatchery outside Requiem's base. Now you guys have seen this on Medusa games, you know, that Great has played and that sort of stuff, but, back then "HOLY SHIT! He really does play on the Korean server! Look at this ingenuity!", right? He was like building a ton of Sunken Colonies and getting mass Zerglings, oh my God, and Requiem is like getting 10 Shuttles and, like, trying to expand everywhere. And they played this dramatic game that had Stasis and Storms, and Maelstrom, and Guardians, and Defilers, and every single unit you could imagine, and, and Dream loses, this unknown kid Requiem wins.

And then they play the next game and they get 12 vs 3 on Lost Temple, which, as you know, you hate 12 vs 3, if you're a Zerg player. So Dream was the Zerg, he was at the 3 o'clock position. Requiem brings two Probes early on to harass, kills a Drone and Dream forgets his first Overlord, because he's trying to deal with this harrassment. So there's just this, like, huge upset, and everyone's like "OH MY GOD!", getting really excited because, I knew I would lose to Dream if I played him. But my Zerg versus Protoss was my strong match-up, 'cause I knew how to do a 9-Pool. So, I ended up playing against this Requiem guy and I actually won, and I was like totaly freaking out and everything. And then I had to play against Maynard, but we had to wait a day to play it.

And the winner of that match was in the semi-finals. The winner of the game between me and Maynard was going to the WCG grand finals in Korea. And... I, I played against him, and I was so nervous, and my mom was trying to figure out, you know, in between "Well if you do end up winning and we end up going to... We end up going to Korea, I want, I want to fly out to this, I want, I think, you know, go out as a family" And, I just batched the first game and I lost. And the second game I won with Hold Position Lurkers, in like two minutes, and then I lost the third game, and I was "Uuh!" and then I went to the Losers Bracket and was eventually eliminated. And, you know, I was really bummed out and sad, but, you know, I actually got to tell people that I went to a Starcraft tournament.

So that, you know, story was peharps a little bit longer, but it was cool. I got to meet all these people, who were just names. I actually got to see the faces of people. I mean, nowadays, we have like Facebook and, and people are just happy to like, send each other photos around on Skype and all this stuff, these forums, but there was just no way to actually meet the people who you played with. And I actually got the chance to do that. And Fr0z blew everyone's mind then. Fr0z, who, later I became pretty good friends with... At that tournament, this is in 2001, when people went back and looked to those replays, Fr0z had 300 actions per minute. No one could believe how quickly Fr0z played. And like, the second highest was like, 140 or something. I mean, Fr0z was mind-numbingly fast


[0:35:00]

and crushed everyone at that tournament and it was not close. Now it was cool to see, someone who was just, like, so good.

So WCG 2002 comes along, Nick and I can't go 'cause the qualifiers, you know, were spread around the country, and nowhere near Kansas, 'cause there wasn't exactly the buzzling E-sports community in Kansas, right? So we waited 'till... we waited 'till like 2003 before we were actually able to, you know, participate in any more, any more tournaments. Oh man, is that the year? Yeah, I'm actually checking my notes to make sure I'm right, so I don't forget anything.

But, you know, throughout this whole period, I was still the guy who played Starcraft. And, you know, back then in those early highschool days, there was still a lot of tension in the family. Because, as you can tell, Nick and I are sort of, you know, talkative, big personnalities. We really liked to, you know, have our own space, and be independent. And it was really hard because we lived... we had to share a room together. And we, you know, we argued a lot, 'cause we still had one computer. So there was that whole debate and, you know, mom, as supportive as she was, there we were playing this one game all the time and that was so weird back then, so there was just this whole family tension, but I was still known as that, and I was still into it.

And I remember even, like, dating girls in high school and telling them I played Starcraft, and trying to explain it to them. Because, I just was so excited about it. I just thought it was so cool, that I was playing this game. It really pissed me off this one girl I dated, I explained to her "GG", that you say "Good Game", and she would type it to me on AIM, but she would do "g.g." I'm like "This is not how you abbreviate it, it's "GG", just this thing". So she would like do it to, like, poke fun at me. Uuuh. I'm so glad, so glad that ended. Clearly, she doesn't have respect for the important things in life.

So... 2003 was actually where, where cool stuff started to happen, right? Where, where Nick and I... Where WCG was still going stronger than some other major tournaments. For WCG 2003, there were actually 20 qualifier locations across the entire United States. And the winner of the qualification process would advance to the final AND win a pimped out gaming computer, right? The sickest gaming computer you could think off that had like XP and it, like, it glowed! It was awesome, it was a sick deal. You even got, like, travel stipends to fly out. No, actually I think they just straight up paid for your ticket. That tournament was organized by Joe Moss.

And I'm gonna say that name, because if you're listening Joe Moss, you are the man! That tournament was awesome! But anyways, so my brother and I, we had to drive to Saint Louis. But we don't own a car in the family. I mean, my mom owns a car but she's like "I still need it. So you can't exactly drive to Saint Louis with it". So, our friend Dane, who is very famous, who, I was really good friend with Dane as well. For any of you who don't know Dane, please watch Day[9] Daily number 50 and number 65 for some epic 2v2v2v2 BGH action. God, Dane is hilarious. But anyways... So we convinced him to drive us out to Saint Louis... Oh no! It wasn't that time. Okay. No, no! This is what happened.

So, the qualifica... the qualifier for Saint Louis happened in two phases. You showed up to the first phase, and if you get top 8, you qualified for the final. And then you'd have to drive back out to the final and the winner of the final goes to the, you know, to the national tournament finals. So we didn't have a ride. So what did we do? We thought of everyone at our school who owned a car. And we found about this guy named Clint who we were friends with at the time. We tried to convince him to like, go out to this tournament, like "Yeah man, come on, let's like go out there". And we just conviced him "Yeah man, just 4-Pool all your games, you'll be fine, you'll easily qualify. I mean, not that many people will show up!".

So we had to like, drive out there and it's like a 4 hour drive from our house, and, like, we got pulled over by the cops because we tried to, like, exit at this one thing and then they pulled us over. They like, opened up the trunk, and noticed there was just computer equipment in there, like mice and keyboards. We're like "No, no, we're going to a video game tournament!". He's like "It smells like pot in here!" And we're like "No, we're ACTUALLY just going to a video game tournament. We're nerds. We don't do any of that. We only wanna play video games".

So we'd like get there and like, our hotel got cancelled, so we like, tried to sneak into like a hotel room but we got caught and they were really nice. My brother was really tactful, he was like "Look, we're just here for a video games tournament. We've been driving all night. We're really tired. Can we please sleep?" And they're like "Video games tournament?" and then we got to spend a really long time explaining that to them. But finally, we end up, you know, getting there for the tournament. And Clint 4-Pools everyone but screws up and loses.

So of the nine people that show up, and the top 8 qualified, Clint gets 9th. Alright? He really didn't even play Starcraft but he was pissed, man. And on the car ride home, he just blasted Insane Clown Posse for 4 hours. And we were like "Clint, can you please turn down the Insane Clown Posse, so I don't lose my mind", right?

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And he's like "Dude, look, I drove all the way out here, I just wanted to get top 8 in this tournament and I just want to listen to some of my music. I didn't have a good trip, man. I got knocked out of the tournament". We were like "You don't even play this game, man! We were just hoping you'd have a good time!" So we had to endure that but, eventually, we went back.

Since only one could qualify, I had to knock my brother out of that tournament, so I got first for there. And, then, I flew out. And that's one of the worst things that has just been in like, my life of Starcraft. Just... I hate that whenever there's a qualifier, my brother and I both have to go there and then there's just like one spot. And only one of us can go. 'Cause, man they didn't happen a lot early on, like with the WCGC stuff, the World Cyber Games Challenge, that he had to be the one to take the spot, 'cause I... he would knock me out.

So. Moving on forward... 2003 was a really nice finals for me. I was a senior in highschool. I just qualified over the summer, I was really excited for it. I went in to school a week early. Even... This was starting to be pretty big in my life, the fact that I actually played Starcraft a lot. I mean, it was a bit past time, but even the teachers at school knew that I had like, had done this tournament in 2001.

And I went into the Dean's Office and I was like "I will be missing school for the first week 'cause I'm going to a video games tournament". He was like "No, you won't. I'm not letting you do that." And I was like "No, no, please! Can I, can I? I... really, this is really important!" He's like "No, totally not". And I'm still trying to work out the fact that I'm a little bit awkward and goofy, back then, so I couldn't articulate it, and I just remember that I left and that I was really bummed. I mean, you know, it's just... I was still this quiet, quieter person, I was just like "Owww" I was really bummed out and I called my mom and I was like "Man, mom, you know. They're not gonna let me do it."

And she's like "WHAT?!" She got like really pissed, she's like "THEY'RE WHAT?!" And I'm like "I mean... They just won't let me do it. They said they're not gonna let me do it. They just said it's a video game and they're not gonna let me, you know, get excused absence for a video game." And my mom said "Sean, this isn't just some game you're gonna go play! You're not gonna go play Mario Kart out in L.A. for a fun week! This is something that you work on! I'll take care of this!" First of all, my mom referenced Mario Kart, I didn't know she knew that shit! Cool! Mom! Alright! Right? So, she... she's gone for like 15 minutes. I called her at work to let her know, but she came back 15 minutes later, when she gets back she's like "You're going Sean! It's all taken care of, don't worry about it, I took care of it!".

And I was like "Oookay!" I was like "Alright man!" And that... It's things like that, that just, like, "Wow... Thank you mom!", right? And I mean, part of what was so helpful about like, actually getting to that stage is just that, I treated Starcraft not as this goofy hobby that, you know, was just some way that I would pass the time and not really mention. I thought it was so cool that I played it and I would just always go down to my mom, and just be like "Mom, it is so cool that I do this" And I would, like, try to convince her that it was cool.

And that has been, you know, in addition to, you know, talking to my brother under the escalator as kids over at the mall, that act of making my mom understand, because I was just so excited, I wanted to share my excitement with her. The act of trying to articulate it, in some clear fashion, has been so helpful for me, because, you know, a lot of the ways I learned to explain it to my mom back then, I've used throughout my whole life. When trying to, you know, make people get right to the point, right away with Starcraft. 2003 didn't... the tournament didn't go so well. I got knocked out. I would tell you the whole tournament experience but it's very sad and I've been going for 43 minutes now, and I'm at 2003, so I still have 7 years to go.

But I got eliminated by a guy named Pyrrhus[?], who, noone really knew of. I played like an idiot, and I was like, all embarrassed about it, but I got to meet a lot of cool people there as usual. And the best part of going to any tournament is just that you get to see the people you've been chatting with.

So... 2004 rolls along. This was like when I was a freshman in college. It's actually the summer in between the qualifiers and, and... It was weird because... it was around this time that I actually stuck with the name Day[9]. I wanted a cool one word name. 'Cause there were players like Reach, Yellow, Boxer! And it was like "A Word"! And I was like "I'm gonna do that... Day!!!" Right? So, that was taken, so I had to think of something cool, and I always thought that the 9 Clan was cool, 9Everlast, 9Kane, and since it wasn't really around, I was like "I guess I'll be 9" So I just pust Day[9] there in brackets. Just like, yeah!

And Somehow, this guy named Paul got our AIM, and he'd just like... And by our, I mean my brother's AIM and my AIM and he would just like message us constantly, leading up to this WCG 2004. And it was weird because he would just, like, lie... like incessantly. He would just make up all these stories about what he'd done in Starcraft and about all this stuff, that like, like... For me, he told me he was, like

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a 22 years old 250 pounds ripped football player, who had a football scholarship. And then he told my brother that, he was like, you know, a 16 years old highschool student who was into debate. Just like, completely non-sensical. And what was so funny is that like, when we drove up to the WCG 2004 qualifiers, which were in Chicago... he wanted to be picked up because he, like, wanted to go to this tournament as well, right?

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