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hello ladies and gentlemen. today is april13th, 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 ontop of my computer but i kept actually naturally looking down here. and i'm sure a lot of youhere are familiar with the diablo iii poster, and now because i actually have an hd camerayou can even see the starcraft ii poster there, so that's pretty awesome... so today... today is an unbelievably specialday[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 gonna be doing any analysis of any game:no games at all. it's just gonna be my life
playing starcraft. because, i think peoplejust don't quite... appreciate how in the games that they are. i have grown up playingstarcraft. the things that i have learned by playing starcraft have helped shape meso much. i just wanna do a big dedication to the community, to just say "man, just beproud you are a starcraft gamer. there is nothing more cool than being proud of thethings that you love." and it's actually... it was almost really emotional today as i'mlike trying to sort through all the memories i have from starcraft and just try to... justboil 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 rememberit. 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 alwaysuse. we lived in this awesome little house, that was right next to this mall that nickand i could walk across the street to every day. and of course, there was like a computersoftware store there, where we would buy our various electronics. and we were super pumpedfor starcraft, because we played warcraft ii baby... yes, indeed! we were warcraft iiplayers! 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 likethat. we were your standard little newbies my brother and i... so, my brother nick, whose probably more commonlyknown as tasteless in the starcraft community, but he shall be nick for this story... somy brother nick and i, we walked to the mall and we paid, like, 52.36 or something forour first game of starcraft ever. and it was so funny because the guy at the counter wasa huge nerd too. so he was just excited about
starcraft. so he even knew the price off thetop of his head. i mean, that's very standard nerd sort of stuff, you know... so, nick andi 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 hadto 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: "buildzerglings! they're awesome! trust me!". we didn't know what we were talking about... so, you know, i played starcraft a lot. thiswas 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 forbeing that guy. 'cause i would bring the prima starcraft strategy to school, and like, readit. 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 mygreat friends shawn and charlie. and we would go to each others' house andwe would play. and this was my first ever, like, networked experience. i had never playedagainst another human being. i mean, i played custom games, which, generally for me, wouldtake like... two? three days? to beat a custom
game? because, you know, i would make surethat all the units had names, if they were dishonorable in some way, they would haveto be executed, i would talk to them, you know, just like: "erm. oh yeah. i gotta makesure that martin the marine... you know, we gotta give him something special, becausehe has 4 kills." you know, because i just, would only attack with like 3-4 units at atime. but anyways, first ever game that i actually played against real people, and wewere like god awful, and stuff, and the network eventually crashed. so we went back to playsingle player games on, of course, big game hunters, because that was our favorite mapin seventh grade, and... oh god, was brood war even out yet? i guess it was just regularhunters that we played on. and, to make it
fair, against the computer, we would onlyuse one cheat code. that was the rule that we created, right? just one! you could doanything else you want, but you're allowed one cheat code. and it can't be the invulnerabilitycheat. 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 justtype in. i was like: "yeah man, i want these workers to start out 1-1-1, man. it's gonnabe the best." so, you know... things sort of progressed from there and soonenough, 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 wewould just, like, play against each other.
for hours! but i think, perhaps the most significantthing to note, about our play time, was that... we had curfew. we were not allowed to playthe computer until 3 pm. 'cause one day, nick and i were playing syndicate wars! doyou guys remember this game? hooo my god that's old school! open up a web browser and lookup syndicate wars, 'cause i swear to god, i thought that game had the best graphicsof 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 yourcomputer, cause it's like too hard for him. but one day, nick and i were like fightingwith 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 onlywe hadn't done that..." but my mom also made us get up, you know, at like 8 or 9 in themorning, in the summer's to do, you know, like chores, mow the lawn, because in kansas,you actually have a lawn. in la, it's pretty much concrete and deserts, and really highgas prices. so not really much mowing is going on there. and, so we didn't have time to actuallyplay. we would be up and, we wouldn't have anything to do! and it's kind of weird because my mom waslike a single working mother, like running her own business. so it's not like she wasgoing to be home to see if we were gonna be
there, like playing before 3, but nick andi 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 wherewe would get star.. er, we got starcraft. we would look at the games. we really didn'thave that much money so we would just, like, look at the games and read all the backs andcovers. and occasionally, we would have enough money for orange chicken and we would seatwith our orange chicken from the... from the food court, behind the escalator, and we wouldjust talk about starcraft and talk about video games. and i really think that was the beginningsof my brother and i, just, loving discussing
games. 'cause i definitely think that, probablya majority of people who are listening to this, and you know, don't have siblings, basedon some random polls i've seen on teamliquid and stuff. and i just think it was so helpfulto me to just have a brother there who just wanted to talk about starcraft all day. wewanted to talk about strategies and everything. and just, our crazy ideas that we had andeverything... and what was awesome about nick is that, like... i mean, a lot of people haveasked questions like "what was it like growing up with tasteless?" it was awesome! do youwatch gomtv? how could that be bad? my brother is hilarious! i mean... what's actually funny is that nick is so funnyand 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, andgo, 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 andi challenged eachother to it. man, my brother was like, my biggest competitor. we playedgoldeneye 1v1, license to kill pistols in the archives... thank you! yes, we playedsoul 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! wejust 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 stillremember, 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-alljunk and, and these two guys 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 probablygonna be doing an arbiter rush, which is a strategy that i had practiced many times inmy 3 days long custom games. and... all of a sudden, 12 zerglings run into my base, andi was just like: "oohhhhh!!!" and they weren't attacking each other, and i was like: "youguys... you guys! it's a free-for-all! it's a free-for-all!" and i'm like, typing, andof course, i had like, 30 words per minute, so this is really cutting into my abilityto play. i'm like "y-o-u g-u-y-s !" just each
little individual punch on the letters. justlike sweat pouring down my face, and i'm like "you're... you're allied... just... just stopit! it's free-for-all! that's what it said in the game title!" how can you violate whatthe 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 playerdoes: i just latched on to team games. i think "well, it's obviously because i need to havea 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 reasonable way to spend my time, right?"i'm gonna do this" and i would 3v3 and... okay, i don't know how often this happensto you, in just your history, as like a person... but especially for me, looking back my lifeas a starcraft player, i was an asshole! i disconnected when i lost, right? i would pullthe 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, andfolding it and scratching while i thought, you know, maybe musing on my chin a littlebit, because i was quite the intellectual nerd. and... i would mass hydralisks, and then iwould lose everything, and i would just be like "well. err... good game man". and i wouldactually type "good game" and because i was playing on a laptop, i would just reach behindand unplug that modem cord. and remember: i'm actually on dial-up right now, so it wouldtake me like two minutes to call up aol again and have to reconnect. but, you know, it wasworth it because, it just wasn't fair man...
i am so ashamed that i did that. i can't believeit. and it was really funny because i would join games... and... i had nicknames that were stolen fromthe 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 aname from fallout, or tang finesse. because again, if you ranked up too many losses onone 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 literally, didn't get that that was bad, right?. i would join these gamesand 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?" andof 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?" andi 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 withone hand, only played with the mouse... that was normal, right? that isn't considerednewbie as it is now, that was, like, the norm. so i said "who are these garbage allies thati, the seventh grade, tang kamakazi, has to
put up with? you know. i'm gonna go play 1vs 1 games where i can actually get the good feel for it". so i only played 1v1s on thesmall divide. and i'm sure some of you have heard the stories if you've watched the zotaccup cast i did. but i would only play on small divide, which is like a 64 by 64 map, thatyou both start on islands. and i would mutalisks rush 100% of games. and by now, my alias hadevolved. 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 ofme, like, 1v1ing on the small divide, i just want to give you a picture of what i lookedlike at this age. so, i was... i was short, okay? at the start of the seventh grade, iwas 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 style of growth, right? what was italking about? lost my train of thought... oh yes! so i was really short, but my momhad 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, ringof collected stuff. and my sweat pants, i tucked them to my fluorescent purple snowboots with velcro. and i... so, like, i would actually play with the velcro snow boots atschool, be like [velcro noises] and i just enjoyed doing that. because i just had thesenervous tweaks as a kid.
i also had these thick enormous glasses thati would wear, and i would use them to, like, melt insects and stuff, and i mean, thesethings were gigantic. and my vision was really bad, so they shrunk my eyes, so i looked allsilly and stuff. and then i moosed my hair. not gel my hair, i would moose it! and i wouldmoose it directly to the left, right? it was like a sheet of hair. and it would flick offin the day and my eyes were allergic to it, so i would always had these bloodshot redeyes, with like, tears coming down, and you know how i would socialized with people? iwould 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 "didyou know that the tree sloth moves an average
of 6 feet per second?" and... i'm surprisedi didn't actually got beat up after school. hell, i would beat me up, right? that wasa good formative moment for me as a youthfull but you know, going back to these games ofstarcraft, i mean, this was like maybe 1-2 years later, after this state that i justdescribed. i wasn't much better, right? i was still pretty similar. i liked to... iliked that idea that i was intellectual, hence why i bought the protoss starcraft box, becauseprotoss were clever. terrans were scrappy and zergs were bugs and... uuh i still hatebugs! uuh, uuh! i don't wanna get that. but i, but i was a mastermind, right? i only played1v1s on the small divide. i got it! all i had to do was make a pool at 12, i made theextractor on 12 and then i would get a lair
once my pool finished, and then i would gethatch when i could. which is pretty close to optimal, right? except, i had to it onan 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 peopleat my school why i was so good, right? i would go up to... i would literally go up to girlsi 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. absolutelynot." 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'reprobably saying 'how is it that you get so good at this game?' but i have discovereda 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 literally did this for, god, like 3-4 months. like, only playing on the small divide, multiplegames in a row, on my 56k modem connection, one hand only, and i... i would lose to peoplewho 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 anisland map, how does he know i'm gonna go
air?" so, eventually, i ended up finding out aboutcool 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 wherethe 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'smaximal capacity. couldn't join. i would sometimes sit in an empty channel, just trying to joinx17, because if i got in there and 1v1'd someone, i knew that i would, eventually, be againstthe best of the best of the best of starcraft players.
so eventually, i ended up getting in x17 andplaying 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 keyboardnow, no hotkeys! i didn't use, like, control-1, control-3... i used s-h, to help that masshydralisks 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. happilyjust stuck with s-h, and s-z, and s-d, because, you know, i was pretty set on zerg at thatpoint in time. and, now, i'm actually starting to get towhere the real 1v1 players are. you know, players like firsttsunami, if you guys rememberthis. rekrul existed back then, except he
played under the name 88lurker. incontrolexisted back then. there were strong players, like pillars... god, where are some othernames? agent911... jolly, who were some other good players. oh god, there was one i... it'son the tip of my tongue. who was that player? blackishred! that's right! blackishred! the first ever big tournament my brother andi tried to qualify for was the world cyber games challenge, not the first world cybergames that happened in 2001, but like the 1999-2000, when like the kbk tournament wererunning, 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 farin the tournament, and he lost, and he was
like horribly upset and everything. and it'sso funny to think about the way that strategies worked back then. you know, i was... by the way, i just want to briefly interjectand note that my camera seems to be doing weird things to the colors. so i'm actuallygoing to... see if i can adjust this. okay. seems like it'll be a little more stable now.sincerest apologies. but like, okay, so these... these were the strategies that we faced backthen. here was a standard strategy in zerg versus terran. i 9-pool you, and i build ahatchery in your base, and i sunken push you! because, think about it... terran only hasmarines then, and no one is gonna check their ramp. no! no, no! you have to get a forceand then move to secure your ramp. and, of
course, everyone is now playing lost templearound these days. so... you know, you do this a lot, where'ssome other, like, weird, nutty strategies... like one base corsair-reaver against zergwas unstoppable. nick and i improved it to one-base reaver-scout. because, the scoutdoes so much more damage than the corsair, why would you make anything but a scout? sowe did scout-corsair a lot. this is the time where my alias was sleepingdrone, if any ofyou were familiar with this. and after a while, nick and i actually startedto get decently okay, compared to other people at the time. i mean, my strategies were stilllike, one-hatch lurker versus terran, which, by the way, was standard, and... i think it'simportant to stop and to note how my mind
sets were working at this stage. because playersstill experience this all the time as they, you know, join a starcraft community. so thinkabout my mutalisks thing, that was my trick! i just had a trick! and when someone was ableto defeat my trick, i just got pissed and would try it again, and be like "oww, i stillhope 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 trickmethodology. my question was always "what is the rightstrategy in this spot?" and i would abandon everything else, that i had. the plan wasgone, 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 floatthem 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 itinto his base without him expecting and makings vultures to kill him. i would dark templarrush. i would just do every sort of weird rush, gimmicky thing imaginable, and i thoughtthat that made me a good player, 'cause doing these wildly different things. and i eventually slowly gravitated towards9-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 stepin 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 ofthis to use, right? i had been practicing in clan x17, where the best of the best hangout. and i... i worked on this 9-pool strategy, i even sometimes logged-on to this scary europeserver, to some channel whose name i can't remember anymore. you just had to somehowknow 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 wouldbe flown out to los angeles, to compete in the finals. and once again, remember thati live in kansas. and... other than that, anyone who wanted to participate in the qualifyingfinals could. all you had to do was show up. but, you could get these tickets out. so nickand i trained, and trained for this. and i remember i played three games. i had to goto my friend's house, because... nick and i didn't have two working computers. we hadlike one and a half working computers. it was pretty much that laptop that i mentionedearlier, and another times, you know my... my... our main computer just sort of bit thedust.
so i had to drive to a friend's house andi remember i had 3 protosses in a row. i, i... the first player, i can't even rememberhis name but i 9-pooled him and just won straight up with a 9-pool. the second player i playedwas 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. buti remember i beat bluewolf with my 9-pool and i was feeling really good. and then ihad 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 b-bladeleader, these legend names.
he was in some of those tournaments and ihad to play him. and i remember, i just was so focused withmy 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 theselings 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 lurkersto his expo and i killed 25 probes in one shot. i literally won by harassing him todeath, and i felt so clever, and i qualified for the second day of play. and of coursei played against a guy named wizard who was really good and just demolished me. it wasn'teven 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 developed at all, it was just "uuuh, i hopei get up his ramp, because if i don't... ohh, i guess i lost, and i guess i'll have to findanother opponent". but i started doing something, at that pointin 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 playerslike jellopud as well. and the jello clan were ultra notorious hackers, oh my god! didthey ever hack at times! some of them are probably still around, hacking as well. butthey started this sort of like... now, you
know, you see this all the time, but it waslike... 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 belike "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 being like "no dude! i'm totallyinnocent 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 unbelievableadvantage. it's obviously gonna be the biggest
help in the world. but i remember, i playedagainst 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 thathe'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 playingall 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 ideathat a good strategy and solid play, doesn't revolve around tricks. it doesn't revolvearound surprises, it doesn't revolve around
having hidden information. it revolves aroundvery solid, strong timing, and crisp execution. and that was such a valuable lesson, thati couldn't try to sneak a little drop in there. my gimmick of sneaking the overlord with lurkersinto 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 finishthe story! yes, so this is, i'm, i'm a sophomore in highschool, it's 2001, and i don't qualify and i'm all bummed out, but my mom... i want tojust spend a little more time talking about her... in this, because having a supportivefamily, having a starcraft family, has been instrumental to like, everything. my... mymom saw how bummed out nick and i were, she'd
heard us talk about boxer, she had seen thatthis starcraft game wasn't just another game that we bought and played for a month, andthen 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 tolos 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 andwe're the two kids whose mom came with us. oh god! oh! how revolting to be cool at thatage, to be, you know? have your mom be the chauffeur, you know, the chaperone for theevent. but you know, she was really polite, she didn't try to like step in, be like, youknow "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 onceand 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 wouldmorph them into sunkens if the guy ever moved out. but nick wasn't watching the minimapat 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 straightmatches, 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 thereas well, dream was a zerg player who was like, really into the game. you know, he playedon the game i server, with the koreans, you know, and there was this epic series betweenrequiem, who was completely unknown, and dream.
and i mean, like, it was... it was first thislike 20 minutes game, but then everyone's else tournament games finished, so they werethe ones clogging up the brackets, right? so everyone just crowded around them and watchedtheir games. so they played this 45 minutes game on lost temple where dream builds a hatcheryoutside requiem's base. now you guys have seen this on medusa games, you know, thatgreat has played and that sort of stuff, but, back then "holy shit! he really does playon the korean server! look at this ingenuity!", right? he was like building a ton of sunkencolonies and getting mass zerglings, oh my god, and requiem is like getting 10 shuttlesand, like, trying to expand everywhere. and they played this dramatic game that had stasisand storms, and maelstrom, and guardians,
and defilers, and every single unit you couldimagine, and, and dream loses, this unknown kid requiem wins. and then they play the next game and theyget 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 earlyon to harass, kills a drone and dream forgets his first overlord, because he's trying todeal with this harassment. 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 endedup playing against this requiem guy and i
actually won, and i was like totally freakingout and everything. and then i had to play against maynard, but we had to wait a dayto 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 figureout, you know, in between "well if you do end up winning and we end up going to... weend up going to korea, i want, i want to fly out to this, i want, i think, you know, goout as a family" and, i just botched the first game and i lost. and the second game i wonwith 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 iwent to a starcraft tournament. so that, you know, story was perhaps a littlebit longer, but it was cool. i got to meet all these people, who were just names. i actuallygot to see the faces of people. i mean, nowadays, we have like facebook and, and people arejust happy to like, send each other photos around on skype and all this stuff, theseforums, but there was just no way to actually meet the people who you played with. and iactually got the chance to do that. and fr0z blew everyone's mind then. fr0z, who, lateri became pretty good friends with... at that tournament, this is in 2001, when people wentback and looked to those replays, fr0z had
300 actions per minute. no one could believehow quickly fr0z played. and like, the second highest was like, 140 or something. i mean,fr0z was mind-numbingly fast and crushed everyone at that tournament and it was not close. nowit was cool to see, someone who was just, like, so good. so wcg 2002 comes along, nick and i can'tgo '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 notesto 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 highschooldays, there was still a lot of tension in the family. because, as you can tell, nickand i are sort of, you know, talkative, big personalities. we really liked to, you know,have our own space, and be independent. and it was really hard because we lived... wehad to share a room together. and we, you know, we argued a lot, 'cause we still hadone 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 therewas just this whole family tension, but i
was still known as that, and i was still intoit. and i remember even, like, dating girls inhigh 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 "goodgame", and she would type it to me on aim, but she would do "g.g." i'm like "this isnot 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 respectfor the important things in life. so... 2003 was actually where, where coolstuff started to happen, right? where, where
nick and i... where wcg was still going strongerthan some other major tournaments. for wcg 2003, there were actually 20 qualifier locationsacross the entire united states. and the winner of the qualification process would advanceto the final and win a pimped out gaming computer, right? the sickest gaming computer you couldthink 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 straightup paid for your ticket. that tournament was organized by joe moss. and i'm gonna say that name, because if you'relistening joe moss, you are the man! that tournament was awesome! but anyways, so mybrother 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 saintlouis with it". so, our friend dane, who is very famous, who, i was really good friendwith dane as well. for any of you who don't know dane, please watch day[9] daily number50 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 saintlouis 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 thewinner of the final goes to the, you know,
to the national tournament finals. so we didn'thave 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 triedto convince him to like, go out to this tournament, like "yeah man, come on, let's like go outthere". and we just convinced 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'slike a 4 hour drive from our house, and, like, we got pulled over by the cops because wetried to, like, exit at this one thing and then they pulled us over. they like, openedup 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 likepot in here!" and we're like "no, we're actually just going to a video game tournament. we'renerds. we don't do any of that. we only wanna play video games". so we'd like get there and like, our hotelgot cancelled, so we like, tried to sneak into like a hotel room but we got caught andthey were really nice. my brother was really tactful, he was like "look, we're just herefor a video games tournament. we've been driving all night. we're really tired. can we pleasesleep?" and they're like "video games tournament?" and then we got to spend a really long timeexplaining 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 thetop 8 qualified, clint gets 9th. alright? he really didn't even play starcraft but hewas 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 losemy mind", right? and he's like "dude, look, i drove all theway out here, i just wanted to get top 8 in this tournament and i just want to listento 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 goodtime!" so we had to endure that but, eventually, we went back. since only one could qualify, i had to knockmy brother out of that tournament, so i got first for there. and, then, i flew out. andthat'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 andthen there's just like one spot. and only one of us can go. 'cause, man they didn'thappen a lot early on, like with the wcgc stuff, the world cyber games challenge, thathe had to be the one to take the spot, 'cause i... he would knock me out.
so. moving on forward... 2003 was a reallynice finals for me. i was a senior in highschool. i just qualified over the summer, i was reallyexcited for it. i went in to school a week early. even... this was starting to be prettybig in my life, the fact that i actually played starcraft a lot. i mean, it was a bit pasttime, but even the teachers at school knew that i had like, had done this tournamentin 2001. and i went into the dean's office and i waslike "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". andi'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 reallypissed, she's like "they're what?!" and i'm like "i mean... they just won't let me doit. they said they're not gonna let me do it. they just said it's a video game and they'renot 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 kartout 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 lether know, but she came back 15 minutes later, when she gets back she's like "you're goingsean! it's all taken care of, don't worry about it, i took care of it!". and i was like "oookay!" i was like "alrightman!" 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 justthat, i treated starcraft not as this goofy hobby that, you know, was just some way thati would pass the time and not really mention.
i thought it was so cool that i played itand i would just always go down to my mom, and just be like "mom, it is so cool thati 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 actof making my mom understand, because i was just so excited, i wanted to share my excitementwith her. the act of trying to articulate it, in some clear fashion, has been so helpfulfor 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 thepoint, right away with starcraft. 2003 didn't...
the tournament didn't go so well. i got knockedout. i would tell you the whole tournament experience but it's very sad and i've beengoing 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 aboutit, but i got to meet a lot of cool people there as usual. and the best part of goingto any tournament is just that you get to see the people you've been chatting with. so... 2004 rolls along. this was like wheni 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 nameday[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 wastaken, 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" soi just put 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 justlike message us constantly, leading up to this wcg 2004. and it was weird because hewould just, like, lie... like incessantly.
he would just make up all these stories aboutwhat he'd done in starcraft and about all this stuff, that like, like... for me, hetold me he was, like a 22 years old 250 pounds ripped football player, who had a footballscholarship. and then he told my brother that, he was like, you know, a 16 years old highschoolstudent who was into debate. just like, completely non-sensical. and what was so funny is thatlike, when we drove up to the wcg 2004 qualifiers, which were in chicago... he wanted to be pickedup because he, like, wanted to go to this tournament as well, right? so, he like, he's like "no, no, no! i'm rightby the tournament, just come pick us up" he was 2 hours out of the way, we'd driven allnight to get to chicago, right? and then we
had to drive 2 hours, to like, go get thisguy and when we get there, he comes out, and he's like... he's like 13, okay? and nickand i look at each other and we're like "that's paul?" and i was like "i thought he was 22?!"and nick's like "what? i thought he was 17" and apparently he was talking to my brother'sgirlfriend, who had driven us up there, and she's like "no, no, no, i thought he was 19"and we're like "...what?" and this, like, 14 year old comes up to our car and he's like"hey what's up, i'm paul, man! this is my dog, isn't my dog cool?" and this dog comesout and we're like "what the hell?!" and it's just so... it's just kinda funny the way these thingsactually start happening when you just start
transitioning over that border between interactingwith people online and interacting with people in real life. i mean, he was one, like, humorousexception, but, you know, we took him to this tournament anyways, and... i remember thisis when, you know, apm was big. people getting really into apm, so i tried to play reallyfast, and there was actually a question in the thread on teamliquid about this, aboutwhether i ever, you know, get nervous or get like sweaty, or something like that. oh mygod, yes! for tournaments, jesus! i get like... now i've sort of calmed down, but like in2004 when i hadn't even really done that much, tournament-wise, i just, like, sweat! and i remember i was playing, and i couldfeel the sweat pouring down my face and pooling
at my nose, and dripping into my keyboard,'cause i was like really far forward. and i checked my apm after that game, it was 412,in my first game. because i was just like, so nervous and jittery. non-sensically high,was not nearly good enough to actually make use of that, all that it really do was justmake me sweat, like, a lot. just like i was like a sumo wrestler who been jumping ropein an attic or something, i was exhausted. so, you know, despite driving all night, managedto qualify for the finals and i'm like "yes!"... and at this time, i started to... be betterfriends with fr0z, at this point in time. and fr0z is... he is the most influentialgamer that i have ever known, in terms of, especially in terms of starcraft, but justof all time. he had this ability to just decide
to be good. there was no bullshit, there wasno excuse, there was... he... he... i remember asking him in 2001, like, "god, how do youplay that fast?" and he said "well i saw a video of some korean guy, chojja, and i thought'i can play that fast', so i just kept playing until i could" and i was like "oh my god..." so this was like 3 years later, and, you know,i would... i would chat with him and he would watch some replay of like boxer or nada playingbrilliantly, and he'd watch it and be like "god, he made so many mistakes. that guy sucks!i'm gonna play better than he does" and then... he would play a game, and i would observe,and he would play better than nada. i mean, he would just do it, right? and eventuallywhen i... you know, started meeting and lan'ing
with him and hanging out with him in college,he would just focus so intensely and he did all these crazy things like: he would turnhis air conditioning really high so it'd be freezing, then he'd turn the heat on and practice.he'd practice with his chair at different heights, he'd practice with shoes on, withshoes off, he'd practice when he was tired, he'd practice after he had a lot of rest,before meals, after meals. he would vary up the schedule so much, so that way he wouldbe prepared for anything! and he was always so confident in himself.he just always believed in himself, and any time he lost, he would blame it on himselfand be like "god, i suck. i need to get better." you know, it was a little... a little overlyharsh. but i mean like, he just improved at
such a phenomenal rate. so, i was terrifiedwhen i actually got to wcg 2004 finals, that he was in my bracket, right? it was this weirdthing, 'cause i mean, i just told you there were 20 qualifiers everywhere. one of themdidn't get announced until three days beforehand. so there was this guy, there was actuallythis kid, he was like 11. he went to the las vegas qualifier, he was the only one who wentthere, so he qualified. and i remember i was in the hotel with artosis and this littleguy comes up and he's like "are you here for the starcraft tournament?" and we're like"yeah man, yeah!" and artosis goes "did you qualify from las vegas?" and he was like "yea!"and artosis is like "that's awesome, man!" and the kid is... the kid goes "did you knowthat there's a strategy where you can drop
vultures by their workers and kill them off?"and we were just like "oh my god, that is the sweetest thing that i've ever heard inmy entire life!" this little kid who qualified in las vegas is now at, like, a finals tournamentwith a pretty robust scene at the moment, and he is... artosis and i were like "man,that is awesome!" and then he like, left, and artosis is like "god, i hope i'm in hisbracket" and i'm like "me too!" ruthless competitors. but like, so, you know, they did a randomseeding. and in the brackets it was like, artosis and... like, the bottom half, in termsof the skill bracket. and in my bracket was all the, like, the terrifying names that iwas just praying to god i wouldn't have to face against, you know, there was: evade wasthere, i actually have the list, skew, rekrul,
fr0z... satist. like, really good playersat the time, and i remember my first game i just botched it, and i barely won againstevade 2-1. and you know, it's... it's... that tournament... i called my brother so manytimes, in that tournament. he didn't qualify for it, but i called him between every gameand he kept calling to check up on me. ah, god. it's like... it even makes me emotional. like, how supportive he's just always beenof me, just like my whole family. and i remember i would like call him before games and belike "dude, i gotta play evade" and he's like "dude, you've been practicing, you got this!you... you know you're better. just stick to what you've been practicing. you understandthis game, man. you get it! he's just here
for fun but you're gonna be here for the win"right? and i played and i won, and then i was up against fr0z and i was just terrified,but i got the chance to choose my map first. i choose my best map, korhal of ceres. i havea well practiced strategy, fr0z demolishes me on it. the game isn't even close, i calledmy brother in between those games, and i'm like "man, i'm in this bracket of death, man.there's no way i can make it, i'm down 0-1 to fr0z." and nick said "no sean! it is abracket of death because there's people like you in it. you've beaten fr0z all the timeonline, you got this man." and the next map is gorky island. and if any of you look at that map, it ishorrendous for zerg vs terran. just look at
it and you'll be like "urghhhh". you know,it's an island map, it's very awkwardly positioned. but i practiced it really hard, i stuck tomy guns and played a dramatic game and ended up winning. and then i felt really focused,i was calm, i'd stopped sweating and i just got in the zone. and in that third game, itwas on martian cross, i was scouting with my first overlord and he sniped it with marines. and i was just like, "ohhh god." and theni just send a scouting drone in there, just like "well i don't know what he's doing" andi got into his base and i saw that he was early expanding. and at that point in time,early expanding against a zerg was still a very unorthodox thing to do. players stillprimarily one-based as terran against zerg,
but he was early expanding, and all of a suddenin my head i went "i know exactly what i need to do to win." and i just. i... i did a transitionthat i actually still use today. i expanded a bunch, i opened mutalisks to harass, transitionedinto lurkers, got the hive, then transitioned into guardians followed by ultralisks. whenhis first push came out, i had 12 guardians that demolished the whole thing and just keptrallying ultralisks until i won 2-1. and it was insane, because i won and wheni looked up no other games were being played in the tournament. it was just fr0z and i,opposite computers and everyone else was crowded around, and i was just like "ohhh my god!"i had no idea that there were that many people there. and it was just such a rush, and fr0zshook my hand, you know, mannerly. and i called
my brother and i'm like "nick! nick! i beatfr0z" and he's like "dude, i knew you could do it! now you're playing against satist,and that guy is probably pissing in his pants because you just knocked out the best terranin america!" and i was just like "oh my god!" and i... i beat satist 2-0 and i was in thetop 3. which meant i was qualifying ever, for my first ever grand finals. and, i remember i actually played artosisin the winner's bracket finals, so he was top 3 as well, and you will never have seena happier man than artosis. i seriously... like... i sat down and he's like "hey man!"he said "you wanna play a best of one? i don't even care if i get first or second, we'reall going man!" and i was like "nah! let's
just play a best of three, i'm feeling good"and he's like "cool man! ah god, this feels so good!" and i remember in the games i wassitting there playing, and i leaned over, because he was playing across from me, ourmonitors were facing each other, so if i leaned over i could see him. and in the middle of a game, i just lookedover and he was just beaming. he was just beaming! it was... and it was so cool, 'causeit was like a moment, you know, where it's like... i know exactly, 'cause i knew artosishad been practicing, so i know exactly how hard this guy has been training for this]tournament and i know how hard i've been training for this tournament man. and it like, paidoff.
so fr0z came back through the winners bracket,he actually... he actually won the whole tournament, he just like... he had to beat me like intwo best of threes, and he did that handily, he beat me like 5-1 and however many gamesi ended up playing after that. so... fr0z won the whole tournament. but you know, itwas me, artosis and fr0z going, and it was like my first ever wcg usa qualifier that iqualified for the grand final. and i was just like "oh my god..." and i called my mom andthis is... this is... i part say this is what happens when you have a mom who is just aroundtwo starcraft players, but more importantly what happens when you just have a really kindmom, who just supports you. 'cause i called her and i said "mom, mom idid it! i'm in the top 3, and i beat fr0z
to do it" and she said "sean, you beat fr0z?!oh my god!" because fr0z had, you know, gone to the grand finals, he beat boxer twice!in 2002, and in the group of death, and i mean, just an epic, epic player. and it wasjust so, so nice. and then, you know, i went to the grand finals and i practiced more forthat. and, you know, in between that period of timei learned another like, i think, key thing, in terms of my mindset as a player, that i...zerg versus terran was my good match up, actually, as you're gonna hear, my zerg vs protoss isactually been really lackluster until about 2007, i think was the first year when i wasactually like "hey! i'm confident in this." but it was just zerg vs terran that i reallygot, and, you know, right around the time
of those finals, especially leading up tothe grand finals, it occurred to me... that... i really should not ever be worryingabout the player, or who the player is, or what the player is capable of, or who he hasbeaten in the past, or what his rank is, or what anything is. if he is terran, terranhas constraints that any terran cannot overcome, and that means that if i practice againstterran it doesn't matter what name behind that... what the name of that player is, orwho that player is, because i know how to beat terran and i just studied how terranworked, and... i came across that key timing, where after the zerg gets lurkers, you cancome make a ton of drones, because the terran player cannot move out until he has a sciencevessel.
it seems... it seems totally intuitive now,because you watch the pro matches and they do that all the time. there's nothing newabout that... but at the time, it was just like, weird! because players would prettymuch just start massing up units, once they hit a certain point, just start making theunits and never stop making the units. but it was just this alternation and... when i...time for the wcg grand finals, i was actually in group e... yeah! actually, hold on! stayright here! so, i'm going, going over to my closest right now, because i think i actuallystill have these little things... yea! yea! dude, guys! keep everything! keepevery single thing that you get, see here's my bib, i was in the group e at the wcg grandfinals. and in my group, it was the group
of death, again! it was methospg, the famousgerman zerg player, it was hellghost, the famous brazilian terran player, who is alsovery strong at random, and liquid`drone, who played random, but in tournaments he wouldjust pick whatever race was the best at that map and at the time. i was against these playersand i was just like "ahhhhh, god!" you know. my brother... my brother, the game was insan fransisco, so i could still get cellphone reception, my brother called my everyday andbefore every game i would call him and i would say "nick, i have to play methos." and nicksaid "don't worry man, you got this!" and i think the general theme in all my tournamentsis that i'm very shaken in like, the first... game of the tournament. or in the first...even in a best of three, i generally lose
the first game... excuse me, if i do win thebest of three, i end up losing the first one and then winning the next two, that's sortof the story of my life. so, i played against methospg and for somereason i got so shaken up that i was in this huge area of computers, every famous playerthat ever met, excuse me, every famous player that i've ever heard of, from around the world,was there! it wasn't just america! it was the whole world! mondragon, deathshaman fromromania, who you guys should know because he's pretty awesome. i mean, liquid`drone...the famous canadian players, like testie, was there. the koreans were there, xellos,my hero, was there. i was just so shaken up... that i abandoned my game plan against methos.for no reason. i just completely abandoned
my game plan. i went hydralisks in zerg vs zerg. which nowadays,you know, i love hydras in zerg vs zerg, but then, i never practiced it, and i just lockedup. and i called my brother and i was like "okay nick, i'm already down 0-1. i have twomore games i gotta play against hellghost and ariador" excuse me, ariador is liquid`drone,same person. and i was just like "oh god" and he's like "no man! remember, dude, youknocked out fr0z at the finals man. you knocked out satist. you knocked out artosis, man,you got this!" endlessly supportive of me, and 'cause he was a starcraft player, andbecause we talked so much, he could just calm me down and get me focused and get me in thezone.
and i... i managed to win my next game againsthellghost. it was a pretty dramatic game but i managed to win. i managed to win my nextgame against liquid`drone, on my best map, and i just stuck to my game plan and crisplyexecuted it. and all of a sudden, i... i was first in the group! i was first! i was 2-1,liquid`drone was 2-1, and methos and hellghost both went 1-2. so i was like "oh my, oh mygod, i'm in the round of 16!" and i hadn't played darkcalum, whose a very famous czechplayer, we played a zerg vs zerg and i won that 2-0, and now all of a sudden i had toplay against xellos. now, that's... that is awesome for two reasons.because xellos was the korean, who eventually went on to win that tournament. and i'm notgonna lie, when you're in a starcraft tournament,
and you're just a random, you know, basicallya newbie from america, i mean... like, especially compared like, to the calibre of player there.i was just not, you know, top of the... top of the pack. if you get faced against xellos,that's the person you wanna lose to man! oh, that's so great for we-little-weasely-foreignerswho have no pro-scene. oh yea, i lost to the korean, no big deal! you don't wanna loseto someone, you know, who is also a foreigner or anything like that. so... he demolished me and i actually dida review of one of the games i played against him in the day[9] daily. but... so i endedup getting eliminated and i was a little bit bitter but... it was, it just went so well,because i got to go back to school and this
is when i'm a freshman in college, and i getto tell everyone "guys, i went to the starcraft world finals, and i lost to the korean whowon it all!" you know, i mean, easy out for me, right? easiest thing in the world. if i lost to someone, you know, with an embarrassingname, for instance: rekrul, in the wcg usa final, the one that fr0z, artosis and i gotfirst-second-third... rekrul was eliminated in the losers bracket by monkeyballs, wasthe guy's name. now if you're in a tournament, and you have to go home and your mom's like"oh honey, how did the tournament go?", "oh it went crappy, got eliminated by some randomguy in the losers bracket?", "well who was it?!", "it was monkeyballs" you know... itjust, damages reputation for everything you've
ever done in your life, you know. so... i'mdelighted that, you know, i managed to lose to... to xellos in that final. what was i...what was i talking about, i need to get my notebook out, once again. i've put it asideto go get that awesome little bib, because once again, i keep absolutely everything. still, i, i, at this point i've had no winsin my entire life, and i remember for the, for the 2005 final... so there was like thisonline ladder that... you know there's a qualifier for, and i mean, it's... it's around thistime that my family really started to just gel around starcraft, you know? like, anytime we had a tournament, mom would ask for updates... nick and i would constantly calleach other, and anytime ask... anyone asked
me for my favourite memory, or one of my favouritememories, i tell them the story of how my brother qualified for the 2005 final, 'causei qualified online, so i was already seeded, right? and nick had to drive down to texas for thistournament, and... so it was just him, right? it wasn't anything dumb like we both had togo to the same qualifier and one of us ended up winning. we went to different places, andat this qualifier, nony was actually there. nony is really, really good now, and he waspretty damn good back then as well, and my brother had been practicing his protoss vsprotoss... and, oh my god, i remember he... so he drove down there, he drove 17 hoursto get to this texas qualifier, and he'd been
practicing so hard, oh my god, he killed himselfpracticing for that tournament. just endless protoss vs protoss against random players,against practice partners, against everyone he could find. and again, for any of you tuningin, this is my brother tasteless, who's the... you know, the storm observer for gomtv. he... he practiced so hard for that tournament,and he drove all the way down there, and... nony was knocked into the losers bracket bya zerg player early on, so nick was like "oh my god, yes! i have a free ride to get tothe finals!" so that's what happens, nick gets all the way to the finals, we're callingeach other, he's updating me, he's like "dude, i got this! nony was knocked into the losersbracket!" but nony came all the way up, losing
first round, came all the way through thelosers bracket, and when they got to the finals, the way that it worked was that nick had towin one best of five, and nony had to win two best of fives. so nick says "alright man, alright. i'm...i'm feeling a little nervous.", and i'm like "don't worry man! it's cool, you got this!you can do this, man. you've been training, just stick to what you know!" and he... heplays the series and he calls me back twenty minutes later and he says... he says "sean,i got 3-0'd. he... he raped me. it wasn't even close. it was totally one-sided, he 3-0'dme." and he said "sean, i..." god, he said "sean, i drove all the way out here and i'mgonna lose. i tried so hard and i'm just gonna
lose here." and i... god... i felt so bad,he still had a best of five left and i, and i talked to him for 45 minutes. he actuallyasked the tourney directors if he could have 5 minutes, but he... he just stayed on the phone with me for 45minutes, and i calmed him down. i was just like "don't worry." i told him he got rushedall three games, so it's obviously gonna feel worse. but you just have to... god i justget so emotional about this, right? i was like "you just stick to what you know." right?and it was loser picks the map, so he was allowed to pick the first map, so he choseastriah, which was a really obnoxious island map. because for some reason wcg just keepsthrowing in island maps into the series. they
just had this... the hook on it, i don't know,but it was in there, so... so nick chooses estrella, and he wins the firstgame. and i'm like "yes!" and he had a brilliant build, constructed on estrella. i mean, tothis day when i go back and i look at that, brilliant! weirdly timing when he gets hisrange upgrade for an island map as protoss, but it finishes at just the right time todeal with this one dark templar drop, and this one time when his opponent would getobservers in, he can snipe it with the range before it gets in. building placement thoughtout, genius! he executes it, he wins. and there's this guy, who... another friendi met through starcraft named rogerdodger... i think his real name was matt, but we calledhim roger. so rogerdodger was messaging me
via battle.net, there was no way to get ahold of him, so he said "nick lost the next game, and it was a really one-sided game."and he said "but nick is choosing estrella, again." nick chooses estrella, he wins, they're2-1. and then he loses the next game, so they're tied 2-2. so now it's nony and my brotherin the final for the qualifier for the 2005 usa finals, and i'm just like "roger, yougotta keep me updated on everything." like, my heart is pounding, i'm so stressed outand everything... and he's typing to me, and... he's like "okay. nony tried to do this drop.it's not working. so nick's building up his army, he's getting dragoons and reavers, he'sgetting his shuttle. nony's expanded before him. wow! nick really is slow on that shuttle,he's not moving his stuff out. now he's ferrying
his stuff to the low ground. nony's expansionhas been up for a really long time." and then dead silence. and then he comes back and says"holy cow, hugeeee battle. one sec." and i don't hear from him for like 3 or 4 minutes,and i've just never been so wigging out in my entire life! so he gets back on and hesays "okay. i think nick won that battle. i think he came out on top." five secondslater, he says "nick lost his shuttle with both his reavers in it." and i was just like..."oh my god... oh my god..." i was like "oh, please, please nick, find a win!" and thenroger says "oh wait a minute, you're gonna love this. nick's food is 92. nony's foodis 38." and i was like *gasp*... and right as i got that i got a call fromnick, he said "i won, i'm going to the finals,
man!" and i was, i had never been so happyin my entire life. i couldn't stop jumping for like... like an hour and a half. i justhad like so much adrenaline in my body. i called my mom, she drove home from work, weboth went out to dinner, nick was in texas so, you know... but she and i went out todinner, and we were just like "oh my god, he trained so hard and he did it, and you'reboth gonna be at the finals. because you know what, we're a family that plays starcraft!"we're just the ones who get it, you know. so going to that 2005 finals was... horribleto find out that my brother and i were paired against each other first round. and i remembergoing out there and it was just so bittersweet... 'cause... i had to play my brother first round,and... and i won... and afterwards, he gave
me a big hug and everything and, you know,was talking to him and i just felt really bad. and i remember he... he brought me into this backstage, and hejust started crying, because he's just like "i'm sorry, man, you know, i practiced reallyhard for this." and... and then he just said "but you know what sean? you're gonna winthis tournament." he's like "i'm... i'm so proud of you." man, there's 3000 nerds watchingme right now, get all emotional but, you know... it's just so important to me that... justthe like, the... how supportive he could be. that he could be so upset that he flew allthe way out, worked so hard, and ended up getting eliminated first round to his brother,so he's gonna deal with all those obvious
obnoxious comparisons... but then he still just says, you know "i'mso proud of you. you're gonna win." and then, from that moment on, like, i was focused man!i can't lose after that! i can't be like "whoops, sorry! i lost to a 4-pool, next round! whoops,got bunker rushed!" you know? so i was just so focused that whole tournament, i ate solittle. my focus was just peaked, and i ended up... it was the first time i ever actuallywon a tournament, and it was a little bittersweet, 'cause you know, again, i had to knock nickout first round.. you know, i had to play a bunch a whole bunch of my friends in thetournament, 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,
i mean, he was just right there, you know,i could just easily, you know, he would be like "awesome man, you played well!" and i'djust high-five him. uhm... what was i talking about? oh yea! but that was so cool becausenick got eliminated first round, he had nothing to do, and the commentators were up on stage.and they were... it was radio itg, and they were doing all the events! and their guy upon stage just didn't play starcraft, at all! and i mean, it was so funny because he wason a 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. buti remember... so he's up there and he has
the mic and he's watching the game and he'slike "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, andhe's gonna keep making them", it was just, like, this non-sensical completely randomlydirected commentary. and nick went up to them right after that game and he said "okay look,i understand your guy doesn't have that much experience, give me the mic. i'll take careof all this." nick walked right up on the stage there, absolutely no preparation, satdown and commentated beautifully. he said everything right, anytime his... the, theco-caster said anything at all, that seemed ridiculous, nick would totally just save him,would not do any sort of thing to embarrass
him, and radio itg hired him right on thespot, and that's what began his casting career. so i mean, it ended up working so nicely forhim, it was so funny i even remember there was this game on estrella, again, 'cause wcg,for some reason, wants to have an island map in every single tournament, and uh... i rememberthe guy, the guy, the radio itg guy, says "ok so..." i need this hand here, so you cansee this, so he goes "so nick, it's an island map, do you think we're gonna see... drops?"he's like "uhhh", like "don't you think?!", and nick's like "yes, i definitely think that'sa possibility here, you know, big variety of, you know, things we can do here." justcompletely picked it up. i mean, i'm not gonna lie... 99 people out of a 100 would've beenlike "well gee, yea i think he might get drops
if he's into ever attacking in this war game!yeah! i think he'll maybe get drops if he's interested in winning, ever!" you know, butnick just completely, just crisp, no... no dropping the ball at all there. so that endedup working out just great. but uhm... now comes the 2005 grand final,in singapore, that i flew all the way out to. and i wanted to do better than i did lastyear. i got in the round of 16 against xellos, i lost, so of course i said "ohh, i got 9th,right? ohhh!" and i wanted to get into the top 24, round robin groups of 8, instead of4. and i was in the group with sen, and android. and... they're both really good. and thisis also the period when i started playing a lot on the abyss, which later became pgtour...oh, excuse me! no, i was playing on pgtour.
and then, later on i played on the abyss whicheventually became iccup. but my major practice partners during that period were... frozenarbiter,on the teamliquid.net forums, tons of the russian players: advokact, android, deadmanfrom 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 a little... a littleoff. like, he would lift... he would be dead! and instead of saying "gg" he'd like, lifthis buildings and float them around the map, to try to just, like, delay the game. whichis kinda funny, right? but you know, technically
bad manner. and people would sometimes belike "oh, that android guy is bad manner!" but you know, we always played together, andyou know, there was a language barrier, obviously, but we played a lot, a lot, a lot of gamesleading up to that tournament. so i was feeling confident against him. it was on the map paranoidandroid and i hadn't practiced against sen, who terrifies me! god, sen! okay, sen wasscary in the tsl2 that just happened, not long ago. but also, he was terrifying in 2005,right? he is just a scary beast at... 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, i'm gonna play protoss." and i was like "ohhhhman..." so i lose my first game, and i'm 0-1,
right? seven more to go! oh, excuse me. sixmore to go, right? so i have to pretty much go... 6-1 or 5-2 in the group. so, uhm... so i kept playing and i was winningall my games until i got to android and... i was in that game, and i was playing, andi was even... playing better then i did in practice, but... all of a sudden, he comesout with his first push, i have... i have lurkers and zerglings there, they're ready,they're positioned behind the fat bridge on paranoid android. and all of a sudden, i felt...my muscles just started doing things that i didn't want them to do. and in my head isaid "oh my god! i am about to send in a full control group of my lurkers, and they're allgonna die. and i have no idea why i'm gonna
do that." and i just choked! and i watchedmyself do this, and i, like, felt no control over my hands, right? just none! i was justlike "oh my god..." and i just lost all my 12 lurkers... so i had 3 control groups ofzerglings and no lurkers, that's not gonna do very much good. and i remember, like, after that plan i gotthis boost of adrenaline and my focus just like, peaked! but i mean, it didn't matterat that point, you know, it's like... the perfectly orchestrated symphony, but you know,all the instruments are out of tune. i just couldn't pull it together, and i rememberi lost that game and i... i... i was so mad at myself! i was so angry! because i practicedso hard, now i wasn't going to get out the
group, i was 4-2, the best i could do was5-2, which meant that, you know, sen was gonna go 7-0 and android was gonna go 6-1... and...and i remember i just left the game and i just punched my keyboard so hard... i actuallycut my pinky. i just slammed it, and... gosugamers, the crew... mazer. he was running the tournamentfor the grand finals, and i remember he came over and... he said "dude look, i, i knowyou're upset. if there's anything i can do to help, i'll let you know. i'm not gonnagive you a yellow card. but, you know, i'm gonna let you stay in here, you know, just...just take some time to cool off." i've been so grateful for that, a lot of theplayers, you know, after they were done with their games, they had to go to the boothsand sign some stuff and be done, but he was
like "you know what, man? just stay here.i understand." and... oh god... i mean, a lot of nice things happened there in retrospect,but i was still so angry at myself, i was so mad. 'cause... what ended up happeningis that i lost. and i couldn't... i was so angry at myself, how dumb could you be, sean?!how could you have choked like that? and send your lurkers in there? you were playing...you were playing perfectly! exactly the plan, on such a hard map, it would've been thisunbelievable win against this great player who knows your style in and out, but you justchoked! why did you do that, sean? and i remember i went in the bathroom and i just cried, andi 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, you know, everyonehas a lucky, you know, "i wear lucky pants to my tournament", "oh, this is a jewel","this is an angel that i got from so-and-so event". for me, i just brought my little bunny,that i had since childhood. and when i scheduled my flight to leave, early, and i just hatedon myself for a 14-hour flight back from singapore. i realised that i had actually left my bunnyin the hotel... like, the most dear sentimental object in my entire life! and... i tried toget the hotel to ship it back, but i gave them the wrong address. so my bunny was foreverlost... in the mail. and, i mean, it was after that, that like... i was just like, you know...all of that happened just because i was being
too hard on myself. i liked being hard onmyself, i loved being hard on myself! it's one of my favourite things! you hear me...watch my... you know, you see the day[9] dailies where i'm like "here's a game of me, lol i'mawful!" you know? but... i was just too hard on myself then. the winning! i was valuing it too much! iloved learning, i loved figuring things out, i was generally a very quiet gamer, i didn'tpost much on forums, i didn't publish my replays, i just trained in private. but just becausei didn't win this tournament didn't mean that i was, somehow, a bad player. that somehowi had sold myself short. and... it was... i mean, it... it still hurts dearly, to thisday, to know that i left bunny there in singapore.
and wherever bunny is... you know. it's becausei... i spent too much time focusing on myself and focusing inward and not... and just nottrying to... to just be reasonable to myself, to be good to myself. i mean, i like thishigh benchmark that i put myself to. but you know, one of the greatest things that happened,after that loss, is that... is that android came up to me after that, and of course he -- again, he is notorious for bad manner -- but he said... i'll do the russian accent!to hell with it! "day, i do not want you to feel bad. you aresuch good player, and good friend." and he was... he was just so nice and i could tellhe felt bad, because he and i were the two players who were battling for the second placespot, 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 peoplewere like "oh yeah, notoriously getting pissed off at people" but he came to me and he waslike "dude, i... i appreciate your skill and you, and i think you're a good guy and i'msorry it had to turn out this way." so that, that's always been really nice to me, 'causei'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 comeacross as a jerk. so i just valued trying to be just as nice, and polite and pleasanton the forums as possible, and... it was so...
it was so nice to hear him be able to saythat. and around this time in 2005, i was like "you know what? i just wanna be goodat starcraft" like, afterwards, i'd hated on myself for a little bit, but then wheni 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 iswhen i started going hardcore into, like, pgtour... this is when i hit a+ over multipleseasons in pgtour, just mass gaming, like 6-7 accounts a season. i would work an accountup and i would just reset it and just try to work it all the way back up again. usingthat 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 justwanted to get good. and i didn't tell anyone about it, i thinkmy brother is the only person who actually ever knew about it, because, you know, throughoutthis 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 inthe way, i just wanted to focus purely on the game. i had such a useful discussion withmy mom, one of the most... eye opening discussions i've ever had in my entire life, 'cause isaid "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 momsaid "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 importantto know is that all that feeling of tension, and anxiety, and the adrenaline that goesinto your system and more importantly the adrenaline that comes out of your system afteryou lose a really intense match, that stuff is just chemicals. and it's so easy to getsucked in by that, and to believe it, and to direct that anger at yourself." and she'slike "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 justchemicals. just ignore it and wait for it
to go out of your system, and then don't believeit. don't think anything, just be very calm and just deal with it." oh excuse me, "justdeal with the emotion, don't think about anything else." so, from that point on, i would go on losingstreaks, of course i would get angry. if any of you get angry and think "oh i shouldn'tdo that after some games." don't worry about that. but the important thing is, as my momsaid, just don't be hard on yourself! do not hate on yourself! if you get that feelingof anger and feeling flushed, just go sit down somewhere, and just calmly... wait forit 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... forthat 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 qualifier for the tournament, and i gotthat bittersweet feeling because "ohhh, i played so bad against android and all thatother 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... oneof the most stressful tournament experiences of my life, so... they did, like, some littleinterview thing beforehand, like "day, who do you not want to play at the finals?" iwas like "i do not wanna play echoofthunder, that guy-- uh excuse me, echoofterran, thatguy 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. 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 "ohmy god, i beat echoofterran, oh my god! i... i can do this, right? i got this! i just gottafocus. i just have to go through slog and,
i mean, already the hardest person at thetournament 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 firstgame of every best of three. or, every notable best of three. because obviously they didn'thave time to do all of them. so what happened is, it was me vs slog, so game 1 was up onstage and i lost to slog4, the protoss player. and i was like "oh my god" and he, like, crushedme, 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 watchthe starcraft matches. oh yea, that day9 guy, he lost, alright..." so then... and then ihad 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, andthey 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 andwinning the next two. with the one exception of lastgosu who just beat me 2-0 straightup. so, in the final game, i was... i was justso 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 gotafter android, because i thought to myself "i designed my build to hold off 9-rax, andi 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 wentinto a corner and i got really upset. and he's... he's just been this, like, fixtureof support, that's why i think it's so important for people, you know, if you have brothersand parents who don't get starcraft, to just... get them into it. to just figure out waysto say these stories, to... to... share your intense passion, all the amazing stuff thathappens 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 tothe 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 focusedand kept playing. and then 2007 came along. this is me now, i'm... still more wcgs, therewas a wcg u.s. open and... okay, for the u.s. open, if you got in the top two spots youqualified for the wcg pan-american championship,
which is just north and south american countries. so i... i went to... i was invited to theopen, '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 summerresearch 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 threepeople who i wanna personally thank right now are: frozenarbiter, helped me with myzerg vs protoss, deadman from croatia, for helping me with my zerg vs terran, and iveelovefrom denmark, i believe, who also helped me with my zerg vs terran. and i just trainedso much, holy cow! i played a lot of games then... as you might imagine. and... nonygot first at the... at the open and i got second so we're "oh my god! we're both goingto the u.s. open" and then there's this weird thing, this is perhapsthe best feeling i've ever gotten in starcraft, like far and away the best. you'll end up in situations where... you wannado 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 that those are just loosebenchmarks, the b- player could very well take out the c+ player... umm, excuse me,the c+ player could very easily take out the b- player and vice versa. so there's no reasonto claim that one is necessarily better than one or the other. so, you know, they are justthese broad categories, so you always have... it's always hard to tell if you have... improved.umm, it's easy to say "well my rank is higher than yesterday." but did you get better? andi recall in all my hours of just laddering like crazy on pgtour and iccup, this thingwould happen where you get up to someone, who would be, you'd get to like a- or a rangeand play against some player who is just really
good. just, out of 10 games we'd play in arow i'd win 3, or maybe 4, and none of them felt good. so what i would do is i'd create a new account,i would rework what i wanted to practice and i would start from the ground up. you know,being like, okay, so let's see how it feels against these lower level players and letme adjust all the way up, 'cause i don't wanna do something nuts like... completely changemy playstyle and then "oh hey! now i'm gonna practice it against a and a+ level players"i would just get demolished. i mean, it's not like... i mean, i'm not gonnalie... it's not really being super smart or anything that gets you, like, high. man, justfor me, i just played a lot and analyzed my
games a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, alot. so i created a new account because i just needed... i, as a person, needed thatmany games to just figure things out, and to problem solve and to sort out what was,umm, what would work and what wouldn't. and, i remember i found that same guy again, andhe wanted to play another 10 games, and suddenly i won every single one of those games. and...his units felt predictable, and stupid. his play felt so flawed, and it... it... at nopoint during the game did i ever actually feel nervous or feel like i was at a lossor feel like i had to play intensely. that after all those hours of playing, i was like"oh my god... i actually improved!" and that in my eyes is why starcraft is incredibleas a game.
just as a game, think about that, it is agame that requires as much mental strength as a chess grandmaster, trying to figure outall the different strategies and the right way to respond and all these little adjustmentsyou make, in game, to all the various possibilities and on top of that, you need to have the dexterityof a musician, to have your fingers be... umm, your fingers obey your brain. you wantthem to do what you tell them, right? which is a surprisingly hard thing to do, your braincan want it all you want, but if you haven't trained your hands to do it, it's not gonna...it's not gonna come together. so you need this, like, brain and dexterity, and mergethem together. and that means that if you lose, because it'sa game... that it's not because, you know,
"oh the russian judge was just feeling, youknow, angry today." it's not because, umm... you know, "oh, there's this subjective ratingsystem", it's not you know, agreed to disagree. you lost straight up purely, truly and onlybecause you did something wrong and he had superior mental strength and defeated youthat way. but that also means that when you win, it's not because you got, you know, somesort of cheap opportunity, it's not because your mommy and daddy had a lot of money andpaid for you to do it. it's not because you had the right connections or because you werecheap or cheating or anything. it is your fault that you got that good at somethingthat hard! and that, i think, has been just the mostinstrumental... thing that just made me appreciate
all starcraft players as just incredible,incredible people. and just that feeling of "oh my god, i actually got better at something!",that is so, so important and so rewarding, 'cause that's really hard to do nowadays.you know, 'cause in school the kids, they're just like "all a's for everyone!" but nowin this harsh environment of starcraft, you get the chance to prove yourself to yourself. and i continued to train as hard as i couldfor that, you know, pan-american championship tournament, and i went out to cancun and ididn't wanna be there. it was wet everywhere and the humidity was high, it was so moistthat the, the humidity would condense on the sheet. so i would get into a cold, damp bedat night, and i had like food poisoning, you
know, because the water got montezuma's revengeand whatever. and... i just felt "urgghhhh", and i went to the tournament and... i didn't...the best player at the tournament was the famous canadian player testie, nick perentesis.he is... like, a legend! he was unbelievably good with all three races, he would, like,practice regularly with all the top-named players, like stork and stuff, he was in thesame clan with them. i mean, he would even, like, show me these private replays of himjust demolishing, uhm... demolishing, like, stork in these games, on, like, gorky islandand all that stuff. really scary player, and i thought he wasn't gonna show, and he showedup, and i was just like "ugghhhh". but what ended up happening is that we gotall the way to the finals of the winners bracket...
actually i ended up winning 2-0. and i hadno idea, that that was even possible, 'cause testie was really good. it didn't occur tome, like, "oh gee, sean! you've been basically playing 14 hours a day for 2 months, hardcoreand non-stop for this tournament, you know, like... it's bound to help eventually!". but...i, i, just was, like, blown away... and he just walked up to me and he was like "dude,yea wow! really, really nice! nice, well played!" and i was just like "oh my god, testie issaying nice things to me, oh my god!" you know, and then uhm... i remember, i was inthe finals of the winners brackets, i had a one game win advantage. game 1 was on...uhm, gaia, which was my second best map. game 2 and 3, were on paranoid android and uhm...azaleiah, which are my worst two maps. but
then the last game was on peaks of beakdu,which was my best map. so, game 1, i played... i executed my strategyperfectly, just believed in myself. 'cause that's the thing that my brother always said,he's like: "man, sean, you got this, dude! believe in yourself, dude!" i will alwaysremember those words. he says them constantly to me. he's just, like, "believe in yourself,man!" and i did, and i pulled the build off, and i won game 1 and it was one-sided. andthen he raped me in game 2, and then raped me in game 3. so we're tied up 2-2 and it'sin the finals. and... again, i've never had a big win. i've never... and i remember, inmy head i said to myself: "oh well, second place is good. second place is fine, you know,whatever! let's just get this over with."
you know, it's been a long tournament, youfeel kinda sick. and then i just went "why did i do that? why did i just say that inmy head? no! i'm gonna focus! i am not gonna 5-pool! i am not gonna try to do anythingcheesy, like rush for mutalisks. i'm not gonna resort back to my 2001 'floating lurkers intothe back of his base'. i'm gonna play the strategy i know, and i'm gonna trust in whati've practiced. and i opened up, it was on peaks of beakdu.i'm bottom left, he's in the top right. i do an over-pool build, because i wanna forceany early expander to build those extra cannons so i can expand actually three times and iend up with a very fast four bases on peaks of beakdu, because you can defend them verynicely. and i... i saw, with my overlord,
that he was actually 2 gate rushing me. and i was like "uhhh, god! okay!" becauseat the u.s. open, in 2007, the reason nony got 1st and i got 2nd is because nony hada brutally good 2 gate, and i just hadn't practiced against 2 gate. i practiced a lotmore after that qualifier, with frozenarbiter, who plays with the name of jinro now in starcraft2, as you may have heard in one of the day[9] dailies. but he, uhm... but he did this 2gate opening, and i remember, like, time was so slow in that game, because i had expanded,and i was just waiting for my hatchery to finish. i was starting to get zergling speed,but i knew: to hold off this 2 gate rush, that hatch needs to finish, i need to throwdown a sunken colony immediately! because
if that sunken colony doesn't get up in time...i'm done! so i'm just staring at my expansion. all hisunits seem like they're, just... moving one pixel at a time. i feel like i can see everyframe in there, as i'm looking it, it's at 900 hitpoints, and then at 950 hitpoints,and then at 1000 hitpoints, and then at 1050 hitpoints, and i'm just, like, i'm gettingmy drone ready and it's there and it's waiting, and his zealots are coming in and i'm tryingto push him forward and back, because i just need to get this sunken colony done! so itfinishes and it starts building it takes a few hits, i'm trying to position another hatcheryto get in the way i'm trying to control this but he just has so many zealots and then...the sunken finishes! and he has to back off,
and i go "oh my god! i held the 2 gate rushand i'm in a decent position!" and then i look at my overlord that's up at his basethat's been inspecting this 2 gate opening, and i see that he threw down an expansionat his natural. and the weirdest thing that has ever happenedto me in my entire life happened. my brain went "oh my god, i won." and then... i literallystopped consciously playing. it was almost as though i stepped out of myself and i wastwo feet to my right. i could feel myself... it felt like i was looking at myself frombehind. and i remember that my brain was totally clear, and my hands were just doing everything,and my eyes were just sort of going around and i thought "i know exactly how to crushthis early expansion, right now. and i'm gonna
do it. and it's gonna work." and my handsjust did everything from then on. and then i actually won, and... that was it. that wasit! that was the end of the tournament, it wasn't a qualifier. it wasn't, you know, theintermediate step between the world final. it was just the end of that tournament. andnick comes over, he's like "hey man, good games! well played!" and i was just like..."oh my god! dude, yeah, good game!" i don't know what to do, i don't know how to party,i don't party, i play video games! you know! what's a good friday night for me? how aboutsome settlers of catan or the card game dominion, ya know? so like, i'm in cancãºn and i justwon the biggest starcraft tournament i've ever been to, and i just went back to my hotelroom and i just like sat on the bed and i
just didn't know what to do. i was just thereand i was like "oh my god! that's it...that's... cool!" and i watched some stupid johnny deppmovie and i ate the frozen m&ms in the fridge and i remember i just walked along the beach,just by myself and just sitting there and i was like "man, i worked really, really hardat something... and it paid off. and the only person whose to blame is me." and i rememberi... my mum actually messaged me on facebook beforehand, before i even got home, but shemessaged me on facebook she said "oh my god sean, congratulations! i am so proud of you,i know how hard you've been working on this and i saw the results. i heard that you knockedout testie, twice!" how cool of a mum is that, huh? how often does your mum say "yea, youbeat testie twice in a tournament" and get
that? right? what mum knows about the canadianfamous starcraft players but my mum, right? and my family? who just have been infinitelysupportive from start to finish. and... what was so funny about that tournamentis that, like i said i'm a very private player, i don't like posting my own replays, especiallynot replays of me winning, because it feels kind of... ya know... snarky. like "hey, iwon a game, hurr" you know, and just like putting it up here, 'cause you know the other guydidn't want me to put it up i don't wanna embarrass him maybe he was on his off day.so i very rarely release replays of myself playing on pgtour or iccup. so for that tournament,for the pan american, all the replays were lost. so i've never gotten a chance to re-watchany of those games. but that's okay, because
it's always just been a really nice memory.i have this, i actually have this little medal up here, umm, hell i can get it i have starcraftparaphernalia all around my room. yep, here it is. here's my awesome little gold medal,the only gold medal i've ever gotten from a starcraft tournament. took me, took me 6years of wcgs to do that, and 8 years of playing. just commitment, just hard work and just,as my brother said, just you know, believing in yourself. and after that, school was just too much.i mean, 2008: i played in one qualifier and didn't qualify and couldn't go to the finals.2009: i qualified for the finals but couldn't go again because of school. but you know what,in that period i've always needed that starcraft
fix. i still watched all the pro matches,i actually umm... up until recently, actually, this hasn't been true for the last 3-4 weeksbut, up until 3-4 weeks ago i watched every single professional starcraft match since2003. every single one, and... i just love the scene. i love teamliquid, being able tolog on there and just chat with a whole bunch of people and post a replay, because you knowwhat? if you have a game with amazing mutalisk micro, it's so hard sometimes to be able toturn to your roommate and say "dude, there's this hard thing that i pulled off and... i'mreally happy." but if you can log on to msn and find a buddy and say "man, check out thisreplay!" and he goes "oh man, nice work!" that sort of support and encouragement isjust what makes the starcraft community so,
so amazing and why i've just been delightedto be a part of it for so long. and i even remember, you know, since i wasfocused so much on my life as a player, in college i used to watch the matches and iwould always invite as many people as i could in, and i would try to explain to them everythingthat was going on in these matches because i... i thought they were so cool! and i thoughtthat these professional gamers were so talented and i was determined to make all of them getit, and it got to the point where people actually did get it, and at harvey mudd which is aschool of about, umm, i think it's about 900 now, it was about 850 when i was there asan undergraduate. i started hosting... umm... like broadcasts of the msl/osl finals, wherewe would... i would go down to the academic
end, to the auditorium, i would rent it outstarting at like midnight until like three in the morning, and i would send out an emailto the entire school trying to get everyone, as many people as i could in there, and idrew of like, a school of 800, 350 people from the school showed up. and it was awesome!i got the mic, and i got to help everyone understand why this game was so cool. i mean,playing is great, you know, i love playing and i love going to tournaments, i love trainingfor tournaments, but there is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of peopleand helping them get what i love. and for anyone watching if you have any friends orany family that's absolutely something that you should do. i mean that's why in this lastfew... in this last year... you know, i haven't
got the chance to play as much but i stillneed that fix, and i just want to do as much commentary on the games and just share everythingof 12 years of playing starcraft, about all my thoughts and everything and, and you know,just interact with this unbelievably kickass community. i mean, some of the things that, that peoplewere asking is, you know, "how do you deal with juggling school and work and all thisstuff with starcraft?" and the answer is that: i just... love starcraft so much... and ilove that i love starcraft so much. so i'll go to school, i'll hang out with friends,but i have no shame if there's a friday night and i just want to hang in and play starcraft.i went to lan parties non-stop in highschool.
and now in college, you know, i don't havethat much work i have to do after tonight, and you know what, i'm gonna play starcraft2. i don't need to go out, i don't need to follow any sort of weird social norm, like:"oh, you're at college, you don't go to parties?" you know? like: "well, not this weekend. iwanna play starcraft!" and i think that's awesome. and you know what? i'm gonna host an eventon the weekend and bring everyone in. i'm gonna host an osl down on the mainscreen auditorium,that's a 15inch projector and everyone's gonna show up and realise why that's so cool. so, you know what, i... i think i... i thinki've just about hit most of what it's like
been a starcraft player. i've learn... there'sso many lessons that i've learned that have been so valuable to me, for instance: losing.a loss in not a bad thing. failure is not something to be scorned or avoided, or somethingyou should reassure someone on and say: "no, no, no! it's okay. the russian judge was justin a bad mood". those losses, those games that you did not play well... that you lost,that is not you, that is not a reflection of you, that game is completely external toyou. and if you just look at it, all that loss is, is an arrow that points you in thewrong direction. in the worst case scenario, if i lose a hundredgames, i have a hundred different sources of information i can review in order to becomea better player. so now i have such a small
fear of failure, because you know what? ifi completely botch a tournament in the 2005 finals against a player, because i choked,no big deal. i'll be back again next year and i will learn from that mistake, and iwill be clutch in the future. you know it's helped me realise, you knowlike getting... if i screw up an assignment it's not that big a deal, if i end losingup a relationship, you know, it doesn't end up working out... i can deal with it a lotbetter now. i know that, because you have to make decisions so quickly in starcraft,i now have very little issue just making decisions. and i realise the importance of being ableto decide now and figure out if that's better later. too often i think people spend allthis time waffling on various issues, they
say "should i do a or should i do b?" andthey're too scared to make a decision. starcraft makes you proud to be a decision maker andmakes you love being a decision maker, all these situations you can end up in... areso much easier if you have that experience. and i mean, the last thing i wanna say isthat... i mean, you learn the importance of community. no one in starcraft hold themselvesup, played by themselves, and then came back and was better than everyone. players playedwith each other, and discussed with each other, and formed really tight friendships overseas.some of my best friends just live in europe, thanks to starcraft. that community aspectis just so dear to me. so i'll finish with this last question thatsomeone said "what do you wanna do with starcraft
2? do you want to become a professional player?do you want to become a commentator?" my life dream is for esports to be big in the west.i want it to be huge. so i would so dearly want to be the ambassador to esports. i wannabe the person who you can show your mom to, and say "look at this guy! this guy isn'thomeless! he didn't turn out horrifically awful, right? he played this game and it hasbrought him far in life. and listen to how he describes this game. that great feelingthat he's able to talk about, that is what i feel. that is, you know, something thati think is so important, just to be able to spread it to as many people as possible andi just want the love and the passion for esports to just, never die. and, and it would be...it would be a life well spent if i could do
so... it's been about two hours! thank youso much to everyone who tuned in live, and for any of you who have a drink, i'd liketo make a toast to 12 years, to my dearest friend, the starcraft community. it's beenwith me with ups and downs, through everything, always remember to believe in yourself anddream big. cheers.1357
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