The Passion of Starcraft

Getting angry and frustrated
How do you deal with it? I do suffer from these afflictions of the soul and mind. I get sad too quite often as of late but that's for a different type of blog.
No advice can truly save you from these episodes, the pit of despair is endless and filled with cries of rage and frustration(broodlors, swarmhosts, hellbats, medivacs with speed, void rays, collosi etc). Know this, you will rise above it.What seemed maddening at some point will appear as a mere nuisance afterwards. Many things can help in these situations, everyone has their own venting system. Mine is writing strangely enough but I don't do it nearly as often as I should. So try to remember the next time you get mad.
This can be about anything honestly, the path to success is riddled with failures. The truly successful have failed and learned from it.
But if you do have a system that works I would love to hear about it.

The king of silver

My Sc1 roots often make me partial to the old schoolers. The players that played thia game when it was young and owned! Although my personal favourite will always be Guillaume Patry aka Grrrrr this is another's story. As few of you have guessed it is about yellow's quest to enter code A in Sc2. Nicknamed the king of silver due to many second places in tournaments he is one of the best zergs that played Starcraft Broodwar. There is a series of games that live infamy to this day,
in the semifinals of the EVER 2004 OSL. Everyone expected a slugfest between Boxer and Yellow while Boxer it seems had other plans. He actually bunker rushed
Yellow three times to win the series 3-0. It remained a famous and infamous series for the mind games and the perfect micro exhibited by Boxer. I personally would have attacked him with the keyboard at the end of the games but I'm only human...
Bunker rush x3
This is ProjectA with Yellow. Enjoy!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Click read more only if you want to know if he succeeded or failed.

IGN Proleague

What exactly is it? Good question, I did not know that much about this tournament but day-in day-out they have been providing high quality Starcraft 2 comentary and matches. They have a team league and they have individual tournaments. I found myself tuning in to the broacast with more and more interest. Some of the games I did not really know for what were played but the big names and high quality commentary was enough for me. As I am typing this I'm watching a game between Socke and TLO (tlo lost) and before it was Puma vs Mana. If you do not know who they are believe me they are some of the best players! It seems that they are preparing for a big live tournament in Atlantic City at Caesar's Palace. They seem legit , I like the format and they provide EU re-broadcast (the world does not begin and end in North America :) ).
The live event will go down on october 6-th at the Caesar's Palace and it will last 4 days. This is the big leagues from what it seems as it rivals IEM, MLG and even TSL. 
You can check the stream at: teamliquid stream
Honestly their site was a pleasant surprise also - IGN They have a highlight section and it is definitely worth checking out!

Barcraft, because we drink beer and we are many!

There aree thre things I love. One is Starcraft 2, the other is unfiltered beer and the third is SF books! Well there is one thing that combines two of the things I love and that is barcraft. So yes, bars are no longer for the unruly, "uneducated" jocks, WE are here! The nerds are conquering the previous traditional sport bars. Yes, we do drink beer, we have money and esports IS a sport! Sure, the huge majority of sport bars are still only showing "real sports" but remember they are the dinosaurs while esports is the next step of evolution. Say hello to your new Starcraft 2 overlords! Don't worry though, because we are better we will not treat you in the same way we were treated. We embrace diversity because we are global by the nature of our sport! The title of the thread on teamliquid is:"BarCraft is a grassroots movement to bring eSports to bars in every city and town throughout North America.". I would love this to be a global movement. I can only suggest you listen to a better person than me.
Listen to Day9's sage advice, "Stop asking for permission, go f**king do it!"
I'm still waiting for the bar where you can watch Starcraft 2, drink beer and they also have SF books but hey the world isn't perfect and I'm not opening my own bar... yet!

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=248963
P.S.: There are some awesome stories and pictures in the thread.

Back to the beginnings

It's time to go back to the beginnings, an age of mythical creatures, mighty heroes and great battles. We will remember especially one of these heroes, the "Dreamer" as he was called.
While this might seem as a corny introduction to World of Warcraft, fear not for it is a corny introduction to Starcraft 1. The player in question is Nal_ra. He is known for his unorthodox style and creative builds, from which stems
the nickname "Dreamer". He reminds me personally of a quote I once read regarding light-sabers(Starwars) - "An elegant weapon, from a more civilized age."
I will not go on to list his achievements in Starcraft 1 as a Google search would provide the answers easier.
I will link to one of his greatest moves. It was an arbiter recall of the ages. Before his execution this move had been a matter of speculation for Korean progamers but it was deemed too difficult to pull off.
It implied two arbiters hallucinated that would recall at the same time:
Pimpest play 2004
I wanted to present a series in which nal_ra documents his attempt to come back to Starcraft 1 as a pro-gamer. This shows the hard work that some of the old-school pro-gamers put in to become famous, sometime without much in the way
of money. Probably also related to Korean culture which is based on hard work to become better and achieve your goals.
Wihtout further adieu this is Nal_ra - oldboy:

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #1

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #2

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #3

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #4

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #5

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #6

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #7

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #8

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #9

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #10

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #11

Nal_ra's Old Boy: Episode #12

Tournament review: Northern American Starcraft League

Featuring almost all the top players in the world this is a league based tournament full of action. You can check the website at http://nasl.tv/
The NASL was developed by Russ Pfister, owner of the video-game coaching website Gosucoaching. The prizes exceed 100.000 dollars so this tournament can be called anything but serious!
There is one huge advantage for Americans and Europeans and that is the streaming time. You can tune in every day at NASL.TV to see matches as they are aired at 6pm PST and 9pm EST. The rebroadcast of the show is at 6pm GMT and 7pm CET every night. Basically you get reasonable hours instead of having to get up at 2-3 AM in the morning as is the case with GSL.
There is a free stream that you can watch but of course it is of lower quality and you do not get access to vods. What I mean by lower quality is that you can't watch 1080p.
The price for a pass is 25 dollars which is rather low considering you get more hours of footage then you get for a GSL seeason. There are also zero commercials if you buy the pass.
This being the first tournament organised by NASL there have been some problems, ranging from lag to bad sound quality for the casters to one of the casters talking too loud at times cough Gretorp cough. The tournament is casted by EG.Incontrol and Gretorp with guest appearances from other known casters. While some might not agree with how Gretorp commentates(read: gets overexcited) he is making efforts to improve the commentary and it is showing. The tournament is streamed in high quality 1080 on justintv. This is a two-edged sword because on some computers you can't actually watch such a high quality stream(laptops!!). They have changed this option so that you can watch in 720p, 480p, 360p and 240p quality. The lag problems and to a certain extent the sound problems have also been fixed.
There are 50 top players divided into groups of 10. Each player competes against every player in his group in a best-of-three match. At the end of the season the top two in each season qualify to be flown for the live-finals.
I could give some examples of good players but the truth is they all are: OGS.MC(toss bonjwa), White-ra(grandpa toss), TLO, HasuObs, Sjow, Tyler, Kiwikaki, EG.Incontrol, EG.Idra, Morrow, Boxer(long live the Emperor!), July(Sauron zerg), Goody(panzer general) and many more.
As a sidenote there is no option to pay by paypal for this tournament, at this moment at least, so this might be a deterrent. You can pay by credit card.
Some have said they will wait for a second season to buy a ticket because by then all problems will be solved and the organizers will have more experience. This is a personal choice but I will say one thing, this tournament will only get better and it is good now!

Let's waste some time!

Question: Why did the Collossus fall over?
Ansewer:Because it was imbalanced.
I wanted to write something about balance. About how protoss isn't imbalanced but actually a little stronger than zerg and that zerg is the harder race to play. Then I read it and realized it's bullshit. I'm wasting my time and yours.
Actually nobody reads the damn blog but if you would have read it then that article would have been a waste of time. There is one ingredient that's gonna improve your win rate well actually two if you include metamphetamine but I'm talking about legal stuff right now and that thing is hard work. This is not just another damn game, if you want to win against another human being and feel superior you better damn well put in the work to do it. I have a friend that started in silver league and is now in diamond(top 8) and there's a simple recipe to do what he did. Work on your timings, read strategy guides, play against good people and never give up.
I'll leave you with this little gem.It was a game in a big tournament(MLG), the score was 1-0 for toss. Even day9 is kind of speechless.

P.S.:And if you're reading this, leave a comment, it's lonely here.