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My time at ACL Sydney
 

Hello all, I am Gravity, better known as FeDe or Chiddiru. The weekend of 19th and 20th of July I got to be apart of something amazing within Australian E-Sports, ACL Sydney. This event year to date has been the biggest event for the scene since WCS 2012. Just going to write a blog about my journey over the days I was at the event and how I feel now that I am back home.

Friday 18th of July
As the end of my work day approached I was getting more and more hyped for the events that were to come, to again meet some new faces and catch up wild some familiar faces. I left work, organised some details with my hotel, I arrived at the airport in Brisbane very early, much earlier then needed to, but that was alright, a bit of luck went my way and I managed to grab an earlier flight into Sydney, pretty sweet start. The flight was slightly delayed due to the heavy winds in Sydney forcing them to close down 2 of 3 runways. After a short time though we managed to begin the 1.5 hour flight into Sydney as we were apparently going into some winds.

When we got into Sydney the trouble begun, the carousels for our luggage hadn't been loaded with my planes luggage yet, was sad, waited for about 15-20 minutes before being able to grab the luggage, once this did happen though, went outside into the queue for the taxi to take me to my hotel.

Arrived at my hotel, check-ed in and headed up to my room, was quite small, but was more then enough for my short stay. Had a shower before jumping into bed and watching some Rugby League before watching the end of the Tour De France stage that was on. GG WP Pre-Event HYPE!!

Saturday 19th of July
I woke up quite a few times, really wanted to prep myself and get to the venue nice and early. Had a shower, fresh change of clothes and got ready to walk to the venue (10minute walk). So trouble #2 I put "Australian Technology Park" into my maps on my phone, yeah, that was a mistake, it took me past where I needed to go and to a conference centre (this was a 25min walk). I felt a little silly, my GPS on my phone had said "End of route". I then checked the website and input the exact address into my phone and started walking to the actually venue this time, stopping for some snack food and some deodorant (can't be too smelly from walking around). Still arrived at the venue relatively early, saw Alpha and other familiar faces. Shortly after the doors did open.

Inside the venue was massive, a lot of room for each different game, LoL had a nice area to the side, the Hearthstone set-up was sick and then I went in and saw the theatre that would be used as main stage and for the stream/casters. Eventually I saw Alpha again, looking for where the PC's were for Sc2. Eventually got to them, I set-up started some practice games as I decided to play in the event, didn't expect to win a series at all, but figured doesn't hurt to play.

Petrify walked past me and saw me playing Protoss, seemed impressed xD but still said Hi and asked how I was. It's always a nice feeling when you have people you respect so highly remember you or even recognise you. After a few games of protoss, I decided I had more practice with zerg and decided to get a few games in before the open bracket pools were announced.

Yay finally the bracket were announced, oh man were they stacked, Bracket A had pretty much a bunch of people I didn't know at all, think it was like Frustration and South only that I even knew (didn't check it thoroughly) then I saw my bracket, Bracket B. Oh man, before they decided to seed some well known players, my first series was meant to be against MightyKiwi, I was feeling really confident, pretty easy win, but of course it changed and I had to verse some random, I looked through his match history to see about 1/15 games was over 15 minutes and that was a ZvT, I felt pretty sad, knowing I'm about to be cheesed multiple times. My lovely opponent didn't disappoint, I opened fairly safe with a 15 pool 16 Hatch 16 gas, however my opponents pure speedling flood proved way to strong and I fell to cheddar. The following game I decided to go my go-to ZvZ build, #KK9Pool. My opponent blind counters with 15 pool 15 gas 16 hatch, then builds a spine as soon as his pool finished, made me pretty sad, event though at the time I was okay with it.

Now for the best moment for me personally for the whole event. After my fantastic 0-2 score I decided I'd just watch instead. While I was sitting up the back of the theatre, prepping myself for what will be the start of some fantastic games a non-familiar face came and sat next to me, introduced himself. #YOP Probe lives, he knew who I was we sat and just talked about PveZ and the "special builds" he had prepped for the tournament, it was a pretty surreal feeling, having one of the top protoss players recognise me and sit and just chat to me about Sc2, was literally my favourite part of the event.

The theatre began to fill as the games grew in calibre, the hype built and it was a really really nice end to day 1.

Sunday 20th of July
Day 2, started slightly different, still had my shower, still prepped snacks, but I walked straight to the venue this time, woop woop no detours. Saw Probe upstairs, so went up, he told me about his group and how he was about to play his games, I got to watch some nice solid PvZ from him against Kez and Petrify. Again more chats about different builds and how to incorporate different stuff into the MU to throw people off. He jumped over and got Frust to do some gas timings for one of his builds, looked pretty solid.

Rezyn, let me know that Peppy was about to play some group games on mainstage, so I wished Probe best of luck for his PvP's against South and Frustration and went down to the the theatre to watch Peppy, his first series was against Iaguz I believe, the games looked really strong, game 1 went to Peppy and then I think under producing banelings game 2 got Iaguz the win, the third game Iaguz, put on his try hard hat and played in a different league to the prior 2 games, managing to take the series 2-1, so well fought to Peppy to take a game off the eventual 2nd place finisher. His following serious was against Pox, I think? Regardless, the back to back series Peppy played really well.

I think the saddest moment of ACL Sydney was the MK vs Blysk series, winner makes groups, loser is out, the emotion in that game. MK's interview afterwards, you could tell in his voice while he was happy to make it into groups it was sad to see another player of such a high calibre go out.

There were a lot of great games, I'm sure if you saw the stream you don't need to have me go through each one and why I enjoyed it etc.

Monday 21st of July
First full day back in Brisbane, I'm still feeling the hype that was ACL Sydney, it makes me want to play and get good enough to be on the mainstage next time, It was a great event and makes me so proud to have gone.

A massive thankyou to all the volunteers, the ACL Admins and their staff, you did an amazing job, I tweeted at that so much, it was great effort and a great event, so a massive thanks to Baldie, Vanzr and the rest of the team.