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Hi guys, as you know I'm one of the most famous people on this website and after seeing so many no names write blogs I decided people might want to read something by someone important instead.

Friday:
Woke up at 4am to catch a bus at 5am. Pox also caught the bus but I didn't talk to him because it was 5am and I slept for most of it. We arrived at the airport a little later than expected and after sitting down for 10 minutes I checked the flight tracker website and saw that David had already landed. We decided that we'd go to our meeting spot at maccas, basically as soon as we sat down David comes strolling in right on time.

Lawrence picked us up from the airport, we quickly went to lawrence's house and I dropped off my stuff before we caught a bus into the city and went to a pc cafe for about 3 hours. We then all went back to lawrence's house before going to get Ryan and Domo from the airport at 5-6pm~. Lawrence's mum cooked us potato bake and schnitzel.

From there we just sat around and played video games and talked for awhile before david and Anthony(pox) left to go to their hotel. We went to sleep pretty early that day, waking up at 4am is surprisingly tiring when you go to sleep 3 hours before.

Saturday:

Ryan was in open bracket so for saturday we were told to arrive by 9:30 to register and get started. We woke up at 7ish, showered, had breakfast and then went on our way.

**** Bridges

Games didn't start until pretty late, Open bracket didn't start until midday but that was mostly held up because of opening ceremony and stuff so wasn't too bad. My day personally didn't start until a little later maybe 3-4pm.

My first match of the tournament was against former teammate Crimson aka ben.
Game 1 and 2 were pretty standard roach vs roach, except one of us got pretty ahead from the openings and ended the game swiftly with a +1 timing with roach speed.
Every game we both opened 15 pool, I had a lot of respect for Ben coming into this knowing that I had a losing record vs him but also that I had improved a lot since we had last played(and I like to 9 pool so I assume he was just being safe).

Game 3 was on expedition, all week I had been practicing roach headbutt on that map with lawrence but when I got into the game I felt like mutas would be a good choice against Ben. Ben had skipped baneling nests in the game before so this game I decided I would try targa bane him, unfortunately for me this game he had a bane nest and banelings ready for my attack. I still managed to get quite a few drones but not enough to warrant the attack.

My only hope was mutas from this position, I scouted that he had committed to roaches with no lair on the way and assumed he was going for a roach bane counter. my assumption was correct and by the time he got to my ramp I had 8 spines spread out and ready and his attack did nothing, my mutas popped and I was able to secure my 3rd.

My mutas went across to his side of the map but I forgot to check his 3rd(maybe due to nerves idk) but when I checked 20 seconds later my mutas were on the other side of the map and the spores were almost done. At this point I thought I had fucked up and might have thrown the game by letting him secure the 3rd. BUT the game was not over I had remembered from my games with lawrence that crashing banelings into spore crawlers was a good idea and decided I'd go for that, I drew his army out of position with a ling runby whilst I ran banelings into the spores. this forced him to counter attack, but the time his attack go to my muta I had as many roaches as him + mutas. At this point I knew I'd won the game because I saw he had no drones on his 3rd and mine was fully saturated, from here he tried to nydus me but I defended with mutas at home whilst killing him with roaches.
2-1, pretty good start and honestly one I didn't expect.

No offence meant to nama for this but I think he got one of the hardest groups(before open bracket) and I didn't really think much of our games. I won swiftly with 2-0 and moved on to my match vs probe.

I heard the news that crimson had 2-0'd probe, meaning that if I lose to probe I would be in trouble if a 3-way tie came about.
I was extremely nervous at this point, I get to the point where I can't feel my hands and I'm shaking uncontrollably when I play offline. This was no different and going into these games I did everything I could to make sure my nerves didn't effect my play even if it left my exhausted at the end of it.

I lost game 1, but didn't give up. After losing this game I knew I HAD to win the series or else I wouldn't get through on map score in the case of a tie.

Game 2 was on iron fortress so I was pretty confident that I'd win this game, the game went to late game with storm and I thought that I might have lost it before probe ended up accidentally walking his high templar across the map and losing them for free. I countered as soon as this happened and was able to take a really big advantage in the game. he was forced to try and base race sort of as I had killed all his production and all his nexus. When I saw the "Probe is being revealed" I knew I had won the game and did a little fist pump.

Game 3 was on coda. The game went late again but this time I was in a pretty good position, we traded for a bit before the game ending moment happened. I saw his army on the left side of the map going for my 4th base, I hadn't droned this base and so in a split second I decided it was better to base trade instead of trying to defend it. This ended up being the correct decision because he decided to recall and on this map recalling to either base once the zerg has the low ground between your 3rd and nat is pretty useless. I was able to get a better position and got sick fungals on all his army, I able to take the game from there.
We were the last game of the day so there was a bit of a crowd.

After meeting and talking to probe a bit this weekend I feel like we got off to a bad start but he seemed like a nice guy and easy to talk to, even after a tough couple loses on the first day.

I felt my inner nxz coming out this weekend because I couldn't help but fist pump every time I won.
I ended the day 3-0 in my group, and after seeing hut and Afhrait got into my group I was pretty confident that I could go 5-0.

Sunday
Blessed with a rainbow

Sunday started pretty early as we got up at 6:30 this time to get into the venue at 8ish so we could practice. Me and david ended up being seated together, much fun was had.

Dabid

Nothing extremely notable happened in my 2 last group series, though I have to give credit to Afhrait, he was a lot better than I had expected and took a map off me and made me go full try hard in game 3.

me playing game 3 vs Afhrait).


Being 2nd seed in the championship bracket, I got matched up against pox. I was pretty confident going into this and ended up winning the series 2-1.

After hearing that david had lost to pigeon I got a little scared, zvp is my worst match up and I was hoping one of David or I would get into the upper finals.

My games vs pigeon were on stage, my first stage match out of every acl I've been to.

Game 1 vs pigeon was really close, I'm kind of disappointed I lost this one. I opened 3 hatch after even though he 10 gated, he killed a lot of drones with a zealot and it was a pretty bad start But I kept calm and crushed his gateway all in with speedlings and was able to deny his 3rd for ages. The game from there got really silly because I honestly don't know what to do vs blink immortal storm. Feels like unless they make a mistake I'm out of the game, well he did make a lot of mistakes but so did I. For one I pulled a snute and completely forgot about my pocket natural and I'm almost certain if I had that base mining I would have won the game. In the end there was nothing I could do to his relentless onslaught and I was forced to gg out.

Game 2 was on coda, coda is probably my 2nd best zvp map after iron so I was pretty confident I could win. The game opened very standard, he went for fast 3rd. I opened burrow roach and was expecting blink again but when I rocked up to his base I saw a collosus, I was able to pick it off, cancel fungal and get a quick hive. From there I showed him why no one makes collosus anymore by abducting them all and wi... then the internet went out for about 10 minutes and we had to resume the replay were I won the game maybe 1-2 minutes later.

Game 3 was on iron so I was really confident. I opened 13/12 but he scouted and countered it so I did no damage. I doubled expanded to try and catch up and managed to yhold off his gateway pressure. He was on 2 base all game and I am really frustrated that I ended up losing this game, I had the right comp I just didn't buy enough time to match his army supply.
he walked up the ramp, killed all my hydras and was able to take the game. I sat in the game for few moments to soak up the lost and left without a gg. I wasn't mad at him, or protoss or anything. I was just really frustrated with how I played and thought I had a good opportunity to win. I thought it was a bit bm to not gg so I made sure to go over to him and give him a handshake to make sure he knew I wasn't mad. He was the better player that series.

In the lower brackets I ended up having to play vs KK, which is always a bit sad for any zerg(unless you're lawrence or ryan).
Game 1 I guessed that he wouldn't 9 pool and I was correct and got away with going hatch gas pool. the game was going really well, I was even ahead in supply for a lot of it. but I realised too late that my evo that I had queued to build had not actually been built, and ended up losing the game because I couldn't trade efficiently in roach head butt. Pretty happy with the game though because if my evo had built I'm pretty sure I could have taken the game with the advantage I had gotten from the early game.

Game 2 was 9 pool vs 8 pool and I think I came out ahead. Sam simply outclassed me this game and went for mutas vs my roach opener. Roach vs muta is pretty much the bane of my existence and he was about to take the series 2-0 knocking me out of the tournament.

Overall, really good result for myself. I honestly didn't think I was going to make it out of group stages because I was 1-8 vs probe going into this tournament and have a losing record vs Ben on ladder/tournaments. Really happy with 5th place but would have loved to have gone further. It's giving me a lot of motivation though and hopefully I can continue this form until next weekend WCS qualifiers.

Thanks to everyone I met at ACL, thanks to baldie for running easily the smoothest tournament I've ever been to. We actually don't realise how lucky we are to have such a competent admin running sc2.


Everyone wrote a blog about their experience and so I thought I'd instead go more into each of the games I played and how it felt to play at a lan. Thanks for reading, cheer for me. I will show good game. 감사합니다