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Hey guys, haven't made one of these for a while, so figured now is as good of a time as any to express my thoughts leading up to and including this last weekend at ACL, and also have a few ramblings that have been on my mind recently.

So, without further ado!

After qualifying for Avcon I was pretty pumped to practice my balls off to try and do well. This was another 16 player qualifying tournament that I managed to qualifer for of off nearly no practice, so that felt pretty good, and I wanted to show the Aus scene that I was still semi relevant when it came to events in terms of my play. About a week before Avcon tho a close friend of mine died in a motorbike accident and pretty much my entire world got flipped on it's head and a lot of things came into focus very clearly and very quickly.

One of them was my passion for the game, and just how abrupt your life can end and everything you have come to know and love could be gone.

Needless to say I was seeing friends and family and the people I love a lot more, thus, practice became non-existent and the last thing on my mind. This isn't really an excuse, as I hadn't practiced a whole lot for the last few months leading up to this, but this certainly didn't help.

After avcon and going 1-4 in maps 0-2 out of groups I was pretty bummed. I didn't play very well, and it was the first time representing SLCN in an interstate tournament. But in my mind I thought ok **** it, I've still got ACL. Well turns out the thought of possible impending doom doesn't make you want to practice very often. So again, all I really did was go out and hang with friends and sc2 again fell to the waste side, and in my games at ACL I feel it really showed.

Going 1-4 in Sets but 1-2 against Jazbas, Fenner and Arze showed what could have been me coming out of groups. I didn't feel outmatched by any of those guys, and if you saw the match between myself and jazbas, I kind of threw game 3 in a heat of the moment full retard decision. Against king kong I had a fleeting moment of being ahead in game 2, but then he kinda stomped as king kong does.

So that was it. My run at ACL was done and I was left having a feeling of what might have been. And I gotta tell you, I'm feeling pretty pumped for Sydney. For the first time in a loooooong time (since ACL Melbourne last year actually) I have a pretty big desire to get on ladder and actually practice. Not just practicing quick aggressive builds either, but actual strong macro play. Which brings me to my first rambling.....

Macro play vs "Cheesy" Play.

A lot of people (just about every angry nerd ever) regard cheesy play as something only bad players do who are terrible at the game and this is the only way they can win. This is actually just about as far from the truth as possible and it frustrates the living hell out of me when I see someone (especially not at the highest tier of players) credit their loss to 'some dumb cheese'. If it was really that ******* stupid to cheese people wouldn't do it in the first place. If someone thinks their best chance of winning is to use an aggressive build which is designed to capitalize on the flaws of generic meta game builds and you're too 'pro' to see a build like that coming, then you deserve to lose. If you want to call yourself a 'Macro' player then you better not lose to any cheese. If you're standard macro build can't defend a cheese or has holes or weaknesses in its scouting abilities then you need to fix those. Because otherwise you're actually just taking equally as bigger risk in hoping your opponent doesn't attack you. Not only is it stupid to call a player 'bad' who cheesed you (cheesing =/= unskilled opponent) it is incredibly silly to do the same build 3 times in a best of 3. If you think the one build on every map in the pool is the best idea, then you seriously need to learn how to play this game properly. The reason I can still take games of better players than me is due to learning how to play a b.o. x series and learning to utilize certain strategies on certain maps.

Having an extremely well executed aggressive build in your series keeps your opponent much more afraid, and that gives you a macro advantage in your normal games.

Secondly, peoples attitudes towards 'big companies/organizations and entitlement of players.

I'm not really sure how to phrase this in a way which won't cause a lot of arguments so I'll just say this:

People need to get over it when shit goes wrong at events, and find ways they can HELP instead of ways they can complain.
The amount of times I heard people complaining about either being delayed, the format being changed to bo1, or anything else is pretty annoying. Yes Major tournaments should be doing their best to provide a good tournament and having everything on schedule and running smoothly. However, the second these things don't occur doesn't mean we should all be shitting on them and bagging them about it as if someone just ran over our dog. I get that it's annoying and frustrating, but it doesn't hurt to simply bite your tongue and not spread word of mouth about how bad everything is. Man the **** up and go ask what you can do to help the situation. A lot of people at the moment are pretty mad at MLG for dropping sc2, and I gotta say. I can't blame them. I have just about zero factual evidence about why MLG dropped sc2, and this isn't why they dropped it, but I can have a guess that they would been a lot more hard pressed to drop it if they thought the sc2 community actually appreciated their efforts and what they are doing for the scene. Instead, after just about every MLG, there are a lot of circle jerking threads about how shit 'x' was at MLG and how Dreamhack or ESL does things sooooo much better etc. Again, I'm not saying constructive feedback isn't an extremely valid and beneficial factor. But if after every single time you run a tournament or do something with the best of intentions for the community they shit on you repeatedly, it begins to get a little old.

The reason I bring this up is because I feel there are a lot of parallels to draw between MLG and ACL, and I fear for ACL's mentality when it comes to their sc2 events. They've currently picked up LoL as a major PC game. And nearly every ACL I hear a lot of complaining (yes I do hear a decent amount of praise as well but still) from the sc2 players about how the event could have been so much better or how they don't care about us etc. Boo hoo. They are trying their best to what they can with what they have. You wan't ACL to be better? Put your hand up and volunteer and follow through. At the end of the day they run these events at a loss, and are putting them on PURELY FOR YOUR BENEFIT. I know a lot of these words won't apply to most of you, as it's usually a loud minority who get heard, but if you hear irrational stupid insults towards ACL feel free to slap the dude in the face and tell him to pull his head out of his ass.

Again as a disclaimer, I'm not saying ACL are perfect or that we should hold them on a pedestal and never insult them or give feedback. Just that once in a while people deserve a bit of a break, and you should keep that in mind and be appreciative of what they actually do for you.

Ok. phew. Rant over. Feelsgoodman.jpg.

Lastly I suppose I'll give the generic things you read in blogs. I promise to practice/stream a lot etc etc I'm gonna be the best (like no one ever was). Massive thanks to the ACL guys for another sick weekend of watching sc2 with friends from around the country. A huge shoutout to Rezyn8 and Synthetic from SLCN for what they have done for me and the other guys. I know we haven't been around very long as a team but I really feel like shit is coming together at a very quick pace, and I'm extremely impressed with how they are running the team and the organization.

Oh yeah, Grats to Iaguz for winning another event! His TvZ is honestly like the most ******* perfect thing I've ever seen in my life. It actually looks like he's a genius who has every move anticipated and is reading your mind.

So to sign off and contradict the tone of this blog I'll say this:

Go out and enjoy life and don't get caught up in a whole lot of shit that is really unnecessary. When you're lying on your death bed it's going to sound so silly that you wasted possible precious moments being mad about getting cheesed or having a tournament delayed or any other of a million trivial little things that make up what we call life.

Until next time,
Kez.