Around January I posted a blog (on SC2SEA.com) after I returned from a long holiday which basically stated that my goal for the year was to win a tournament. Since then, a lot has changed, and while I haven’t reached that goal, it’s still my major drive.

The biggest change for me since then was joining and forming Team Silicon Sports. Despite an early hiccup with Rival quitting StarCraft, I could not be more happy with how this team is headed. We have picked up Kez, Stoicwilly and Pezz since then, with all of us already showing pretty damn good results, I can’t describe how excited I am for this team in the future.

In terms of tournaments since the start of the year, I flew up for ACL Brisbane despite not playing in any of the qualifiers. This whole experience was fantastic. Flying up and staying with Kez and Fur was a whole bunch of fun, and meeting some really cool people.

In terms of my actual games at ACL, I was pretty shattered when I saw I had Nv.deth round 1, but I put up a pretty good fight against him and was able to crawl my way through the open brackets into the groups. After that I got put into the group of death and wasn’t able to take a game (except Mafia forfeiting), although it was a really hard group I was quietly disappointed with the quality of games that I showed and I think I got too complacent in knowing I had achieved my goal for groups.

Another good tournament was the most recent Cydus LAN. Coming 2nd in this is probably my favourite tournament result to date as the top 4 was Pezz, myself, Kez and Stoicwilly (although Pezz and Stoic weren’t in Silicon at the time). It was nice to play against a good friend in Pezz in the finals, despite getting rolled pretty hard (pimba).

But alas, I still haven’t won anything of note.

As of yesterday, I have finished my exams and have absolutely nothing to do other than have a social life between now and ACL Melbourne, which I have qualified for the groups. I didn’t really practice much at all for the ACL qualifiers, I was lucky to average 10 games a day but I was still able to take out players like KingKong.

I have proven to myself already that I am capable of beating anyone in SEA when I play my absolute best, the break between now and then will be all about making sure I can consistently play my best. I think the best way to do this is to grind out so many games that my play becomes second nature in my muscle memory.

My goals before ACL Melbourne are:

30 games a day minimum.

Maintain top 100 overall on Korean masters.

Fix my zvp!

Top 4 at ACL Melbourne (ambitious, but I got complacent in setting my goals too low last ACL, and I will use NXZ as inspiration).

Time to get some #dedication.