[Taco John]

Originally Posted by patteeu

I don't really know when or where to watch these things as they happen. I just catch them on youtube or on links like the ones posted earlier in this thread when I see them. I watched several of the TSL round of 32 at the link you posted earlier. I agree with you about the quality of play at that level. It's fascinating.

I'll fill you in. The North America "foriegner" scene is blowing up (everything outside of Korea is considered the "foreigner" scene).

GSL
The highest level of play, as you probably know, is the GSL. They show just about every night at 11pm PST (they're on Korea time). As I understand it, they offer the standard quality live feed for free, but the HQ feed and the VODs cost $9 per season.

Main homepage: http://www.gomtv.net/
2011 World Championship: http://www.gomtv.net/2011championship/
(On the world championship page, you can see "Next live starts in..." on the right side column. If you click on the "schedule" link on that page, you can see the tournament schedule. IMMvp and MarineKingPrime are going to be in the championship on Friday night/Saturday morning. These are the two best Terrans in the world, so it should be a great one to watch.

Outside of this world championship they have a couple different tournament formats that they switch between. The first is standard 1v1, in which they run two leagues - Code A (the lower league), and Code S (the premier league). If you lose in Code S, you go to "Up or Down" match to play the winners in Code A. The winner moves up, the loser moves down. The other format is a team league in which the teams put up 5 players one by one, and strategize on which players should be put up to face the opponents and when. The winner of each game stays, and the opposing team puts up another player to try to knock him off. It's difficult to explain, but in practice it's a lot of fun because the players get more creative and "loose" with their builds and strategies in this format. Also, teams will showcase their up-and-comers alongside their stars.

The North American Star League - http://nasl.tv/
This is a new venture that starts on April 11th. It is going to be sick. On their homepage, you can see their list of players at the bottom. It's an incredible lineup. It is looking to be very high calibre with North American, European, and Korean participants. I'm very excited. It costs $25 bucks a season and lasts 13 weeks (that's less than $2.00 per week all told). I never thought I'd pay for something like this, but I told my wife last night that I'm about to make the geekiest purchase I've ever made in my life, and I can't wait to do it. LOL! You can get $5 off a ticket if you use the coupon code: "presalenasl". You can see the full schedule here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=209251

Major League Gaming - MLG - http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/
These guys have been putting on Halo tournaments and the like for awhile, and Starcraft 2 is just starting to blow up with them. They put on a tournament this past weekend. It was a bit of a bumpy ride for them, but at the end of the day they ended up being able to broadcast quite a few games and provide quite a bit of entertainment. Their next tournament is MLG Columbus, June 3-5. First place for the championship at the end of the tournament season is $50,000.

TSL - TeamLiquid Star League -http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=205550
This is a tournament that sprung up from the community itself, and is sort of a "street cred" tournament that all the pros want to win. It started a couple of weekends ago, went on hiatus for one weekend due to MLG, and picks back up this weekend (saturday and sunday @ 11am PDT). You can see the broadcast schedule here. If you click on the "TSL" countdown logo in the top right corner, you can see the link there to watch it live when it's on. And the VODs are posted here once the tournament is done. I have an app on my phone that downloads the youtube MP4s, and I like to watch a couple before bed.

IGN Pro League - http://www.ign.com/ipl/tournament-announcement
This league was announced yesterday. It looks like it will run from Thursday April 21 - Sunday May 1st. It will be 16 player double elimination. I don't know much about it, but I'll probably follow it.

Other Stuff
You can view streams here: http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/


Day9TV - http://www.justin.tv/day9tv#/w/1048786576
I recommend Day9 if you want tips on how to get better. Day9 is pretty awesome and entertaining to boot.

State of the Game - http://sotg-sc2.blogspot.com/
This is a great podcast following the game develeopments, and follows the pros. They usually have a panel of pro gamers on there to talk about the meta-game and discuss tournaments and the like.

Streams - http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/
This is the full list of streams available.

/r/starcraft - http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/
Reddit has a thriving starcraft 2 community that follows the game pretty closely. The front page is all the stuff that is hot. But if you click the "new" tab at the top, there is a lot of content that is good but doesn't make the front page.

WellPlayed.org - http://www.wellplayed.org/
A brand new site that launched just this week, and shows a lot of promise. Worth keeping tabs on.


This list should provide you with enough to wade into the waters of the Starcraft 2 scene. If the NFL has a lockout this year, you might find this quite valuable.