IPL 4-Las Vegas StarCraft

April 6,7,8 (Friday-Sunday)
We left Sydney with Lydia on Friday night, picked up Rhian and headed to Las Vegas. We were there for Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. We checked into the Flamingo Hotel on the Vegas Strip, and then went walking around trying to find where we were going to be the next couple of days. That was a lot of walking. The tournament was being held at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, so we ended up staying only a couple blocks away. But with Vegas traffic it still took 15 minutes to just walk there.
After walking around the Cosmo for a little bit, we finally found where the tournament was. We registered, got our name tags and stayed for a couple games, but Jake hadn't slept at all so we headed back to the hotel. We were all hungry, but didn't want to spend money on hotel food, so we got in the car (thank heaven for the GPS) and found a Food-4-Less. Got a bunch of food that we could pack around for the next couple of days and then headed back to the hotel. Saturday morning we were up by 7 AM Vegas time, got ready, eat, and headed for the Venue. We had to wait in line for an hour and half past starting time before we got into the Venue and found seats. The place was huge. I bet there was over 500 seats set up. Anyway, one of us stayed sitting at all times to reserve our spot. Jake and I each got a shirt and then a jacket (to share). Jake and I got a bunch of signatures and the games were really good. Today was also the GSTL finals for GOM.TV (all the way from South Korea). It was team StarTale vs. team Prime. They were some exciting finals. There was one hick-up where MarineKing vs. Parting the game quit out. The judges determined there would have to be a re-match. Everyone knows if the game hadn't glitched Parting would have most likely one. But with the rematch Parting lost. MarineKing won all but two games for his team. After the day was over we left and got back to our hotel around 11:30 PM Vegas time. (It was a really good thing we brought food, because the food they were serving for the tournament was 4-7 bucks an item.   Sunday Rhian headed to the venue to save a spot at about 8 AM Vegas time, and Jake and I went in search of breakfast. We found a restaurant with reasonable prices for the amount of food (I mean the plates of food were ginormous). We eat and then packed the car and drove over to the Cosmo and got to the Venue about 9:30 AM Vegas time, and Rhian was still waiting. We ended up waiting another 45 minutes before we were let in to find our seats. This time they had a seating arrangement (apparently the night before people were everywhere-but after the staff left, everyone went to sit where they wanted anyway). The Finals for IPL 4 were really good. But they lasted forever. I was pretty grumpy by the time we left at 1:30 AM Vegas time.  We left Vegas about 1 AM and arrived at Lydia's about 4:30 AM. Jake and I slept on the floor there because we didn't want to have to get Sydney and all her stuff in the dark. Lydia woke us up at 6:30 AM. We got home by 8 AM and slept the whole day, or as much as Sydney would allow.
All in all it was a fun weekend.



http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/IGN_ProLeague_Season_4/Championship_Bracket

Winner's bracket
	NesTea	2
	Squirtle	1
					NesTea	2
					Stephano	1
	Bomber	0
	Stephano	2
													NesTea	1
													aLive	3
	MarineKing	2
	MMA	0
					MarineKing	1
					aLive	2
	Polt	1															aLive	2	3
	aLive	2															Squirtle	3	0
	Loser's bracket
					MarineKing	0
	Squirtle	2
					Squirtle	2							NesTea	2
	Bomber	0							Squirtle	2
													Squirtle	3
									MMA	0
					Stephano	0
	MMA	2
					MMA	2
	Polt	1

Coming from the Loser's Bracket, Squirtle had to take two best-of-five series to win.  The Crowd. (Jake, Rhian, and I are in the bottom left corner, second row back) The Cosmopolitan MC The line waiting to get in NesTea GSTL Finals-Team Star_Tale Quantic GSTL Finals- Team PRIME July_Zerg MarineKing MarineKing winning the Championship game PRIME-Winning team of GSTL finals IPL 4-Finals, Stephano (right) and Bomber (left)  NesTea (left) and Squirtle (right) Rachel (right) and Anna (left) (Love the Baneling Hats) Stephano (left) and NesTea (right) MC (middle) is helping to cast Winner of the AMD poster contest  A cool picture I took (of the screen) of Alive vs. Squirtle The Signatures we got Top: MtwDimaga, Top right: QXC, Under top (left): Liquid_TLO, under that is: Liquid_Nany (or Liquid_Tyler),  Bottom Middle: DeMuslim, going to the right: NesTea, next: Col. Catz, Middle: Liquid Ret                                          next in middle (right) is:  July, Bottom Left: MarineKing Our new Outfits