Kevin 'RotterdaM' van der Kooi interviewed by Filefront

With the introduction of the new line of Starcract 2 products manufactered by Razer, Filefront took some time to sit down with SeriousRazer Starcraft player Kevin 'RotterdaM' van der Kooi and Mousesports star Dennis 'HasuObs' Schneider.

The interview handles different subjects such as how RotterdaM started to play, his ideas on Starcraft 2 and his involvement in the development of the new Razer Starcaraft 2 products.

Here you find a snippet of the interview:
FF: In any game of StarCraft II, what should be your very first priority right when the match starts?
Scout where my opponent spawns and how his opening moves look. If you play in darkness for just 3 minutes it can signal your defeat already.

FF: How do you group your units? Does each unit type have a group? Or do you have big crowds of unit combinations?
1 Zealot/Stalkers/sentry/colossus, 2 High templars, 3 Air ( Phoenix/carrier/void ray), 4 Gateways, 5 Robotics, 6 Stargates, 7 Nexus, 8 Forge

The full interview can be read at the following link: Filefront RotterdaM interview.

NTT joins StarCraft II division

Serious Gaming / Team Razer is proud to announce a new addition to our StarCraft II division, please join me in welcoming Terran player Jacob “NTT” Scharn to the team!

NTT should be a familiar name to StarCraft fans. Ten years ago, at the age of 18, he was one of the best players in the world and is known for taking third place at the World Cyber Games Challenge 2000 at Seoul, Korea. This was the first world championship event in the game which would be held annually afterwards and renamed to the World Cyber Games. There were was no meaningful professional scene outside of Korea at the time and NTT never made the move to Korea. As a result he retired from competitive gaming. That was until now. NTT decided to give StarCraft II a try in the beta and apparently liked what he saw as he continues to play the game very actively and is consistently ranked among the very best players of Europe by Blizzard’s weekly ladder rankings.

A few weeks ago Dlovan approached the team’s management with the idea of NTT joining, the two players knowing each other from interacting online, unknown to Dlovan at the time was that we had already discussed this idea and were very open to it and welcomed him trying to bring NTT in contact with the rest of the team. After talking it over with NTT himself both parties decided we did not want to make any hasty decisions so NTT has been idling in our private chat channel and participating in internal competitions for several weeks already as we’ve been getting to know each other. Today we can safely say that both sides liked what they’ve seen as after asking NTT if he wanted to join he expressed a desire to do so.

NTT brings a wealth of experience to the StarCraft II division as he belongs to the very first generation of top RTS gamers. We generally work with a philosophy of trying to convert young and eager players into champion players and having someone in the team that is still eager ten years after his first successes should be a inspiration to the entire team and will hopefully have a positive impact on everyone.

NTT had this to say about joining:

Robertson Davies once wrote "The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past." Consider me one of those people, as I've certainly idealized the time I spent playing Brood War. Hopefully I'll be able to achieve a level of skill high enough to compete with the best in the world and recapture some of my lost gaming glory. On my path to gaming excellence I plan on bringing success, acclaim and ultimately great riches to Serious Gaming!

We are certainly looking forward to seeing where our paths will go together now that they have crossed and won't mind great riches. The entire Serious Gaming StarCraft II division now consists off:

Jacob “NTT” Scharn (Terran)
Dong Hwan "viOlet" Kim (Zerg)
Alexander “iNSoLeNCE” Hein (Protoss)
Kevin “RotterdaM” van der Kooi (Protoss)
Nikolaus “SonKiE” Cassidy (Terran)
Lennart “SushiLicious” Roest (Zerg)
Dlovan “Dlovan” van den Bosch (Protoss)
Jos “Zerter” Buijvoets (Team Manager)
Oskar “Zubie” Rudberg (Honorary Member)

StarCraft II opens Nova Clickmaster League with resounding win

Today at 18:00 CET our StarCraft II division played their first match in the Nova Clickmaster League, facing a group of experienced RTS players that have gathered under the name of "No War, but still Craft" (NW). This is the first war in the regular season of the league which will also see us play such teams as mTw and Against all Authority.

NW has some international tournament regulars such as VortiX and DemigoD playing for them. All of our European players got playing time this war and it had the following results (with one match postponed to some time next week):

Serious Gaming [4:0] No War, but still Craft
SushiLicious [0:0] VortiX (postponed)
iNSoleNCE [2:0] GamBu
RotterdaM [2:0] Rob
Dlovan [2:0] DemigoD
Dlovan & Zerter [2:0] DemigoD & Rob

A strong first result for our StarCraft II division. SushiLicious will face off against star-player VortiX at some later date as he was unavailable for the date war. We will face incredible Panic next sunday for the same league.

Cypher wins ASUS Summer 2010 without dropping a map

Every three months an ASUS Cup takes place featuring the top QuakeLive players of eastern Europe and the occasional international attendee. It is regarded, alongside DreamHack, as the most competitive LAN event in Quake outside of the major three tournaments (QuakeCon, ESWC & Extreme Masters) and is generally attended by Serious Gaming / Team Razer player Alexey "Cypher" Yanushevsky, unless the event date collides with major tournament events, who has been the most succesful player at the cups the past four years, winning titles in Quake III, Quake IV and QuakeLive.

Today ASUS Summer 2010 took place at Kiev and Cypher attended alongside such players as Anton "Cooller" Singov and Shane "rapha" Hendrixson. He had the following results throughout the tournament:

Cypher vs. ASUS Summer 2010
2-0 x1t - group stage
2-0 sHreK - group stage
2-0 sinis7er - group stage
2-0 vend1go - winner bracket
2-0 x1t - winner bracket semi-finals
3-0 Cooller - winner bracket finals
3-0 Cooller - grand finals

With this win QuakeCon champion Cypher was victorious at the last six ASUS cups he attended (as well it is being the third one this year), winning eight overall since 2006.

The final standings of the event were:

1. srs[Razer]Cypher - 50 000 rubbles
2. mouz.Cooller - 30 000 rubbles
3. SK.Rapha - 15 000 rubbles
4. PinG.x1t - 5 000 rubbles
5/8. PinG.Reaper / zloy / vend1go / Balk - hardware

Dlovan wins LowLandLions Starcraft 2 Cup

Today the LowLandLions Starcraft 2 Cup took place, organised by LowLandLions and hosted by BESCENE.net, this tournament featured some of the best players in the Benelux compete for various hardware prizes including Serious Gaming's Dlovan "Dlovan" van den Bosch as well as such renowned players as Ret, Dantestyle & Zion.

Dlovan's results in the tournament were:

Dlovan vs. LLL.sc2 Cup
1-0 Feast - round of 64
1-0 Wokkels - round of 32
2-1 Zerter - round of 16
2-X sunshinE - quarter-finals
2-1 Sherrif - semi-finals
3-1 Zion - finals

He won a Raidsonic Media Player for his troubles, congratulations to him! You can find more information on the official cup page.