**SPOILER ALERT** If you haven’t had chance to watch the SCi#3 tournament yet and don’t want to know the results, please check out the links section for the full event before continuing reading this post.

Links:

SHOUTcraft Invitational #3 Officlal TeamLiquid Thread
TotalBiscuit’s Twitch.TV channel (for full VOD’s including all the banter inbetween matches and the awesome Bastion OST music!)
TotalBiscuit’s Youtube channel (all VOD’s with an anti-spoiler master playlist so you don’t accidentally stumble across later stage matches)
TotalBiscuit’s website (has full information on how to donate to the SCi tournament’s and also has a “chip in” tip-jar system so you can donate directly to a player of your choice during the events)
Audio version of TotalBiscuit’s event post-mortem

Replay Pack (Spoiler Free) / TB’s Official Mirror

Stenigma Facebook page
@StevayStenigma on Twitter

The third SHOUTcraft Invitational is now over and there were some vast improvements over the previous SCi tournaments, from the improvement in audio and visual quality, to the player tip-jar system which allowed viewer’s to directly donate money to player’s of their choice (this opens up a new way for participants to make more money from the tournament).

The downtime this tournament was very minimal, allowing just enough time to restock yourself with food and coffee supplies (or beer for those early starters) and giving the tournament an overall smoother flow, both days finished in under seven hours and although there were delays because of player’s also participating in the WCG tournaments, not only did it really have little effect on the overall tournament but TB has already planned to impliment a new rule to the SCi to prevent similar events occurring in the future by making sure participants are not competing in any other tournaments that may conflict with their SCi commitments.

The games themselves were very entertaining to watch and i’m sure i wasn’t the only one who had their head in their hands after White-Ra (who displayed some oustanding “Special Tactics” Warp Prism play which will surely become more popular after Patch 1.4 is released) lost 3-2 in the semi-finals to DDE after being 2-0 up, however all was not lost for the Protoss brethren of Auir as Socke managed to take down the Terran Terror DDE in the finals, winning the best of seven series 4-2. We also saw the stream maestro Destiny in some great games against TLO however the German Terran displayed a show of force and hopefully a return to form after his Repetitive Strain Injury recently reared its ugly head forcing TLO to take time out from Starcraft II (although he does need to work on his PvT build as it appeared rough and unfinished during SCi3, not only against Socke but also against White-Ra in the 3rd place series). Overall however, it wasn’t a very good tournament for the Zerg’s, with only Destiny and Dimaga participating and both being beaten 3-0 in the opening rounds but hopefully the Swarm shall rise again in SCi#4!

TotalBiscuit has released many facts and figures from the events and i’ll start with the viewer counts:

Although the viewer count overall was down in comparison to SCi2, alot of that may attribute to the fact that it was the 9/11 Memorial day on day 2 of the tournament and overall it was an earlier start time (7am EST and 5am PT which meant on the dedicated American’s would be getting up that early to watch – three-and-a-half hours earlier than SCi2) however due to the smooth sailing of the tournament TB wishes to address this new start time (which was originally altered due to finish time for Socke in Europe) and can hopefully alter it slightly to accommodate people in the America’s and Canada. Unfortunately this is one of those issues in which alot of things factor into, for example match and series lengths, technical delays etc. so it’s not always possible to please everyone in terms of start and finish times.

The financial statistics from the tournament have also been released, including comparison’s with SCi#2:

According to TotalBiscuit, this increase is a result in Justin.TV fixing the commercial system with the implementation of the commercial button when they released the Twitch.TV website (as opposed to the old “/commercial” command which was apparently prone to bugging and unreliability) and he continues to say that this month’s ad revenue is set to be a record breaker, as of the 12th September 2011 he has already raised $1,131.23 and will continue to stream as much as possible to get the figure to over $2,000.00 before the end of the month (although he will be attending the Dreamhack Valencia and Eurogamer Expo event’s).The donation count for the SCi#3 tournament stands at $2,427.87 and in addition last month TB raised $1,403.73 in ad revenue and you can now pay an optional subscription fee of $5 per month for TotalBiscuit’s channel and receive some additional benefits (such as being able to use the chatbox during TB’s streams)

If you don’t already, please either completely disable your ad blocker or create an exception for TB’s Twitch.TV channel. If you use Adblock Plus for Firefox and want more information on how to create an exception for the channel, check out ABP’s Writing Adblock Plus Fiters guide.

The SHOUTcraft Invitational #4 financial breakdown is as follows:

$5,000.00 prize pool consisting of:

• Donations – $2,427.87
• Ad Revenue – $1.403.73
• Subscriptions – $1,250.00

Totalling $5,081.60 ($80.60 will cover the wiring fees and Paypal transaction fees for sending prize money to participants.

Carry over to the SHOUTcraft Invitational #5 so far is $1,131.23 (+ any additional streaming ad revenue made this month, donations and ad revenue made during SCi4, subscription fees and the “This shirt is ruining eSports” sales.

Player earnings this tournament (including the tip-jar system):

• Dimaga – $100 + $72 (tips) = $172.00 total
• Destiny  – $100 + $92.51 (tips) = $192.51 total
• Strelok  – $100 + $77 (tips) = $177.00 total
• Tyler – $100 + $150 (tips) = $250.00 total
• TLO – $300 + $455.37 (tips) = $755.37 total
• White-Ra – $600 + $201.50 (tips) = $801.50 total
• DDE – $1200 + $97 (tips) = $1297 total
• Socke – $2500 + 170.37 (tips) = $2670.37 total

However, of all the donations made, one in particular really stood out from someone who goes by the name of Colin Smith who made a VERY generous donation of $1,200.00 during the SCi#3 tournament!!

I personally cannot wait for SHOUTcraft Invitational #4, as usual on behalf of Stenigma i would like to thank TotalBiscuit for organising such an amazing tournament and his fellow co-caster d.Apollo for giving us some great play-by-play analysis.

I shall leave you with the final bracket from the SCi#3 tournament: