Cuban Scene/Individual Leagues/Havana StarCraft League

Introduction[edit]

The Havana StarCraft League or HSL is the major StarCraft Cuban tournament, it became the national center of attention after the finals of its 12th edition, where other organizations Helped ADEC to arrange the biggest e-sport event held in Cuba. The HSL became known to the world thanks to a Thread in TeamLiquid and a Promotional video that depicted the magnitude of the finals. Despite what the Teamliquid thread name states, no organization or company sponsored the XI HSL event except ADEC.

Any player who is available to play (Have a modem, the latest StarCraft version and a phone) is allowed to play in the preliminaries, nothing is requested in return, except to compromise of be responsible to the event, to maintain a high quality in the event. This was later unneeded, since most players were aware of the importance of the tournament and its reflection in the ADEC Elo rank. The tournament document, including the groups, rules and info is handed to the players in meetings where player attend, is a way for people to join as a community.

Background[edit]

This tournament it’s the result of a series of tournaments held around 2006-2007 that were often never finished due to lack of organization or irresponsibility from the players. Those events were organized by now retired player called Jose “Sasuke” and Jesus “Wizard”. When the last tournament was being held, the soon to be president of the ADEC Ian Pedro “Silence” Karbonell joined the crew and brought some fresh ideas, thus ending the first StarCraft tournament, later renamed to Havana StarCraft League “HSL”.

The first finals were under very poor conditions, often in private houses in remotes locations, with a very tight capacity. That was until mid 2009 were, a place called "la casa de la FEU" or FEU`s house were the selected location for the event. Despite being a big place, with plenty of room, only around 40-50 people assisted, right after, The maxim Rock was the theater selected for the finals, becoming the biggest and most important E-Sports event in Cuba, with more than 200 people watching.

Format[edit]

Preliminaries[edit]

These tournaments have three qualifying events, called “preliminaries”, which are divided in three zones, depending on their location. The groups are often of 8 or 10 integrants that are engaged in a Free for all style playing two games with each of them; only two players can emerge victorious from the groups.

Group stage[edit]

In the end, 24 player emerge from preliminaries, plus 8 seeded makes the 32 tickets for the HSL, where participants make eight groups of four. The system copies that of the soccer World Cups. In which the play once again 2 games with each other and 2 players advance to the next round, to the ro16, each individual win grants a point.

Elimination Stage[edit]

After the group stage is over, the first qualifier from a group has to face the second from the adjacent group, and vice versa in the ro16. For example:

Group A qualifiers – Player1 (4points) and player2 (3points)
Group B qualifiers –Player3 (4points) and player4 (3points)

Then the Ro16 matches would be Player1 vs. Player4 and Player2 vs. Player3.

The Ro8 is also called the Elite 8, since this player are seeded for the next HSL, meaning the do not have to pass through preliminaries to enter the tournaments group stage. The Ro8 works in a classic 8 mas-single-elimination tournament. The players fight in a best-of-three, whereas the Semifinals and Final are best-of-5 matches.

Winners[edit]

Edition No.	1st	2nd
1st	MaX)Void	TheNookie[L_P]
2nd	MaX)Void	o.O]P[Boundless
3rd	o.O]P[SlipKoRn	Ike[Bound]
4th	o.O]P[Boundless	MaX)KlOwn
5th	o.O]P[Boundless	Storm[Star]
6th	MaX)Klown	o.O]P[Boundless
7th	o.O]P[SlipKoRn	o.O]T[XerOx
8th	MaX)KlOwn	ACE[Ready]
9th	o.O]T[XerOx	o.O]P[SlipKoRn
10th	o.O]T[XerOx	MaX)KlOwn
11th	Max)Hokage	o.O]Z[RocKStar
12th	MaX)Void	o.O]P[Slipkorn
13th	MaX)Genius	o.O]Z[TheRock
14th	MaX)Hokage	o.O]T[XerOx
15th*

The 15th edition finals are between MaX)Hokage and o.O]Z[TheRock, and are yet to be played.

Trivia[edit]

No player has been able to win 3 HSLs, considered to be the curse of the HSLs. In his current edition, however, the enchant is broken since the finals are between o.O]P[SlipKoRn and MaX)Void, 2 players who already have 2 gold titles.
One player Luis “Boundless” managed to get to 3 HSLs finals in a row with all three races, wining with both Zerg and Protoss, but losing in the end with Terran.
Only one Terran, Yordi “XerOx” has ever won an HSL.
Yordani “SlipkOrn” Quintana has won 2 HSL with Zerg and its currently competing with Protoss in the 12th edition.
The casters for the finals are active players and the ADEC president Ian Pedro Karbonell.
In the HSL meetings, there are always cameras taking pictures. Sometimes videos are being recorded showing extreme game related arguments between rivals and a lot of funny and interesting videos result from this encounters, referred to as the “videos del fuego” or “videos from fire”, refereeing to top players playing jokes to each other about game superiority. Despite this, rivals are generally best friends in real life, and argue for fun.

Useful Links and Further Readings[edit]

StarCraft Cuban League sponsored by Redbull — thread on TL.net by oo_xerox.
Habana StarCraft League Final — that video is from the Final of the 11th Edition of the Habana StarCraft League, the main event in the StarCraft scene in Cuba. Thanks to the support of RBOL, the event stood as the best to the moment, with over 350 people attending the event. ADEC organized the event with the help of PMM and Maxim Rock Theatre, the place at which the event was made. ADEC is Asociacion de Deportes Electronicos de Cuba (Cuban E-Sports Association) responsible for all StarCraft events in the island.
StarCraft Tournament Wraps Up in Cuba — news about the ended HSL on its 11th edition, the first one on the Maxim Rock Theater.
StarCraft en la Habana — Blog in Spanish about the 11th HSL Final.
[1] - Recap Video of the 14th HSL Finals

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