Playing video games for several hours a day may seem like the epitome of ill discipline but, for a growing number of people, this is the strict training regime required to compete in some of the biggest sports events on the planet.
Hearthstone is one of the most watched esports on the planet, with its viewership regularly eclipsing 30 million hours a month on Twitch – making it one of the top five most watched games on the streaming service.
With the Championship Tour making its first ever stop in Australia this past weekend, we had a chance to chat to three participants about how they train and prepare for big tournaments like this, as well as what it takes and means to be an esports athlete in Australia.
We spoke to Melbourne duo Eamonn “Ender” Kashyap and Jowen “Akumaker” Chee – who represented Australia in the 2017 Global Games – as well as American Edwin “HotMEOWTH” Cook.
All three surprisingly have backgrounds in traditional sport too. While arthritis has prevented Ender from participation, he follows The Ashes when it’s on. Akumaker played both cricket and basketball growing up, while HotMEOWTH grew up on soccer and taekwondo.
The Roar: What would a typical day of training look like for you?
Akumaker: So [when playing] Ladder, I wake up, do my normal routine, I don’t eat breakfast, I eat lunch and then I start ladder.
For me, right now, I kind of want to not let myself burn out. So I set a schedule for myself. I say, “I’m gonna play eight hours today.” So regardless of what happens, I’m gonna play eight hours.
Even if I’m losing a lot, I’m gonna play eight hours, if I’m winning a lot I’m playing eight hours.
And then, if I get to a good rank I might stop before eight hours, but if I don’t get to good ranks, I’m just playing eight hours and then after that I rest and I don’t play any more Hearthstone.
I just don’t want to get burned out. I play my hours and that’s it.
Russian player ShtanUdachi considers his options. (Photo: Helena Kristiansson / Blizzard Entertainment)
Ender: Just before a big tournament, first I train, work out what decks are contenders, what decks I could bring. So I just look on Twitter or whatever and look up sites for what decks could be real – stat sites like HS Replay or Vicious Syndicate.
Once I have an idea of what decks look interesting then I just try and play them on ladder a bit or have some friends to just try and play some practice games. Once I get a decent feel for which decks are good, I try and work more at the specific matchups.
And then just play those out for a couple of hours and then just see what I’m comfortable with at the end.
HotMEOWTH: For me, let’s say my practice routine, it’s mostly ladder. If there’s not any tournaments I would just focus on ladder and try to grind to a high rank. Like spend most of my day trying to gain a high rank when I have the time.
When a tournament comes close, I guess you just kind of look at the tournament meta as a whole other than ladder. Or, like Ender said, look at sites that have stats on which matchup is good against who like HS Replay, Vicious Syndicate – just to track stats.
But also you want to practice with your own practice partner just to have the feel like how matchups are personally for you and not just the statistics. I think this is how I went with most of the time.
The Roar: Do you find your preparation changes when you get closer to a tournament at all? Do you practice different things or is it mostly the same?
Akumaker: So basically for me, I almost always think about line-ups at potential tournaments because I’m more of a tournament player.
So I think about the line-ups I will play in a particular tournament, if I see a tournament [I think], ‘what do I expect other people to bring?’
I’ll think, ‘which decks am I good at? What are the decks I’m bad at? What decks do I need to practice if they’re actually good decks in the tournament that potentially could see play.’
So I just spam those games if I need to practice a deck that I’m not comfortable with. Usually I predict a few pretty well and read the field pretty well and just bring a line-up that’s kind of like soft counters or hard counters and then be generally fine.
I don’t bring anything too out there – actually, I bring a lot of things that are very out there – but it’s usually pretty solid line-ups.
Ender: Yeah I play completely differently when the tournament is not coming up.
I’m mainly just a ladder player so I just pick one deck that seems good and then just play hunderds of games on it and then see how all the cards are performing and try and see which cards are bad and then improve the deck and then with that new deck just jam another couple hundred games and see how I go.
When there’s not a tournament coming up I usually just play one deck and I can’t do that in a tournament, unfortunately.
HotMEOWTH: I think I’m a better tournament player than ladder player. Like I have way more success in tournaments.
So, before a tournament comes, I probably just keep jamming tournaments or just mock tournaments with people just to see which line-up shows up as the best line-up over all of them and just go from there.
But, again, it’s a bunch of trial and error to see what is the winning line-up. Like after a couple of decks as a whole, instead of one deck.
The Roar: Are there any parallels you can draw from how you prepared for sport and how you prepare for Hearthstone now? Or is just completely different thought process altogether?
Akumaker: I think in sports, when you get too excited you sometimes lose focus, you kind of lose yourself in the moment. Sometimes it’s a good thing, because your adrenaline is pumping, like things slow down for you.
But I feel like that’s also kind of bad when you get overly excited because you actually have to keep a clear mind to see everything and not overthink stuff or not.
You know, if you’re too focused on the previous play – let’s say you make a mistake on the stage, if we’re playing Hearthstone or high sport level [sic]. You feel like everyone is laughing at you or whatever for making a dumb play or dumb mistake.
But then when you start focusing on that too much, you’re gonna start messing up more and more. So you have to just move past it like, ‘I made a mistake, whatever, it happens, on to the next play, on to the next play.’
HotMEOWTH: For me, I think preparation is the key part, especially in Hearthstone. I think piloting the deck is not as [important] as your deck preparation or card choices. So to really have precision, like in soccer, is just like your positioning in the game, before you even play the key card.
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The Roar: How well do you think esports is recognised in Australia and, by extension, Hearthstone as an esport?
Akumaker: So I think esports is massive in America. Like there’s sponsorship, there’s big teams, very widely recognised teams. Whereas when you say, let’s say Oceanic esports organisation, there’s barely any that actually come to mind, right?
When you say, “esports team in Oceania”, what do you think of? Not really that many, right?
It’s a struggle for us APAC players because we don’t really have a team and then, let’s say I’m in North America or Europe, I would a get pretty popular offer, (to HotMEOWTH) do you agree?
HotMEOWTH: There’s [fewer] offers for sure in Australia.
Akumaker: Yeah, there’s almost none and then if I was a European player, I would get way more offers and way better offers, and I don’t have a team right now.
Ender: Yeah I agree with that. There’s just not that many Oceanic teams. Even for other games, there’s some small teams for other games like Rocket League or CS:GO, but nothing major. And for Hearthstone there’s just no teams.
HotMEOWTH: I think the esports in America is probably the biggest but, I think Hearthstone-wise, it’s still has certain stuff that can grow.
Because I think, Hearthston- wise, the biggest esports scene right now is probably Europe and in America it’s still growing.
I think America has more casual players than competitive players in Hearthstone and it can catch up more. But America, for sure, esports in general is probably the biggest branching out right now.
It’s nice to have all these Hearthstone opportunities and I hope that there’s more Hearthstone tournaments and esports activity in Australia too.
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