Sep 26th, 2012 9:39:34 PM
Bloo**
Considering how easily she got drafted during the most recent SPL, perhaps you could consider asking Orichalcos Owl for some advice :P.
In all seriousness, if you want to enhance your chances of being drafted, the best thing you can possibly do is build up your tournament resume. You can even make yourself known on the ladder for BW2 OU. Laddering is how I, along with others, became known and drafted into tournaments like the World Cup, so it isn't completely out of the question, especially with the resurgence of the suspect process.
You've recently won a tournament and are close to winning two others right now, so I would say try your best to get as far as possible in those (or preferably just outright win them!) so you have more stuff under your belt to show your success to managers come SPL time. Keep joining things while trying to perform well in them, and you're bound to get noticed, especially if you actually win the tournaments. Of course, if you want to play BW OU2, you should try to win BW OU2 tournaments, and if you want to play something like RU, you should try and win RU tournaments.
Since SPL is a few months away, you have some time to do the above. Come SPL time, you can contact the SPL managers you're interested in playing for via PM with an explanation of your achievements and strengths (such as team building) - this is the best way to have managers notice you if you aren't an obvious big name like Earthworm and are instead a lesser known player. Managers usually give people who contact them tryouts in order to gauge their skill level and determine if it's a good decision to buy a certain person or not, so you can go that route and show managers what you've got and leave a good impression for them with your tryouts, and they will let you know if they are interested in drafting you. Ginku, who was lesser known back then, did this last season and impressed everyone with his performance in RU (I regret not picking him up when he showed interest in being on the team I co-managed since he did really well).
Lesser-known players that are good at battling are actually on manager's eyes very often because they usually go for cheap, allowing managers to save money for bigger buys later on. Most managers, including myself last season, put in more money for lower/other tiers in order to buy specialists/big names and went for cheap BW OU buys because anyone could do decent in BW OU given how "eh" the metagame was. As such, there is definitely a chance you can be picked up since I would consider you an "under the radar player" with plenty of potential, and managers love those kinds of players because, as said before, they typically go for cheap and allow them to conserve $. If worse comes to worse, I would almost guarantee that you'd get a sub spot on a team if you don't get to start. And if worse really comes to worse, you can always go for mid-season pickups and build up your resume more before those roll around, and even offer to help a team unofficially when the SPL weeks begin if you don't get picked up during a draft. That way, you can make a mark and have said team pick you up mid-season after they see your qualities as a team member.
If you're a multi-talented player, as in you have the skill to play tiers like RU, NU, UU, LC, and Ubers relatively well, you'll be even more attractive in a manager's eyes because those talents can be put into helping teammates with teams, testing, among other things. You can always get involved with the lower tiers playing-wise and in the sub-forums via posting intelligently, and become known in their communities so others can vouch for you come SPL time. The LC, NU, RU, UU, and Uber communities hold mini-tournaments in their subforums, so you can also join those and try doing well in them too if you're interested in becoming known there.
Lastly, as funny as it may sound, becoming more involved with IRC helps loads. Many players love hanging out on IRC, and you can build connections through IRC so others can vouch for your skill and even recommend you to someone.
That's all for now. That came out a lot longer than I expected, but I am not surprised because I have a tendency to write tl;drs 99% of the time. Nonetheless, I hope it proves useful. Just try and keep performing well and making yourself known and you'll go places!
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