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Excerpts from an interview Thursday with Jazz small forward Gordon Hayward. He is scheduled to participate Oct. 6-9 in IPL 3: Origins, a StarCraft II in-person video game tournament at Caesars in Atlantic City, N.J.How he got involved in the tournament: I've always been into video games. [My good friend and] I just play for fun or whatever, and I'm a competitive guy; I like to do stuff and win. I feel like the best way to get better is to watch the best people at whatever you're trying to do and try to mirror what they do. And so we got to a website, Team Liquid, which is all about StarCraft games, and there's people that on there that stream their games and so we just started watching that. And then we got the bright idea, like, 'Hey, let's just stream ourselves.' … We thought it was just going to be for me and him and our friends to watch; I didn't think people would follow it that much or people would care. So I put it on Twitter, just for my fans or followers if they wanted to check it out. That night, the next thing we knew, we had 3,000 people watching it and just chatting it up with the fans. Then IGN contacted me and contacted my agency and kind of just went from there.Lending his name toward and participating in a big-time video game tournament: It's something that's really cool. Tournament settings are always different than just regular games. There's always just a lot more pressure; the intensity kicks up a notch — especially when you have $100,000 on the line. It'll be pretty intense there. And the guys that will be playing there and competing for the $100,000, they're professionals in every sense of the word. They play StarCraft probably 8-10 hours a day. They're really good. They make me look like a high schooler in basketball terms.Been to a tournament before: I have not. I've always wanted to go to one. I don't know if you've ever heard of MLG, but they play more than just StarCraft and so I've always wanted to go to that. But some buddies of mine used to play in local tournaments for Halo when I was growing up, and we were competing with MLG rules, so we always wanted to go. We won some money. Then we started playing some StarCraft, and IPL is just another type of event. It'll be my first one. It should be a lot of fun.Attend all four days or just one: Well, I'm supposed to be competing in the tournament. I'll just be in the open bracket, I'm pretty sure, and it'll be just for fun. … I'll be there throughout the whole thing and probably watching the finals. I'm supposed to — my agency talked to David Lee, and he's got a guy who's in New York and I'm hopefully just going to be training with him basketball-wise so I don't miss out with basketball. A lot of people have been saying stuff about [not playing basketball] — people have kind of been freaking out about that. But, for sure, basketball is my profession. It's what I do for a living. It's my passion, my love, and I'm always doing that every single day. But this is just something on the side. I won't lose anything basketball-wise.If NBA lockout ends, training camp starts and Jazz's schedule conflicts with tournament: Well, I hope everything works out with the lockout. And if we would be able to have training camp right then, I would be 100-percent thrilled. I would be in Utah for training camp. I don't know how that would work out for IGN. I already talked to them and said, 'Hey, if the lockout ends that's my first obligation.' I might be able to do a shootout. Do a video or something streamed from Utah later that night. I would definitely be in Utah. That's my No. 1 priority.Home video game setup: Growing up I was an Xbox guy. I got Xbox right when it came out, and Halo was one of my biggest games — it still is one of my biggest games. … Me and a friend challenged some fans this past year to play some Halo: Reach. So right now I have a big-screen setup where I watch my movies and play video games on console. And then kind of across the other side of the room I actually built my own computer this year, so I've been playing StarCraft on the PC and just kind of going back and forth a little bit.Brian T. Smithbsmith@sltrib.comTwitter: @tribjazzfacebook.com/tribjazz