Battling to get StarCraft running on Ubuntu 13.10

WINE is a set of software that allows the running of Windows software on Linux/Unix systems. Apparently a lot of people run Broodwar with no problem using WINE. 

I have run into problems, however. I tried installing using both PlayOnLinux and winetricks. First I downloaded the combined installer for StarCraft/Broodwar from blizzard.com. These two installers, however, are not really set up to run the combined installer. Eventually I just did the installation using the wine command. Here are the basic steps I did to get Broodwar working: 

1. Install "Wine windows program loader" (wine) from the Ubuntu Software Center. 

 2. Open a Terminal window, change directories to where you placed the StarCraft installer, and type "wine Downloader_StarCraft_Combo_enUS.exe", which will give you a basic installation. 

 3. Type "winecfg" and then click on the "Add application" button. Find "StarCraft.exe" and add it. Make sure it is highlighted. Then, under the "Graphics" tab, uncheck the "Allow the window manager to control the windows" checkbox. 

 4. Download the latest patch for StarCraft from https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/classic-game-patches. Install the patch similarly to how you installed StarCraft in step #2. 

 5. There should be an icon on the Desktop now for StarCraft-Brood War. 

 6. Play the game. 

 Everything seems to work great until I try to play a game on BattleNet. Some of the images there for the login are missing (no big deal). The worst, however, is that input from the keyboard suddenly gets lost. I can join a game, but I have to control everything by using a mouse only, which slows me down a LOT. When I quit the BattleNet game and start a single player game, the keyboard input is still missing and does not come back until I restart the program. The current version of WINE in the Ubuntu Software Center is 1.4. I also tried 1.6 and 1.7 by changing the repository. When I did that, the login screen for BattleNet became really messed up such that I could not even log in (everything else in the game seemed to work fine).  I could try wine 1.5, but that will take some extra effort to get installed...

The battle for StarCraft will continue...  If any readers have solutions for running StarCraft on Ubuntu 13.10 that you can share, that would be great.

UPDATE:  It looks like someone has a solution (http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/115853/is-there-a-work-around-or-fix-to-the-starcraft-online-chat-bug-for-wine), but it will involve having to write a new wine prefix for PlayOnLinux.  I understand that is supposed to be easy to do, but it will have to wait for another day...