Results from Live report thread by opterown.
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Curious Kills the Cats
- Curious defeats MarineKing and MC to advance from Group C in first place.

Last night, Curious showed his most dominating performance in GSL Code S since he entered the league. Squeezed into a group full with some of the biggest names in Korean Starcraft, Curious stole the show by defeating multiple finalists MKP and MC to emerge in first place.

The night started rough for Curious, as he lost his first game to MKP on Entombed. MKP opened normally with a cloaked banshee hellion harass at the front, while Curious used 6 queens and zerglings to defend. However, the pressure became a full on assault and with the use of the narrow hall connecting the natural and third bases, Curious lost all of his queens and speedlings. Because of this, he was caught mid transition into the ling infestor style before spotting MKP’s mech strategy. Curious switched over back to roach infestor and eventually broodlords, but MKP had expansions, more production and superior upgrades, and was able to brute force his way to victory.

In the next game, Curious started to show some of his new-found unorthodox play by using a 2 base nydus roach queen bust at the front of MKP’s natural. This caught MKP completely by surprise as his main forces of hellion banshee was at Curious natural, and at home he was going reactor vikings with a third CC. Curious pressed his attack while defending the hellion run by and eventually forced MKP to GG.

In the final game, MKP went into the standard 3 CC into double engineering bays, while harassing with some hellions. Curious got a somewhat faster spire and his mutalisks caught MKP completely off guard. With his mutas and speedlings, Curious was able to keep MKP pinned back while taking the map. Once they entered the late game, Curious completely outmaneuvered his opponent. When MKP moved to the center to establish a 4th, Curious backstabbed MKP in the third with a large group of ling bane where he slaughtered all of the scvs, while at the same time, MKP’s army was wiped out by infestors and banelings as they attempted a counter attack. With those two engagements, Curious was able to safely tech to brood lords and secure a massive economy. After that, Curious kept throwing hive units MKP's way until his opponent was forced to GG at last.

Curious then faced off with MC in the winner’s match, starting with Antiga. It started with a standard 3 hatch against a forge expo into a sentry immortal army comp. Off of the back of that sentry immortal army, MC got a third. But Curious played a strong roach ling style into mass mutalisks. With that composition, Curious was able to kill the third and keep MC pinned back while double expanding on the other two mains on the map. As the ling muta army slowly diminished in effectiveness, Curious continued to transition more and more into mass infestor and broodlord with a great wall of spines and spores. Eventually, the game came down to an explosive elimination race, where Curious felt he was too committed to return home and MC could not dare to engage the Zerg army. So Curious uprooted his spores, built as many infestors as possible and placed 4 infestors adjacent to MC’s main to catch and kill his mothership. The game eventually ended with MC trying to make a move killing the last spores, but there was just too many infestors and broodlords.

After all that trouble on Antiga, Curious would take a relatively easy win to secure passage to the Ro16. MC tried to do some fast zealot cannon pressure on Curious’ third to open game two, but was completely shut down. With that, Curious surged massively ahead and used that advantage to get double evo ups for lings and a spire. MC went for an 8-gate + phoenix all-in to follow-up, which Curious responded to by giving up his third base while pillaging MC's main and natural with mutalisks. At the end of it all, Curious came out looking far better than MC. MC got phoenix range to try to stay relevant in the game, but it was a largely futile gesture. Curious had already double expanded and finished teching to infestors, and with one fungal, ended the game.

The King Finds a Way
- After three extremely close series, MKP is able to make it through to the Ro16.

After falling to Curious, it was MKP began his road to recovery by facing the Tyrant. Jaedong had dropped down to the losers match after losing a very close series against MC, proving he would be no walkover, even to a GSL finalist.

The first match was on Antiga, where MKP used his mech strategy again to try to harass Jaedong. Jaedong held off the attack with ling bane muta while going up to 2-2 upgrades. Jaedong immediately struck back with his mutalisks, ravaging the third base and scouting MKP’s mech army. Jaedong reacted by adding a roach warren, gearing up for a big timing attack with speed roaches and banes. It worked out exactly like he hoped, and Jaedong was able to kill MKP’s army and finish him off in game one.

Going into game 2 on entombed, MKP looked deep into himself and showed Jaedong the experience of a player that had been playing SC2 for two years. He did a proxy double rax and pulled a bitbybit. Jaedong was unable to deal with the pressure, losing too many drones in an overaggressive defense, forcing game three.

In Game 3, MKP went for his other signature move, the base trade. Jaedong got an early advantage by going triple hatch into gas and then into pool, while MKP played his standard hellions into 3 base terran with double upgrades. The situation devolved into a base trade when MKP pushed forward with a large marine tank medivac army while Jaedong countered with a mass of muta ling bane. Unfortunately for Jaedong, MKP managed to kill his baneling nest before speed was complete, and he was lacking the crucial upgrade when he returned home to try and fight MKP's army. Predictably, the king of marines didn't have much trouble fighting off slow-banes. Jaedong continued to fight on using his last 10 mutalisks to try to kill the last of the floating buildings, but MKP had more than enough troops left to split up on attack and defense. While a group of marines defended his orbitals, the rest discovered the location of Jaedong's hidden base, upon which Jaedong conceded the GG.

MKP then faced off MC in the last match of the night. MKP having remembered the taste of a good all-in from his previous series with Jaedong, opened with a 1-1-1 on Ohana. MC was able to hold it off and eventually crushed MKP’s army of marines and tanks with just immortal colossi and blink stalkers.

In the second game, both players felt the pressure and played extremely safe builds on Antiga. MKP would push with his standard bio medivac force while getting a third and getting a second starport. MC would tech up to colossi and with a strong army, safely taking a third base. The game came down to MKP attacking MC before his transition to templar, where some terrible colossi positioning allowed MKP win a landslide victory to tie up the series.

The last game of the night was on Cloud Kingdom. In the third set, MKP once more pulled out the 1-1-1, this time using a reactor hellion medivac opening rather than the cloak banshee. Once again MC scouted early and teched immediately to stargate for the phoenixes. Once the inital hellion harass was pushed back, MC counter attacked while building a robo. Then, everything fell apart for MC. The hellions came back, and with no army, MC was forced to pylon block his main. At the same time, he carelessly lost 2 stalkers to 4 marines and a medivac while trying to pressure MKP's main. Then, he canceled his robo, and then remade it as the cloaked banshee hit his base, losing almost twenty probes in the process. And finally, MC misclicked and accidentally made a second robo instead of the robotics bay. After that, MKP needed only point his troops in the general direction of MC's base to take the game.

Jaedong First Impressions
- Jaedong narrowly fails to defeat MC in the first match of the night

In the first game of the night Jaedong played MC on Daybreak, where Jaedong turned many heads with his impressive ZvP. MC went stargate into collosus bay into a third base, but found himself flustered by Jaedong's muta-ling attacks. From there, Jaedong took his advantage and went for more expos and teched to infestor broodlords. However, despite showing great muta-ling play to take the lead and set himself up in a powerful late game position, Jaedong's actual late game management left much to be desired. Unnecessary sacrifices of broodlords and infestors for little gain allowed MC to claw his way back into the game, and eventually score the comeback win with a good vortex engagement.

The second game was on Whirlwind, where Jaedong held off MC’s gate before nexus into 4 gate build with mass speedlings. There, Jaedong tried to end the game with a mass ling roach drop on the natural, but was indecisive upon discovering the third base of MC. Caught between the two forces, Jaedong went for the natural, but was cleaned up. Eventually MC pushed out and Jaedong tried to backstab with a large drop, but was denied. With these units out of position, MC’s army was too large for Jaedong to deal with and by the time Jaedong’s units came back from the drop, MC had already won the game.

Overall, Jaedong showed some strong unit control, strong harassment and great creep spread. On the other hand, his larvae injects were subpar in many of his games. He overcommitted mutas against marines a few times and seemed unable to deal with MKP’s 2 rax or his base trade. He seemed lost in the late game ZvP army control and felt weak to strong 3 base protoss pushes. Jaedong has shown some good potential, but he still needs more experience in the game before he can fight head to head with Code S level players.

Group D: ByuNPrime, SKT_Rain, LG-IM_Happy, SlayerS_Genius

ByuNPrime vs. SKT_Rain

Understandably, most fans were focused on star players like Flash, Jaedong, and Bisu when KeSPA officially announced their change to StarCraft II. But was it any surprise that the player to emerge at the head of the pack of elephants, turns out to be one who is more similar to his GomTV brethren than the fabled TaekBaengLeeSsang? Rain (aka By.Sun) was by no means a superstar in his Brood War days, though neither was he a player with a 1 – 9 record in Proleague. Kindly put, he was one of the rank and file – albeit, towards the upper end.

Whatever the link between Brood War and Starcraft II skill may be, By.Rain comes into Code S as the finest Starcraft II player the KeSPA teams have to offer. Already racking up a great 13 – 7 Proleague record, Rain comes into this match with wins against GSL top dogs Curious, Leenock, MarineKing, and DongRaeGu. Rain's Code S Seed wasn't charity, it was fully deserved.

Interestingly enough, Rain has somehow found himself in a group where he won't be able to play his best match-up of PvZ. On top of that, his first opponent happens to be Byun, a player who's masterful at TvP – which also happen to be Rain's least tested match-up. Yes, Rain did beat MKP in the OSL last week, but the consensus is that MKP had a huge lead, and lost more because of his own mistakes than because Rain impressed.

Furthermore, Byun's style isn't one that Rain will relish facing. While Byun is perfectly capable of playing a standard macro game, he prefers to stay highly unpredictable, using a variety of one and two base all-in builds to catch his opponents off-guard. Rain's biggest strength is his solid textbook play, and he may not yet have the experience to deal with a player as unorthodox as Byun.

Of course, there's always the lingering possibility of self-defeat, as we saw frequently from GomTV players during WCS Korea. Byun isn't exactly known for his mental fortitude, and he may crumble under the pressure of facing an opponent he 'should' beat. Luckily for Byun, enough GomTV players have lost to KeSPA players so that it's not a must-win scenario like it was before. Still, after seeing how easily rattled he was in last season's semi-finals, it's not hard to see him getting more preoccupied with the nasty comments on DCInside than his opponent's strategy.

LG-IM_Happy vs. SlayerS_Genius

At this moment, I still can't quite believe Happy made it through. Last season, he was only able to defeat Code S whipping boy Suhoshin before dropping out of the Ro32. At WCS Korea, he showed some seriously shaky play that could only be ascribed to nerves or typhoid fever. When he failed to be deployed at all during the IPL TAC3 finals series against Liquid, it came as no great surprise.

Thus, obviously we picked him to finish dead last in his Up/Down group, and obviously, he went 4 – 1 just to spite us. It leaves us starkly confused as to where he stands as a player – but we admit he deserves another chance after such a performance. YoDa has recently usurped him on the depth LG-IM depth chart, but a good Code S run could see Happy retake his position as the team's #2 Terran behind Mvp.

His first opponent is a strange one, and it's difficult to say if it's a stroke of luck or a disaster. After being brilliant in 2012's first Code S Season, Genius has reverted back to his old ways of coasting along in Code S. This will be his tenth Code S Season (alas, no Nestea award for Genius, as he dropped to Code A once in November 2011), and if there's anything certain about Genius' motivations, it's that he wants to hang on for for an eleventh. He may not be a player you'd pick to go far, but he's definitely a player you'd pick to hang around in Code S no matter what.

Match-up wise, Genius could be trouble for Happy. If anything, Genius is good at playing towards the deathball phase of the game, where Happy has shown some pretty mixed ability when games go long. Additionally, Happy hasn't looked particularly strong against early cheese rushes either, and Genius isn't averse to mixing it up. It wouldn't be shocking to see a repeat of their match in the previous season, where they traded macro games one a piece, and Genius then took the rubber match with a two base colossus attack.

Overall Outlook and Predictions

Overall, this group is actually pretty even. None of these players jumps out at you as "championship material," but they're very good players who could go deep with a bit of that ever-crucial tournament luck. This group boils down to TvP, TvT, and PvP, and thus Byun is probably the slight favorite here. His TvP is his strongest match-up, and there's no real advantage to either side in the mirror against Happy. Rain is at a slight disadvantage without a Zerg opponent, being stuck playing his least tested match-up, and flipping coins against Genius in a PvP. Happy and Genius are stuck somewhere in the middle, as darkhorse candidates who could surprise.

Byun > Rain
Genius > Happy
Byun > Genius
Rain > Happy
Rain > Genius

Byun and Rain advance.