EPTSo if you make a prediction based on my advice and get it wrong, don't blame me.
Momentum:
This is the biggest thing that players who do well in tournaments have in common. Players who have done really well recently going into a tournament tend to do really well in that tournament as well. On a similar note, players who go through qualifiers to get into a tournament tend to do better than those who are invited. But don't just take my word for it, let's look at some case studies:
NASL. Puma went through an open bracket with hundreds of players while most of the rest of the tournament played a fairly slow-paced group stage where they only needed to get top 6 to advance to the next round. Also, those players were invited months before, based on performances up to months before that, and Puma went to the finals based on his performance from a few weeks before. Besides Puma, the only other players on hot streaks were Sen and MC, and both got very far.
TSL. There were 8 players who won qualifying tournaments, 8 players who did well in but didn't win those tournaments, 13 invites, and 3 players who qualified by placing well in a BW TSL over a year before. Many expected the invites to win based on their accomplishments, but a good amount of those accomplishments occurred months before the tournament and were no guarantee of the players' present states. As it turned out, all 4 players who made the final four had won a qualifying tournament, which makes sense as those were the hottest players at the time.
Arguably the player with the least momentum to win a tournament was Huk winning Dreamhack, but even then he had just qualified for Code S and gotten past the first super tournament round (losing to the eventual winner) so I'd keep my eSPORTS dollars on someone with momentum.
Edge:
Champions are never boring. When looking for a potential champion, look for someone who trash-talks a bit, is confident in winning, but isn't mad. This includes sometimes IdrA (watch his interview with Hot Bid for an example of "champion" Idra), Huk, Naniwa, MMA, and especially MC. NesTea, MVP, and Thorzain have more of a "mature confidence" but apparently that works too, it's just a little more rare from what I've seen, and I wouldn't call their personalities boring.
Gut Feeling:
If your gut thinks your prediction is wrong, it probably is. Trust your gut. A lot of liquibet people talk about "my heart says X, my brain says Y". The solution is to listen to neither. Don't predict who you hope will win (your heart) and don't do a careful analysis of who will win (your brain) just go with your gut.
Applying this to MLG Anaheim:
First of all, quick note on the MLG system. Because of extended series, double elimination, and so on, you pretty much need to win your group to win the tournament. So then, in any given tournament, there's only four open bracket guys who have a real shot. So you should predict a seeded guy, right?
Wrong. The open bracket players will have a lot more momentum because they'll have just won 5 or so Bo3s in a row. Do not count them out by any means.
Let's look at some open bracket guys with momentum going into the tournament:
A lot of people's players to watch in the open bracket will be players like Alicia, Ganzi, Jinro, and White-Ra because of their many past accomplishments. However, as I said, looking into the far past is not a good way to predict a tournament.
The two names you should keep the biggest eye on are qxc and TT1. qxc is a no-brainer after his recent Korean performance, but TT1 is a little harder. He's shown us he can take games off of Nada and Polt, and he came in 3rd in the recent IEM America qualifier ahead of drewbie, Killer, Fenix, Axslav, StrifeCro, and dde, among other names, and well, most of TT1's open bracket opponents will be American, so it's pretty good to head in coming in ahead of every American allowed to play besides the seeded Idra and Select.
Don't ignore Destiny either, his recent wins over Bomber and Ace give him momentum, and he definitely has the necessary cocky, unboring attitude.
Now let's look at the groups.
Group A [Naniwa, Huk, TLO, Haypro, DongRaeGu]
is a clear choice for a group of death. Haypro and TLO haven't done much recently, but Naniwa, Huk, and DRG are all going in with an insane amount of momentum. Whoever takes the group has a high chance to win the tournament, especially if they beat both of the other high-momentum players. That kind of mental high will be very helpful in the final rounds, as we saw from Thorzain after his difficult TSL road.
In Group B [Idra, Incontrol, Sjow, Sheth, Boxer],
no player has that much momentum, so let's look at the mental edge. Idra and Incontrol have great "champion's attitudes" but both have failed in the clutch in the past. However, I think they'll come into this tournament feeling like badasses after having had a training camp, and I think that the "theft" of Puma will help the confidence of everyone on EG as they got a great practice partner and the whole team came across looking like badasses who will do whatever it takes to win.
But don't ignore Boxer, either. He has loads of experience and he practically oozes "mature confidence." It's been a long time since he's actually won anything, but the potential is strong.
In Group C [Slush, Socke, Ret, Drewbie, MMA],
MMA wins in momentum, edge, and gut feeling. There's very little else to say here, I consider anyone else winning the group to be a huge upset.
Group D [Kiwikaki, Select, Moonan, Machine, MVP]
is tricky. Lots of people might jump and say Kiwi has great mental edge and momentum after WSOP. But looking at it a different way, he hasn't had as much time to play SC2 and he came off a disappointing finish in IPL2.
MVP is another player people might be quick to jump onto, but he's also had a lack of results recently and thus doesn't have much momentum. In terms of raw talent he might be the best player in the group but I wouldn't say he's the favorite, simply because Select is going in with much more momentum.
Select is probably the most likely player to win Anaheim out of players who have never won a major SC2 tournament. He has a champion's attitude (watch the Dignitas at Dallas video) and he's been doing really well since his relatively poor showing at Columbus.
Of course, mental edge and momentum are hard to judge, so don't think too hard about it, and predict with your gut. See some of you there!
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This was my "placement match" into the blog ladder. Hopefully I don't get bronze league. 
