After a disappointing June, Light opened his Proleague account in July with a bang (5W-1L). He was one game away vs Queen to get his all kill in set 2. Doesn't matter though, as Snow cleaned it up for him. Almost unfair to have these two on the same team.
* denotes players who jumped between major and k-league from time to time
June is probably the strangest month in 2023 when it comes to Proleague. With the Starcraft university scene starting to rumble again accross the AfreecaTV ecosystem, our top players weren't playing in Proleagues as much as they used to do in the previous 5 months. There were also a couple of mixed proleagues in which some female streamers joined in to play with the absolute best players in the world ("with", not "versus"). Even our big variety streamers Sea and Calm have been grinding a lot of games themselves and joined the lower-level leagues from time to time.
Back to the top of the food chain, this month sees Snow at the top of it with an absurd win rate of 70.5%, mainly because he was feeding on his preys a lot. He was 23-2 in PvT in June. That means 92% against the top 4 Terrans in the world. He made the matchup look broken.
But the strangest thing is Light, who was always one of the frontrunners in major proleague in the past five months, now sits in the bottom three with a meagre win rate of 40.5%. Maybe it was partly Snow's fault that Light had a record of 3-11 in TvP, but his TvZ also saw a negative win rate. Well, I guess he's allowed to take his foot off the gas once in a while.
Bisu returned to Brood War in early June after one month break with decent results (47.6%), but Hero who returned a bit later is still struggling. For a while he couldn't even get a single win in major proleague, so he had to drop down to K-League more often to find his form back. Even so, he was still only at 40%.
I don't know what happened to Best. He's had an impressive winning streak in the Ultimate Battle Events, beating JYJ, Royal, Soulkey and Light, but struggled in Proleague (38.7% - bottom of the table). Maybe just unlucky then.
Royal is another one with poor record in June (40%), but he along with Rush (47.8%), were probably victims of Snow as well.
Finally, after some dark days, we finally see the Zerg players at the top of the table. In fact, 4 out of the top 7 spots belong to Zergs, leading by Soma with an impressive record of 65.3%. He was also 14-2 in ZvP in June. That means 88% against the top 5 Protosses in the world - also the player that Snow fears the most.
Many great games today with both sets very close, concluded by an edge-of-the-seat thriller between Snow and Queen, in which the Protoss player came out on top.
[Team A] Mini Snow Royal JYJ vs [Team B] Best Light Jaedong Queen
SET 1 (PROLEAGUE) JYJ <Apocalypse> Jaedong Mini <Neo Dark Origin> Light Snow <Shooting Brake> Best Royal <La Campanella> Queen + Show Spoiler [Game 5] +
A few surprises in the first set couldn't mask how unbalanced the two teams are, as it showed exactly in the second set when Mini took down the whole opponent team with relative ease.
Today there is a Major Proleague "World Cup" (sounds kind of dumb, I know). Organized by Bisu, 16 players will be divided into 4 teams to play semis and finals.
Semis are single set BO7 PL. Finals are two sets: BO5 PL and BO7 Winners and super ace if needed.
Rain Sexy Stork Sharp are considered the 4 weakest players and divided into 4 teams. They used a randomizer to determine who gets to pick first.
First round: - [Team A] Rain got the the first pick, of course he picked Snow - [Team B] Sexy picked Light for his team, obviously - [Team C] Stork picked Mini, understandably - [Team D] Sharp picked Bisu
Third round (they didn't continue with the snake picking pattern but used the randomizer again to determine picking order, poor Sharp got 4th place again lol): - [Team B] picked Rush - [Team C] picked Best - [Team A] picked Shuttle - [Team D] picked JYJ
Very fun tournament. The finals gave a strong ASL5 vibe as it was all Protoss battling each other for the crown. Overall, Snow was the best player with 5W-2L. Rain used his first pick very well to get to his team the player that almost single-handedly took his team to the super ace. Stork with 4W-1L exceeded expectation, but when presented with the match point in set 2 of the finals, he threw the game to Shuttle. Rain lost all his games of the tournament before the super ace where he had to face the current best PvP player in Mini. This is not 2019 anymore and Rain would never beat Mini in a PvP series now, but in a single game, his champion DNA kicked in and he won the super ace with essentially a build order win.
Team Rain won the tournament. Come to think of it, all members of his team played a big part in this victory, mostly in clutch style: - Royal beat Bisu in the ace of the semifinals, pulling off a 2 Fac that was scouted - Snow basically saved his team in set 2 of the finals, defeating the 3 strongest players of the other team in a row - Shuttle came from behind to defeat Stork in the ace of set 2 of the finals - Rain finished it off by beating Mini in the super ace - his only win in the whole tournament, yet the most important one.
lmao 6 Protoss players in the finals. Ironically the only Protoss who was eliminated is Bisu who is the host of the show
Rain was the worst player of the tournament (0W-3L) until the super ace where fate forced him out to fight against the current best PvP player Mini. But that's where his champion DNA kicked in, as Rain dispatched Mini in under 10 minutes and win the tournament for his team
On July 07 2023 18:53 TMNT wrote: Today there is a Major Proleague "World Cup" (sounds kind of dumb, I know). Organized by Bisu, 16 players will be divided into 4 teams to play semis and finals.
Semis are single set BO7 PL. Finals are two sets: BO5 PL and BO7 Winners and super ace if needed.
Rain Sexy Stork Sharp are considered the 4 weakest players and divided into 4 teams. They used a randomizer to determine who gets to pick first.
First round: - [Team A] Rain got the the first pick, of course he picked Snow - [Team B] Sexy picked Light for his team, obviously - [Team C] Stork picked Mini, understandably - [Team D] Sharp picked Bisu
Third round (they didn't continue with the snake picking pattern but used the randomizer again to determine picking order, poor Sharp got 4th place again lol): - [Team B] picked Rush - [Team C] picked Best - [Team A] picked Shuttle - [Team D] picked JYJ
Wow interesting how they perceive each other strength. For me setting Rain into 4 weakest is nonsense.
On July 07 2023 18:53 TMNT wrote: Today there is a Major Proleague "World Cup" (sounds kind of dumb, I know). Organized by Bisu, 16 players will be divided into 4 teams to play semis and finals.
Semis are single set BO7 PL. Finals are two sets: BO5 PL and BO7 Winners and super ace if needed.
Rain Sexy Stork Sharp are considered the 4 weakest players and divided into 4 teams. They used a randomizer to determine who gets to pick first.
First round: - [Team A] Rain got the the first pick, of course he picked Snow - [Team B] Sexy picked Light for his team, obviously - [Team C] Stork picked Mini, understandably - [Team D] Sharp picked Bisu
Third round (they didn't continue with the snake picking pattern but used the randomizer again to determine picking order, poor Sharp got 4th place again lol): - [Team B] picked Rush - [Team C] picked Best - [Team A] picked Shuttle - [Team D] picked JYJ
Wow interesting how they perceive each other strength. For me setting Rain into 4 weakest is nonsense.
It's actually correct. Rain now is different to the ASL13 Rain. Back then I believe he practiced more and rose his level significantly for the tournament. Now we have a laid back Rain who just casually plays at times, much like Effort. His level now is around the top of K-League, which obviously puts him bottom of Major Proleague.
Best has been playing in the K-League more often lately. He sure does show his dominance over the K-League players, winning all 4 of his games in the first two sets today. Buzzing with confident, he went to the super ace, and.... lost to YSC. The Best choking narrative goes on. By the way, how bad has Sharp become, losing to the likes of Tyson and YSC regularly now?
EPT
Snow 
Light 
Hero ![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/4Uw41zR.png)
