The ace game is often the most exciting part of team play. It is the culmination of all practice into a single point. Every sleepless night, every tear shed, every ounce of concentration into the theory and execution of a strategy compacted into a single test of strength and will. Triumphs and failures of the past are forgotten, irrelevant in the wake of battle. The quest for victory has marched forward, and reached a point of complete equilibrium. It is one last chance to prove who is deserving of the spoils, one last shot to earn the respect of peers and advance in the ranking charts.

To add to the excitement and tension, it includes an element of surprise. The ace match is a secret bond, an unbreakable covenant that tests the relationship of the fan to his team. If they choose their player well, if he is able to carry out a winning strategy, the fan can leave the arena feeling vindicated in supporting his team. If they picked poorly, sent out an ill-prepared participant and were unable to secure the win, the blame begins. He curses the coach, the practice partners, accuses the players themselves of being no more than one trick ponies.

This bond extends to the relationship of the neutral fan, those seeking to watch exciting games. Within every ace game includes the possibility of fantastic, high level Brood War. Between any two teams, there are multiple combinations of talent that will inevitably lead to quality of games similar to what is found deep in starleagues. Every time the 4th set concludes with a tie, a standstill between two teams is reached, the live report threads become alive with excitement. The viewer feels he is owed a game of the highest calibur - a reward for watching some one-sided affairs earlier in the night. This is the unspoken contract the coaches have with the viewers. His duty is not only to win, but to please his fans (keeping ratings up for the network is probably an okay thing to do as well).

Of course, this doesn't always happen. In cases like this, the viewers feel cheated. Even the fans of the winning team leave with a salty taste in their mouth. Proud, but unsatisfied. At the very start of this proleague season it looked like this might become a dangerous trend, even winning an early poll about the most unexpected aspect of the first days of play.

It worried us here at the Proleague News HQ too. After some diligent checking however, it turns out that early in a season is it not uncommon for a relatively untested player to get thrust into the spotlight. After all, a coach has to find some way to give his players experience in higher pressure situations. This digging did lead to a marginally useful discovery, that as a season progresses (and matches become more imortant) the ace players sent out tend to be more predictable. Potentially useful knowledge for both coaches and those casually watching (though coaches surely know, and if you're watching a match there is no reason to turn it off before ace players are shown).

With that in mind, the season has gone on long enough that we can get a pretty good sense of which teams have options for a deciding match and which teams get sent scrambling.



Find yourself shocked and amazed that how well a team does in the ace match generally reflects where the team is overall in the standings. Of course, the relationship isn't completely clear cut, as having one or more players strong enough to consistently win in ace means the team is in a much better position in matches before getting to ace.

It has a few aberrations worth noting. Its a pleasant surprise that eSTRO is actually winning around half of theirs (a serious improvement over the 1-6 they began with last year). WeMade FOX impressed us all for the first half of last round, and this chart explains why they have had trouble keeping it up (even ACE has won more deciding games than them). CJ is doing pretty well and has only used zergs. Leta is hite's only option and he isn't winning as much as last year (also reflected in the overall standings).

The Hwaseung Oz family is the most bizarre case of all, probably worthy of its own article. At 4-0, Jaedong is on pace to beat his record of last year (9-4) quite handily, and is playing well if slightly less scary than the pre-Flash days. Yet he has been chosen less than half the time to play in the ace game. Like last year, HiyA is getting some play time and is able to win when facing players like Action. The biggest surprise, however, has been Coach Cho's insistence on grooming Killer to be the next step in the zerg evolution.

This is problematic for a few reasons. Every team in the league is going into the match with a plan on what to do facing a zerg in the 5th set. The threat of a terran exists, but last year Jaedong saw play about 70% of the time (which worked out pretty well for them) and he is clearly the man to beat. That in itself isn't necessarily a problem, several teams have done fine with multiple ace players of the same race (Stork-JangBi, Bisu-BeSt, hero-Calm). Killer, meanwhile, is nowhere near their calibur nor does he have anywhere near their experience. If Killer had the element of surprise, maybe if he played for SKT and other teams were ready only for Terran/Protoss, he might have an edge but that is never going to be the case on Oz. You might also notice that while Oz just barely missed the gold a year ago, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel now.

Frankly, the most disappointing aspect of this whole affair is the lack of conspiracy theories. Keep it hush hush, but there is talk that Coach Cho gets a huge cash bonus every time he wins a match without Jaedong in ace.

Some months back, GosI[Flying] first broke into the progaming scene by wowing everyone with an all-kill of MBCGame in the STX Masters. Since then, he received some sparse air time in proleague, but failed to live up to expectations, falling short of the 50% win ratio mark - it seemed he would be another one hit wonder, unable to survive in the gruelling world of progaming today. Then he played in this game vs Effort, and our opinion of him changed again.

The introduction to the game was standard and uninteresting, although one thing to note was that Flying had a really good sim city at his nat, allowing him to get away with just 1 cannon in his FE vs Effort's overpool. As the game panned out, it seemed Flying was opting for a corsair heavy build, his stargate flashing continuously, and his core spinning, hinting at the +1 air weapons upgrade.

This was all good, as Effort had added 2 hatcheries after his spire, but was, instead, adding mutas as opposed to the usual hydras, hoping to catch Flying unprepared. Massive fleets of scourge accompanied this flock of mutas, which had some initial success in taking out a number of Flying's corsairs and, for a while, looked threatening in Flying's main, but corsairs eventually cleared them out.



Following this, both players had macroed up sizable land armies, and Effort decided to make a push at Flying's choke with his hydras. Flying's zeal/goon/ht army was clearly lacking in numbers, but he compensated with some fantastic storms, his corsairs doing an excellent job of protecting his templars from muta sniping. The hydras were quickly sent into retreat, but the Protoss army, too, took heavy casualties.



Things momentarily took a slight lull, as Effort began lurkering up one of the high grounds of Heartbreak Ridge to defend his mineral only in preparation for hive tech, and Flying took his third base. Ling harass by Effort was largely unsuccessful, and Flying responded by sending his corsairs out for some overlord blood; he lost a number to scourge, but netted some overlord kills as well. A four zealot drop on Effort's 4th gas also took out the hatchery, delaying Effort's gas mining for the time being.

Flying was now probably roaming the map with a maxed out army. Effort's defenses seemed impeccable, however, with both his choke and the mineral only high ground held by a large number of lurkers. Flying was unfazed, and simply hatched a plan to get around the defenses.



Unfortunately for Flying, Effort's response was swift, and he quickly brought in the majority of his army to defend. Flying's recall had failed to bring in many high templars, and he quickly ran out of storm, which could've potentially dealt a lot of damage to the clumped up defenders. Opting to do the next best thing, Flying focused his attention on the hive, and his recalled units hammered it into the ground, just seconds before cracklings ate them up.

Immediately after this, Flying continued piling the pressure on with a second recall on Effort's 4th base. Once again, the lack of storm (or micro even) showed, and the army failed to do significant damage. In fact the expansion hatchery was left standing with 16hp before an arbiter made a trip over and shot it down with its phase disruptor cannon.



Things were looking down for Flying, and, from here, Effort took over the role of aggressor. Repeated drops stopped Flying's warping expo at the 4th gas, and a ling guerilla attack, supported by defilers, took out his 3rd; with just his mineral only left mining, Flying committed all his units to its defense. Effort threw waves and waves of ultraling at it, and despite a huge drop of units getting stasised (twice) in their overlords, Effort eventually managed to overcome the defense, taking the game.



In this game, Flying showed us why Protoss players don't use arbiters to get around sunken/spore/lurk. Because of his recalls, he ended up facing the wrath of almost the entire Zerg army with just a fraction of his. In the PvZ match up, Zerg was the one that abused mobility, making Protoss run around with drops and the like, while hitting multiple expansions at the same time. If Flying had brought his corsairs along on the first recall, things might have worked out differently, but who knows, maybe his play has already inspired the next big PvZ revolution.