Kal started off as the yellow Protoss at 1 o'clock, while MVP started at 5 o'clock as the red Terran in the opening match. This match is important as the winner of this match could bring the momentum to his team. Both players do not open with the standard fast expansion builds; Kal makes a robotics facility even before his first goon comes out after making 1 zealot, while MVP makes a vulture before adding addon.



MVP builds a command center near his ramp, and seeing that Kal had no natural with his vulture, makes a quick engineering bay. Kal makes a shuttle, reaver, and another zealot and flies to MVP's natural while making observatory. The reaver's first shot kills 4 SCV's and stops MVP from mining his natural for a long time. He even kills a tank and a few additional SCV's before MVP is able to drive out the shuttle along with the reaver.



MVP knows he is behind and builds a proxy starport at 11 o'clock. Kal's natural is running smoothly at this point, and he makes another reaver. However, when Kal moves down with his dragoons to pressure MVP with two reavers and dragoons, MVP drops Kal's main with three vultures. Both players become sloppy as they try to micro both places at once; MVP loses a tank and takes hits on another, while Kal realizes too late that there are vultures in his main. Kal's reavers are quickly driven back, but MVP's vultures get at least 15 probe kills and mines explode on dragoons.



MVP then moves on to build his 5th and 6th factory, preparing for a 6 fac timing rush. Kal, on the other hand, only has 4 gateways running on only 2 bases. MVP even slows down Kal's 3rd by killing the probe, and drops 4 vultures in Kal's natural, getting 9 more probe kills. MVP then pushes out, and Kal carelessly loses a reaver. Kal is still on 4 gateways when MVP ran his 6 fac at least two or three rounds.



MVP's army is much larger than Kal's, and MVP even drops 4 vultures in Kal's main as he pushes upward. Kal tries to stall with reavers, but they too, quickly fall. Kal knows that in a head on fight, there is no way he can win.

Kal is still on two bases and the situation looks hopeless, but Kal knew exactly what he had to do: backstab. Kal moved half of his army down near MVP's natural. MVP is too afraid of a backstab, so he moves his army back, and Kal simply kills a couple of units and moves back without much loss himself. When MVP moves back up, he comes again, sniping reinforcements, and moving back.



Kal has now built up a large army, and sends more units down to MVP's natural. Seeing that MVP has no units at his natural, he moves right in, forcing all of MVP's units to move back to the natural. It doesn't do much damage, but Kal is able to prepare for MVP's army moving up, and using two shuttles, dismantles MVP's army. Both MVP and Kal take their third base, but Kal now has map control and larger army.



Kal also takes 11 o'clock natural expansion and MVP consistently send vultures to various places, trying to do some damage. MVP tries to attack 11 o'clock using a lot of vultures and two tanks in a dropship. Although the attack is blocked, MVP kills all of Kal's transferring probes using his siege tanks.



Both players' main and natural bases are mined out, and MVP's vulture harassment begins to be ineffective. Kal takes the 11 o'clock main expansion, and now MVP is severely behind in economy. MVP moves up the right side of the map and tries to take 9, but Kal simply overwhelms him with his superior army.



MVP tries to come back by taking 7 o'clock expansions, but Kal, seeing that his army is centered at 7 o'clock, simply walks into MVP's main, killing most of the factories. He also drops MVP's 7 o'clock natural expansion with templars, storming 2/3 of the SCV's. Kal quickly replenishes his army with his numerous gateways, and once he gets his first arbiter, finishes MVP off.



Kal, after a tough fight, takes the first game for his team.

By heyoka

Its pretty common knowledge that some teams have worse lineups for one race or another. The same jokes appear throughout TL about SKT zergs, or hite protosses (generally these ideas are supported by the numbers so they have some basis in objective reality). What about the opposite side of that window? Have you ever wondered if certain teams struggle against one race or another, what race each team is worst at playing against? I have, but I always have the feeling that what interests me isn't necessarily "normal". Lucky for me (and you!), TLPD makes grabbing this kind of data pretty easy.

With Winner's League regulation play over, now is a good tim to take a look and see if there is anything intriguing in how the numbers shook out. Here is how it looked for the most recent round robin, the regular play season of the Winner's League. Remember this does not include any playoff matches.



The results are pretty interesting overall, it certainly looks like some teams fare worse against other races.

Woongjin didn't lose a single game to a protoss, but they only played against the race 7 times (with Guemchi taking the majority of those wins, followed by Kwanro and free). KT also did particularly well against toss, going a combined 13-4 which is of course mostly Flash's doing (8-1, not quite 90%. All in all, it looks like tosses fared the worst as a race from this chart, their values are more extreme than for the other races.

Against zerg, MBC stands out (thanks to Light for going 8-0 TvZ on his way to three all kills). Behind them KT and WeMade FOX, KT with Flash hitting a nice 6-0 and the WeMade crew posting minor results across the board.

The vT results are unique in that the only real standouts are the bottom half of the field - ACE winning only a quarter of the time and eSTRO not doing much better. Half the field is within 48 and 54%, and the best team against terran is hite, who still had less than 60% overall against them. The only individual who had a really above and beyond performance against terrans in the last 6 weeks is Kal (at 6-1 going into playoffs), even Flash and Light had pertty average numbers compared to their other matchups.

I'm not convinced its especially telling or meaningful, but its interesting to look at the difference in each team between their best matchup and worst. I didn't want to keep looking at the chart above so I made a new one.



STX again lives up to their name of being a well rounded team by this metric, having nearly no difference between their races. Oz also had very little difference (because they only win half the time no matter what apparently). Stars' difference number is more inflated in this than it really is most likely, because they have a perfect record vs toss. As always, final interpretation of these kinds of statistics is really up to you.