This was a fun one. A lot of the trends we saw last week were repeated. Those were have been winning, kept winning. Those who have been slipping, kept losing. Perhaps most notably, KT brought their A-game to the table (hint: they played Flash twice) in a match against ACE and brought their score for round 4 up to 50%.

STX went 2-0 to close the gap even more against their rivals. However, even if they do catch up it will be an uphill battle as KT's point spread still stands at a whopping 41 points, nearly twice that of anyone else. MBC extended their losing streak to 4, and now stand at 2-6, both surprising and confusing after their performance during Winner's League.

WeMade is looking hot as ever, going 6-0 in games this week with a lineup that let old favorite Midas take a part. The elimination of the one of each race rule seems to be helping them quite a bit, their secret so far has been "don't use protoss".

SKT showed signs of the strength they had a year ago, capturing
victories in both their matches (against CJ and eSTRO). Not only that, they did it on the backs of their zerg roster. Thats right, S2 and HyuK both went 2-0 this week to and between them won more games than Bisu has all round.

At the bottom, KHAN and hite continued losing. KHAN did the opposite of WeMade and lost 6 games while winning none. At least SPARKYZ can say they made it to an ace game (unfortunately ZvP savant Hogil can't take down a Kal who is playing against zerg nonstop to prepare for OSL).

Effort, the ace of CJ, spawns at 7 o'clock as the Red Zerg, and fantasy startsat 1 o'clock as the White Terran. Both players, being arguably the best players on their respective teams, know it won't be an easy game. However, Effort is under more pressure as CJ is behind 0-2. Both players open standardly. Effort gets 3 hatcheries before his gas after 12 hatch 11 pool, and fantasy gets his expansion after making 1 barracks. Effort sacrifices his drone to see that fantasy is not going mech and even hides his overlord against fantasy's marines searching for an overlord.

Effort gets lair and makes a control group of zerglings with speed. He attacks fantasy's natural right before medics come out, and surround the marines. However, fantasy reacts perfectly, moving his marines up his ramp and pulling his SCV's. Fantasy even manages to sneak an SCV into Effort's main to see the spire timing. Effort is forced to make sunkens and more zerglings to defend against fantasy's marine pressure. This delays Effort's 3rd hatchery timing, and Effort only puts down his hatchery a while after his mutalisks come out at 11 o'clock.



Effort harasses with mutalisks and fantasy decides to go to Effort's 3rd expansion while protecting his natural with turrets. Effort is forced to cancel and loses his drone, but is able to kill a few SCV's. Effort gets lurkers and tries to expand to 5 o'clock expansion, but the drone is killed by a firebat. Even the next drone is killed off by fantasy's army. Effort decides to just expand to 11 o'clock again. Effort is finally able to put down his hatchery at the 11 o'clock expansion more than 10 minutes into the game.

Effort knows he is behind, and techs to hive quickly. He gets a greater spire while trying to attack fantasy's natural while his units are out. It is easily blocked and now fantasy has a large advantage. Effort decides to get defilers instead of guardians after his attack is blocked. Fantasy moves towards Effort's natural while dropping at 11 o'clock. Fantasy attacks Effort in 3 different places at once, but dark swarm gets placed at he perfect timing.



Effort takes this chance to morph guardians and lifts fantasy's natural. Fantasy makes 2 wraiths, and with good micro, takes out scourges and guardians. He lands his command center again, and also expands to 3 o'clock. Now all the guardians are dead and fantasy has a large Terran army. Effort expands to 9 o'clock expansion, but it is quickly denied by fantasy's army. Effort is once again on the same amount of bases as fantasy, which is not good for Zerg.

Fantasy is now pumping vessels from two starports, and his army keeps growing bigger and bigger. Effort tries an attack at 3 o'clock, but his defiler gets there after all the units die, and even that defiler is irradiated. Effort expands to 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock expansions, and fantasy decides to attack Effort's natural. It is barely defended by a couple of lurkers and 4 perfect dark swarms, and even the attacks at 11 o'clock and 9 o'clock are defended by lurker and swarm.



Fantasy takes a break from the attack to expand to 5 o'clock. After rebuilding his bionic army, he attacks 11 o'clock natural expansion and destroys the hatchery. He heads right down to 9 o'clock and kills that hatchery too before ultralisks clear out the army. Effort is now very behind with his main and natural running out, and fantasy's 5 o'clock running. Effort knows he needs to do something quickly, and he uses small ultralisk and zergling army to harass 5 o'clock and 3 o'clock effectively.

Effort uses this chance to get 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock natural expansion again. Fantasy now has a cloud of vessels and irradiates all of Effort's ultralisks. The irradiated ultralisks do significant damage to fantasy's army and a plague goes off on all of fantasy's vessels. Fantasy attacks 11 o'clock natural expansion, but ultralisks and defilers easily defend, and two mutalisks take down all but 2 of fantasy's vessels.



Effort is now pumping ultralisks off of 5 gases, and his full upgraded army lifts fantasy's 3 o'clock expansion. Fantasy responds by using his army instead to attack 9 o'clock and kill the hatchery. Fantasy clears Effort's army at 3 o'clock and resumes mining. Effort tries to attack 5 o'clock but a large group of tanks defends easily. Effort then attacks 3 o'clock and lifts it again, and attacks fantasy's natural and kills all of fantasy's army while expanding again to 9 o'clock and 6 o'clock.



Fantasy tries to do something about 6 o'clock, but fails to kill the hatchery. Fantasy again builds up a large army, but he is too far behind economically, and after losing his army a couple of more time, fantasy types GG. Effort puts his team back in the game after a 33 minute long comeback win.

"Q: The Zerg line-up, with Hyuk, is on the rise.
A: Recently, Assistant Coach Cha Ji Hyun took over the Zerg lineup, and we now have a 5-1 record. He helped the Zergs improve a lot, and he would often talk with us. He wasn’t a progamer, but he’s very good, and he has a deep understanding of Starcraft, and he’s very good at helping players adjust psychologically to games."

      -- s2, 2010 Proleague SK Telecom T1 vs eSTRO Interview



SK Telecom T1's Zerg players have always constituted a mild embarrassment for the team. A blot on an otherwise spotless record, they've traditionally been viewed as the unworthy scions of a glorious family, the bastard sons written out of the inheritance. Like all bastards, they point an accusatory finger at the man who sired them: Boxer. When the Emperor left Ideal Space and founded his own team in 2003, as the mythology goes, he recruited four initial players: one of them was iloveoov, the future macro monster who would go on to win five starleagues, beating even the unstoppable Nada and eventually defeating Boxer himself. The start of a fearsome Terran lineup that would continue with Midas, then fantasy. Another one of the new recruits was IntotheRainbow, an honorable son of Aiur who was the disciple of IntotheRain, whose storms were said to be comparable to Reach's psionic fireworks and whose spirit would live on through Kingdom, Bisu and Best.

But who were the two other players handpicked by Boxer and invited to join the legendary outfit? Nearly forgotten today, with barely any traces left in the books, the two lucky bastards were Zerglee (aka sigamari) and Hiroko. iloveoov, IntotheRainbow... Zerglee and Hiroko. Ever heard of the last two? Do you recall any game of theirs? Hiroko disappeared without a trace, a stop lurker for eternity. Zerglee, while he would later join Samsung Khan and become a solid 2v2 player on January's team, never achieved much on Orion/4U/SKT. His most famous game was against Reach, where he won with some help from a neutral critter that blocked a scouting zealot from spotting Zerglee's double lair into drop strategy. Beyond that, we're talking about a 38% 1v1 win rate.

Thus began SKT's dubious Zerg lineup. With all due respect to the Emperor of Starcraft, he must face some blame for having legitimized these wayward sons and brought them into the family. Boxer would continue making awkward choices when it came to the team Zergs: Sudaboy (who the fuck is Sudaboy?), Rumble (quickly confined to 2v2), and the infamous Mumyung. Another refugee from Ideal Space, Mumyung was a promising Zerg player in the early days of progaming; one might even consider him to have been decent, since he regularly made the starleagues. But he was always knocked out in the early stages, to the point where he was dubbed "Mr. Dual Tournaments" (the old format of the preliminaries) by OGN commentators. By the time he joined SKT, in July 2004, he was deemed a boring, mediocre Zerg -- "better than Zerglee" was one specialist's charitable analysis, while another glass-half-full kind of guy called his style "educational".



Boxer left SKT in late 2006, taking his whimsical talent scouting with him, and the team turned to other, less savory recruiting methods. After losing the Proleague Finals in early 2007, SKT took a page from KTF's book and decided to purchase big names from other teams -- they had already bought Gorush after his MSL victory in early 2005, though he would only decline from that point onwards. Now they raided their rival, MBCGame HERO: July was recruited in mid 2007, Bisu in February 2008. The result? They both slumped. But let's look at the eventual outcome: Bisu remained, and returned stronger than ever in late 2008; July left for STX, which he would find much more satisfying. There seemed to be no place for good Zergs on SK Telecom T1.

And so the team's dismal Zerg legacy lived on. With July gone and Gorush barely playing, SKT was left with an ever sadder Zerg lineup. The veterans were now Thezerg and Hyuk, who had started playing for the team in late 2005 and early 2006 respectively. s2 showed up in spring 2007, n.Die_Soo in spring 2008. All four of them had a combined 21-34 record (38% win rate, just like good ol' Zerglee) during the 2008-09 Proleague season. Truly the stuff of legends. Mumyung, who had left for ACE in 2007, returned from the dead and joined the coaching staff in February 2009, while Gorush finally went to ACE himself.

The first indication that something had changed, that SKT Zergs had realized their humiliating predicament and weren't going to take it anymore, occurred during the 2008-09 Proleague Grand Final, in the second match between SK Telecom T1 and Hwaseung OZ. Hyuk had beaten ggaemo in the previous match -- now he was up against the Dong himself, on Outsider. No one gave Hyuk a chance, and yet, with some help from a favorable build order (9 pool gas against 12 hatch) and poor defense from JD, he emerged victorious. The "Hyuk for Bonjwa" slogan emerged, and the hype was on. KT.MGW)Hyuk's history on teamliquid.net is longer than one might expect: a well-known old-school semi-pro, replays of his were already circulating in 2002-03. After years of covert presence, he was finally vindicated.

Hyuk's hot streak carried over into the first round of the current season, during which he beat Effort, Stork and Jaedong once again. But the fanboys had barely started lighting their bonfires when he returned to his usual standards, going on a six-game losing streak in Proleague. His supposedly godly ZvZ -- he had beaten Jaedong, after all! -- didn't survive the first round, as he has gone 4-7 in the matchup since the start of Round 2. Hard to distinguish oneself in the realm of mutalisk and scourge micro among the current crop of Zergs, all raised on the teat of ZvZ.



Was it all just a brief flicker, a small reminder that Zerg players still existed on the most venerable team in professional Starcraft? The following months seemed to confirm the streakish nature of Hyuk's performance, and the SKT Zergs resumed their usual role as the punch line to all that is embarrassingly bad in the proscene. But circumstances would force SKT's hand: with Bisu slumping hard, Best fumbling along inconsistently and fantasy still plagued by his poor TvZ, the team was running out of options during the Winners League. The Zergs were the only untapped player pool. We can imagine Head Coach Park Yongwoon and assistant Coach Cha Jihyun, responsible for the Zerg lineup, hesitating at the idea; we can picture them endlessly debating whether to go forward with their desperate plan or instead put it back in the bottom drawer, until one of them tells the other -- "we have to do it. We can't make the playoffs anyway -- send out the Zergs, see how they fare."

They fared surprisingly well. In SKT's match against STX, n.Die_Soo beat Shuttle and Calm, while Hyuk brought home the bacon for his team by defeating Kal, tricking him into defending a non-existent rush and thus putting him far behind. The team hadn't imploded, the spectators hadn't collapsed in fits of laughter at the Zergs' play and SKT's reputation was untarnished. The first hurdle had been cleared and the Zergs would keep playing, even though the rule requiring at least one player of every race in each match was abandoned at the start of the fourth round.

Hyuk has won all four of his games this round, and none of them were a ZvZ. Against forGG, with his third base cancelled and his mutalisk harassment fended off, he went for a ballsy mass lurker and muta all-in attack to crush the Terran's push and contain him in his main with defilers off of two bases, long enough to grab a third and pump ultras for the win. An impressive spurt of macro that Hyuk had already displayed against forGG earlier in the season, with an off-beat 2 hatch muta into four hatch (on two bases) mass lurker and mutalisk attack. That sounds odd, and it was. Against Really, Hyuk abused his muta micro and Really's poor mnm control, once again cancelling his third as marines pushed out, ignoring them and hitting the Terran base instead. CJ rookie Snow was handily defeated after a devastating drop on his main.

s2, who had a 37.5% win rate during the 2008-09 season, has a 2-1 record during the round. His method seems even more straightforward than Hyuk's -- more mutas. Skyhigh crumbled against the all-in, +1 air attack mutalisk fleet. n.Die_Soo only went 2-2, losing to great and Jaedong, but he nonetheless played the most well-rounded, standard game, against Light. After surviving a 14cc opening and successfully taking his third, with his hydras literally rushing right past the marines to block the ramp and morph into lurkers, Soo defended constant attacks and drops with scourge, guardians and defilers, until he grabbed most of the map and crushed Light's army with swarms and ultralisks.

For the first time in years, SKT Zergs aren't just winning, they're winning with flair and aggression. Although they do opt for risky all-ins a bit too often, that only makes their games more exciting as long as they're winning (and more embarrassing if they lose; they can't entirely shake off their SKT Zerg roots). While Hwaseung Protoss, with Perfectman at their head, are still terrible, while Woongjin Terrans have only MVP's hot MSL streak going for them, SKT Zergs have emerged as legitimate breadwinners for their team, and have saved it from dropping out of the top half of the rankings. It's still too early to tell if this is only another short streak that will inevitably end in dissapointment as we all get Hyuk'd, or if SKT Zergs have finally come to terms with their tragic past. One thing is certain, however -- with Mumyung having finally retired from the Coaching Staff in February, the last one of Boxer's bastard sons has taken his leave, and today's SKT Zergs have claimed their rightful seat at the family table.

The finish line is not far away. The competitors in the marathon that is Proleague all know this. This long trek is coming down to the wire, and it is now when we distinguish the strong from the weak. As with any race, there are the forerunners, there are the laggers, and then there is the middle of the pack. Statistically speaking, it is here that we find most of the competitors. Putting this metaphorical dash into Proleague perspective, those in the middle are looking to catch those spots--4, 5, and 6, in order to get to the playoffs. There are a few interesting trends:

• EffOrt is on a huge win streak, and is definitely showing signs of revival. Along with him comes CJ, tearing through its slump.
  
• WeMade FOX is also tearing through the ranks lately
  
• Hwaseung OZ, a la 2009 Jaedong OZ, is on a win streak.
  
• Stars, after its initial hot start, has cooled down a lot.
  
• KT is suffering without Flash.
  
• eSTRO is hard to predict.
  
• KHAN and Hite are getting 0-3'ed a lot. What's wrong with Stork?
  
• MBC is seriously sucking. What's up with the Ace choices, Coach Ha?
  

With these trends duly noted and processed, I'll be using them to put Week 6's matches in perspective:

---

Stars has dropped from 4th to 6th, but with two relatively easy matches this week against Hite and a slumping MBC, they should be able to claw their way back up with two wins, since the two teams that passed it, FOX and SKT, are squaring off against each other. However, CJ is also looking to pass on the left, but it has to get through KTFlash and Jaedong OZ first. OZ is in a similar situation: two matches this week, and with two potential wins it could jump into or closer to 6th. By this point, I think all hope has been lost for eSTRO, Hite, and ACE (okay that was never in question), and the fight for the middle becomes even more frantic. KT and STX have definitely pulled away from the pack, but there is still one last leg, and one more round to go. MBC, after its fearsome Winner's League run, has fallen back down to earth, and is dangerously close to being overtaken by FOX. The blob in the middle makes it hard to discern who is really in the lead, but whatever the case is, this coming week will separate the men from the boys and ToSsGirLs.