This is how each team did during the last week. Lets take a step back and look at their performance over the duration of the season.

KT Rolster: They're still number 1, though they had a pretty shaky performance all round. Flash can continue to carry them with ease now that both leagues are done so they will probably be fine in the final round.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

STX SouL: They're rocking the house despite having no superstars, its awesome to see. With Hwasin now gone their terran lineup is nonexistent though it didn't seem to hurt them at all this round. Their run for #1 is going to come down to the wire.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

MBCGame HERO: They spent all round floundering, all year they have been a serious on-off team. Everything seems to rest on how Sea and Light feel in a given day, since their other lineups range from "passable" to "confusing".
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

WeMade FOX: Midas went 5-1 and Baby went 9-1. Shine went 6-1. Who knows how these things happen, but it certainly begs the question of why is RorO still sent out for ace so frequently. They're a pretty legitimate looking team lately, their round 5 chances seem good, particularly so if Pure can get back on track.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

SK Telecom 1: 6-5 is a pretty respectable performance given how badly their stars have been playing in the last few weeks. Perhaps a zerg revival is coming, but more likely they will fade away for this year until some new talent gets developed.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

CJ Entus: While SKT is on its way down, CJ is on the up and up. EffOrt, Snow, and Iris (motherfuckin' Berserker) are all in great shape. It looks like the dark times are over for now over in Coach Cho's domain.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

Woongjin Stars: Their season is playing out about how you might expect with a lineup of ZerO, free, Kwanro (who somehow went 5-1), and Guemchi. A team doomed to mediocrity for the foreseeable future, however the celebration wheel gimmick they were using for some time means the management knows and is embracing it. Good for them, its true that Kwanro and free games are nearly always worth watching.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

Hwaseung Oz: Jaedong is still really good. Unfortunately for Oz, HiyA, Lomo, Killer, and the entirety of their protos lineup are not. Among players who have played at lest 5 games in any round, Jaedong is the only one to have a winning record (see below). Expect to see them continue to struggle to end the season.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

eSTRO: They went 5-6 this round, which is about on par with the eSTRO we have seen all year. That alone is a huge improvement over the eSTRO of a year ago, and they show a lot more promise than other teams in the mid/low ranks. Classic is 6-0 this year and all of us here at Proleague Central (the batcave of team news) love Action. Flying still has room to develop into a fine protoss so its always possible the eSTRO of the future will impress us all.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

Samsung KHAN: 5-6 is a lot better than the 2-9 they started the year with, but every game they play makes it look like a solid team that is struggling yet continuously underperforming. FBH has gone from okay to flat out terrible recently, reducing their viable matchups to protoss vs ___. Good luck to Stork and JangBi because January has no one else.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

Hite SPARKYZ: Hey Leta, Horang2 had a better winrate than you this round.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

Air Force ACE: Its kind of rare they do anything but 1-10 in a round. Remember that time they put up 5-6 in a round last year? That was a good time.
+ Show Spoiler [Individual] +

Fantasy Proleague Season 8
Congratulations to the winner, JIJIyo!

With a little bit of luck from the last week results, JIJIyo barely edged out a victory over peidongyang, who made no trades at all throughout the round.

In the moment of his crowning, the champion said:

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The "Boxer" Award for best Repeat Performance
Goes to DalaiLameR who despite only getting a rank of #307, still holds the highest amount of top 10 finisheds at 10. Win by doing nothing.

The "Savior" Award for Best Slump Predictor
Goes to the winner Lolwat, who picked an anti-team consisting of Bisu, Jaehoon and Much and sticked to it to the end, suffering only -26. Yay for Protoss!

The "Wall Street" Award for Best Trader
Goes to GTR, who made eight total trades during the season, 7 of them positive, one neutral, netting him +59 points. GTR finished at the #30 spot, but stayed inside the top 10 for several weeks and even managed to gran the top for a while.

The "KTF" Award for Worst Trader
Goes to Ipikaaarrr :3. You can tell he tried. Even thought there were teams with worse trades, such as baeracaed's, pikaaarr just made more trades than average. He gains his price for bad consistency!

The "Nal_Rock" Award for Refusing to Change Anything
Too many Rocks this round...Five non-traders in the top 10, and 45 in the top 100. Ouch. To make things worse #2, #3 and #4 didn't make any trades. The champion only made +5 in trades, but that was enough to edge out a win.

The "Hite Sparkyz" Award for Biggest Surprise Team
Goes to CJ Entus, WeMade FOX and STX. The first two, went 8-3 and made the most points for going 3-0 and 3-1 a lot. STX didn't make as many points, but went to ace 8 times, and won 7 of them, making for very valuable player picks, like Kal and Calm.

The "Manifesto7" Award for Best Staff Performance
Goes to GTR, who got #30 by making trades and had a solid run at #1 for most of the season.

The "Last Romantic" Award for Worst Staff Performance
Goes to Plexa. Bad main team picks, bad anti-team picks and bad trades. Bad, bad, bad. Ended up #2160 out of 2278.

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Some tidbits!

Best scoring player: Jaedong (51pts)
Most Wins: Jaedong (12-3)
Most Losses: RuBy (2-10)
Best +/- Win Ratios: Classic (1$, 21pts), s2 and Neo.G_Soulkey (1$, 16pts), Snow (2$, 31pts)
Best ACE Winner: Jaedong & Kal (4-0)
Most Line-up appearances: Jaedong & Kal (15)
Most anti-teams raped: RorO (-33, owned by 384 teams)
Most popular: BaBy (+39, owned by 1148)

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Thanks everyone for participating, hope you all had fun and see you in the next round!

Snow vs Sea:
Nowadays, most protosses run around like chickens with their heads cut off. This is apparent in PvT where most protoss will just constantly suicide their armies in recalls that do no damage and then die to a monster push moments later. However, Snow is not your typical Protoss. He thinks before he acts even if it's a move as simple as sending an obs to a Terran expo before recalling to check its defenses. In addition, his builds are well-crafted and his macro is impeccable as Sea learned the hard way. The pivotal part of the game came when Sea was trying to push into the top left main. Snow realizes how important holding that expos so he starts adding mass gateways/cannons/and some templar to help stall any push while also never letting Sea mine from the natural. While this is going on, he takes the lower right main and is also constantly assaulting Sea's 4th. After all, a soon to be mined out 3base terran can't compete with 6-7 base protoss with the massive gateway numbers Snow had. Eventually, Snow is able to whittle down Sea's push at the upper left main and Sea is forced to gg. Fakesteve's response to this game? Yellow snow.

Anytime vs Calm:
Style. Something that gets disregarded in modern BW as winning is all that matters. This makes games with gamers such as Yellow and Anytime all the more special as you know they put their own flavor into the game regardless of the end result. They make spectating Starcraft all the more exciting because when they do get that victory, the magic of starcraft becomes rekindled as it's like they shared their soul while playing the game. Calm learned just why Anytime is called Sashin Toss. Anytime's dark templars that game were true death gods as they laid waste to all in their path. Calm ends up losing his pool multiple times while Anytime drops 4 zealots to shut down another base. This game is proof of just why DTs are on top.


Action vs Rock:
"My goal this season is one win, if i win one game i will be happy." Everyone wants to see Rock happy. Unhappy Rock equals angry Rock. You wouldn't like Rock when he is angry. Rock smash. Rock doesn't care about unimportant things like proper unit composition in each matchup. Goons and reavers vs Zerg like it's pvp? Fuck yeah. Sadly, Rock could never get a third gas and transition into carrier because that is what ballers do.


Baby vs Great:
Zerg nightmares consist of three things: tanks, vessel balls, and dropships. Just the sheer thought of 2 dropships landing in a zerg main is enough to send shivers through the Overmind to every zerg. Add a terran who can attack another base while doing so and you have zergs burrowing in the ground like they are ostriches. Baby was everywhere against Great. The drops themselves didn't do much damage individually but it was the constant fear of them that gave Baby complete map control. His multitask was truly sexy as he also amassed a huge vessel cloud that would spell doom to the Samsung zerg. Great defended much better than expected but it just wasn't enough as he couldn't keep up with Baby's multitask.


Stork vs S2:
What to do when you are massively outclassed by an opponent much better than you? Cheese of course. S2's main course for the night? A proxy hatchery. It didn't take Stork long to realize what was up as his probe finds the proxy hat behind his mineral only. Stork has a slight misstep in letting lings runby into this main but he holds. He then shows that all you need to beat t1 zergs are zealots and probes. A short game but certainly entertaining and seeing just how much t1 zergs fail is always good for a laugh. Stork would probably rather have been home catching up on One Piece though.

“Q: You’ve beaten many strong Terrans, are you confident?
A: Indeed I am. I feel like I won’t lose playing PvT. Even though I’m confident in all three matchups, it seems like I’m only playing PvTs, so I’m especially confident in PvT.”

      -- Snow, 2009-10 Proleague CJ Entus vs Hwaseung OZ Interview, May 2010

“In beauty, faults conspicuous grow; the smallest speck is seen on snow.”

      -- John Gay

We all wanted a rematch. Less than a week before their showdown in the OSL Grand Final, Effort had beaten Flash in the first game of the CJ Entus vs KT Rolster match. The bout nonetheless reached the fifth set, where Flash was sent out as the KT ace. Would CJ send out Effort? Coach Cho, a wise man, had no intention of risking his Zerg finalist's momentum, and instead he sent out Snow, his Protoss rookie. Such treachery! A high crime, an act of lèse majesté against Flash. Effort even trolled the spectators by standing up and taking the first few steps towards the stage, until the camera veered rightwards, showing Snow already entering the booth. CJ was making a mockery of the proceedings! No sense of decorum at all. KT fans fumed, consoling themselves with the certainty that an offended Lee Youngho would make short work of this scrub, this degrading ace choice thrown across his path.

But twenty minutes later, Jang Yoonchul was the one smiling and doling out the high fives, as siege tank wreckage smoked in the distance.



“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the hottest Protoss of all?” A year ago, the mirror would have answered “Bisu” without any hesitation. A few months back, after a few seconds of reflection, it would have conceded that Stork was the superior candidate. Today, the mirror would ponder the matter for a whole minute. “Maybe Kal?” it would eventually offer, unconvinced. The STX Protoss has proven consistent in Proleague but, unable to step up his game in the starleagues, he was knocked out 3-0 in two consecutive semifinals. Other Protoss contenders met the same fate this round: both free and Pure were obliterated by Flash. The streets ran blue with toss blood.

As the Dragons of yore reach their limits and put up insipid displays in the starleagues, fans have pinned their hopes on the rookies. Snow is one of these snappy Protoss newcomers. Always on the lookout for the next big thing, Starcraft trendsetters had already spotted him before his televised debut. Idra, traded to CJ in fall 2008, reported that Snow, drafted at about the same time, “got moved to the A team 3 months after he was drafted.” After a forgettable performance in the second and third GOMTV tournaments, where he was knocked out twice in the first round, Snow's KeSPA-sanctioned debut occurred in the last round of the 2008-09 Proleague, against Bisu on Neo Medusa. He lost the game, expanding later than Bisu but missing his timing to attack and coming out behind after every battle.

“Where's Movie?” one spectator wondered. Indeed, Snow was being groomed in Movie's stead during that period -- after having gone 11-13 during the 2008-09 season, Movie played only one game in Round 5. Snow was sent out three times, losing the aforementioned game against Bisu, but also dropping his two following games, against Bogus and Backho. In this last game on Heartbreak Ridge, during the Proleague playoff match against Hwaseung OZ, Backho hit Snow with a single proxied gateway followed by a cannon rush. Zizi yO. After these losses, Snow was sent back to the sidelines while Movie was confirmed as a Proleague regular in the first part of the 2009-10 season. Snow would play only two games during the first two rounds of the current season, losing his game against Bisu, while defeating MBC's Hyun.

Meanwhile, far away from the greedy eyes of TV spectators and internet stream watchers alike, Snow was living a double life: a scrub onscreen, a Dream League bonjwa offline. He had a solid 9-4 record in the previous Minor League; this time around he went 11-0, securing the top player spot until his last game in mid-April (Woongjin's Soulkey, still going back and forth between major and minor leagues, has since overtaken him). “I built a lot of my confidence from my wins in Dream League,” Snow explained in a postmatch interview. With that record it's no surprise that Coach Cho kept him in the offing, ready to whip him out at the opportune moment.



The occasion presented itself during CJ's collective slump in the Winners League, where the team finished second to last, and where Snow would be sent out in six of the team's eleven matches. He lost his first two games, against Guemchi and Flash. This was his first meeting with the Ultimate Weapon, on Match Point. What's a scrub to do? Cheese, of course. Snow proxied two gateways and, with some help from a treacherous mine that destroyed a tank, he was able to force a general retreat and a liftoff of the command center. Flash prevented the finishing blow by using the CC and a depot to wall himself in his main until siege finished researching and allowed him to retake his natural. Snow took his natural and a third in quick succession, hoping to catch up, but Flash moved out soon afterwards, and impeccable vulture micro and tank pushing crushed Snow's defenses.

At this point, Snow was 1-6 in Proleague since his first appearance in mid 2009. Not a very appealing record and certainly no indication of PvT mastery. Things were about to change, however: starting with his next Winners League game against Light, Snow went 8-1 against Terrans. Our special snowflake had finally unleashed himself onto the Proleague like an avalanche. He has an impressive 7-2 record in Round 4, and was undefeated vT (5-0). The confidence built up in the Dream League was finally paying off -- yet something else was also bolstering the young Protoss, something darker. Under the cold CJ exterior, Snow bears keen grudges against those who beat him. A pattern of bloody revenge emerges from his games: after losing badly to a top player, he wins in a dominant fashion in their second meeting.

Though Kal's love of drops nearly cost him the game, the Red Shuttle defeated the rookie with superior micro, as Snow's dragoons were hit full-on with long-range scarabs before the decisive battle. When Snow met Kal once again, he warped in a robo before expanding while Kal took his natural first -- Snow compounded this military edge by cutting probe production, adding a fourth gateway and hitting his opponent while he was switching to templar tech. Not so smug now, are we, Kal? Leta humiliated Snow in less than ten minutes with his trademark vulture drops, killing nearly twenty probes. As the Protoss attempted to counter with a reaver drop, his shuttle was greeted by a wraith. In their next game, Snow went 2 base carriers while fending off dropship harassment. Whatchoo gonna do now, Leta? As for Flash, well, I'll get to that.

Snow's smart play, backed by solid macro and preparation, have been the key elements of his success. Sprinkle this combination with a zest of that good ol' Protoss abuse and you get the full recipe. Snow is fond of 2 base carriers, a build he used in three of his recent games. Leta and go.go didn't scout it in time, and their contained forces were whittled down by carriers and dragoons. Really did scout the carriers but was too passive during the transition and, though he seemed in good shape with a base advantage and a large force of goliaths, Snow masterfully abused the layout of Polaris Rhapsody in order to contain him. When Really unwisely attempted to move down the side of the map to deny Snow's expansions, he was countered by dragoons while carriers controlled the center, nearly untouchable beyond the bridge in front of the natural.



Snow's sharpness can be seen in the way he defends against vultures, after his terrible experience against Leta. In his games against Sea and Flash, small clumps of dragoons incessantly prowled across his side of the map, vigilant sentinels prepared for any Terran tomfoolery. Not only could they block raids, but if vultures did make it through there was always a dragoon group nearby to quickly shut them down. This split army management extended to his two-pronged attacks against Sea, with recalls at one expansion and ground attacks at another, a constant pressure that forced Sea to spread his army and thus considerably weakened his push. All the while, aside from a few gateways lacking rally points that actually worked out in his favor, Snow was comfortably macroing off of six bases.

In line with CJ tradition, Snow also relies on a large amount of preparation for his games. “I've studied all of Really's games on Polaris Rhapsody,” he revealed after his game against the eSTRO frontman. His ace game against Flash was a carefully prepared affair, with Snow watching all of Flash's TvP VODs on Fighting Spirit, analyzing his build orders and preparing accordingly. Indeed, his game against Flash was a brilliant combination of all the elements that have allowed him to shine in Round 4. The dual early zealots were designed to counter the expected greedy opening from Flash, and the first zealot arrived just in time to force the Terran to cancel his bunker, thus denying the fast expansion after one barracks. The mind games went one step further when Snow fast expanded not at his natural but at another location instead. Flash scouted the empty natural but lost his SCV before it could enter the main – a perfect storm of mindfuckery, as he could only expect aggressive, one-base play. He added a bunker atop his ramp, and a few turrets for good measure. When his tanks could finally siege up and push back the small Protoss containment, Snow was already taking his third base at his natural. He now had a huge economic advantage.

But Flash is an expert at turtling his way back into a game, so this was not yet a guaranteed win for Snow -- further strategic brilliance would follow: expanding to odd locations, “skipping” the normal expo guarded by a vulture while still sending a probe there to trick Flash; adding a nexus and gateways in the main base behind Flash's expansion at one of the naturals to make him commit forces there once he discovered the ploy; recalling at that same Terran expansion while bringing a shuttle loaded with high templars to storm the defenses and once again force Flash to divert part of his army; faking a carrier switch, causing Flash to switch to goliath production -- this left his tanks unprotected by minefields when he pushed out before what he thought to be a genuine carrier switch, only to run into a still massive Protoss ground army. An outstanding victory, a vindication for Snow. And the hype was on.



Before we get carried away, let's remember that Snow isn't yet a top tier player. His PvT has become a fearsome tool in CJ's arsenal, and he seems decent in PvP, with a 3-2 record since the start of the year, but his PvZ remains weak. Although his first Proleague win was against Hyun, and his second game against Hyun, though it ended in defeat, was an epic clash on Match Point where Snow multitasked his heart out, Movie's PvZ has apparently not rubbed off on the Protoss rookie. He's 2-5 in the matchup in 2010, including two losses in the MSL Survivor Tournament. The obvious risk is that Snow walks the path of Skyhigh and Movie and turns into a single matchup wonder, a precise, specialized tool in Proleague but an average player overall, with no future in the starleagues. His preparation is also a double-edged sword -- to what degree was every genius move in his game against Flash planned in advance? How much improvisation goes into Snow's games? While it would be unfair to knock the hard work Snow puts into his preparation before each match, there's always the risk that his calculations end up hindering another important quality, adaptability. Just ask fantasy, still grasping at straws with his valkyries even though other players have figured him out.

Nonetheless, all things considered, with the full weight of my skepticism with regard to premature bandwagons duly applied to Mr. Jang, I'm still hyped by CJ's rookie and excited to see what he has in store. He may abuse 2 base carriers, but maybe Protoss need to be a little more abusive to survive nowadays. Perhaps his victory over Flash is to be credited more to his preparation than to any inherent “skill” (however you want to define that), and that thought surely gives an out to Flash fanboys, but finally having a Protoss who doesn't hesitate to punish Terran greed is reassuring. The Snow is hot but does not melt.