EPTTable of Contents
Losers Round 3
Recap
Losers Round 4
Preview
Players, brackets, and schedules on Liquipedia
Losers Round 3: Recap
Results from Live Report Thread by Probe1.
+ Show Spoiler [Results] +
EffOrt vs. herO[jOin]
EffOrt <ESV Ohana RE> 
herO[jOin]
EffOrt <Entombed Valley> herO[jOin]
EffOrt <> herO[jOin]
herO[jOin] wins 2-0!
aLive vs. Miya
aLive <Crux Tal'Darim Altar> Miya
aLive <Entombed Valley> Miya
aLive <> Miya
Miya wins 2-0!
Reality vs. HerO
Reality <ESV ClouD Kingdom> HerO
Reality <Entombed Valley> HerO
Reality <> HerO
HerO wins 2-0!
EffOrt <ESV Ohana RE> herO[jOin]EffOrt <Entombed Valley> herO[jOin]EffOrt <> herO[jOin]herO[jOin] wins 2-0!aLive vs. Miya
aLive <Crux Tal'Darim Altar> MiyaaLive <Entombed Valley> MiyaaLive <> MiyaMiya wins 2-0!Reality vs. HerO
Reality <ESV ClouD Kingdom> HerOReality <Entombed Valley> HerOReality <> HerOHerO wins 2-0!Need a Hero?
- Both Heroes advance into the top twelve, eliminating two KeSPA players, Reality and Effort, in the process.
Liquid's HerO, a player once known for his terrible nervousness in the booth, has emerged as the unlikely hero for GomTV in this tournament, slaying his third KeSPA elephant last night. We've seen weaker players crumble under the pressure of expectations, but Hero has stuck it to his critics and has performed exceptionally well where other players have collapsed spectacularly.
Hero's last victim, Reality, ends the tournament going from the player with the best credentials against top GSL opponents, to a player that will need to do more if he wants to be remembered months from now. His wins versus Symbol, Shine, Happy and others were impressive, but as everyone knows, the SC2 community only cares about what you've done lately. With both WCS and OSL out of his grasp, he will need to prepare for the upcoming Code A qualifiers and advance if he wants to stay in the limelight. He's a good player, but was shown in his past two series that his TvP will need a lot of work before going head-to-head with the current crop of Protoss.
For our other Hero, the one from CJ Entus, he got into the final twelve by dispatching of his ZvP inept teammate, Effort. Along the same lines as Reality, he has shown great games Zerg and Terran, but has looked lost against Protoss. You can say that it's because the Protoss players in this tournament were just better than the rest, or because Protoss is all-around the strongest race in the game, but Reality and Effort can't deny that they have to work on this match-up going forward.
herO[join] is still a mystery. He has played well in all four of his series, and he now has a 3-1 record, but what can we take from two PvP's, a win over the scared-to-death YuGiOh, and a stomping over a Effort, a player who still hasn't won a televised game against Protoss? A match against Curious, Polt or even Miya might give us a clue on how good this elephant really is, but unfortunately for curious viewers, he gets a rematch against Puzzle in the next loser's round. Having already played Puzzle close once in PvP, there is a strong chance he can pull the upset and be the first KeSPA player to qualify for the Asia championships, but you might as well flip a coin when it comes down to a KeSPA Protoss vs. a GOM Protoss.
Melancholy Marine
- With aLive's upset loss to Miya, only one Terran makes it into the final twelve
Okay, it's about time we start preparing a Melancholy Marine fanclub. In the first three Code S tournaments of the year, only three Terran have made it to the semifinals, and Mvp had to use every all-in and sneaky strategy he could throw out to win the title in the second season over a strong opponent in Squirtle. Zerg and Protoss players have been dreaming about the death of GomTvT for a long time, and finally they can start shoveling some dirt on its grave.
This is by far the worst tournament Terran has ever had in Korea. You can make excuses that Taeja couldn't compete because he was at MLG Arena, Mvp got a bad draw against Polt and then had to forfeit, and MarineKing was too sidetracked with OSL that he fell to horror in the preliminaries, but we are now left with only one of the final twelve players in the tournament being Terran. Alive and Gumiho, the other two Terran players who were expected to make it in, both fell before reaching the cutoff point for at least getting into consolation matches.
Miya's ZvT has been hyped up for ages. People were saying that he could beat any Terran in the world if he put his mind to it, and he finally delivered with his series against Alive. After being called a choker and someone who was too scared of the bright lights, Miya stepped up his game and gained by far his most important victory of his career with a win over the former Code S semifinalist.
Alive is now, like a lot of Terran players, in a difficult situation. He will be competing at MLG Summer, but with his Code S spot for next season still to be decided through Up-and-Down matches and no place in either WCG Korea or WCS Asia, he will need a good result in Raleigh if he doesn't want to truly become the Invisible Terran of Starcraft 2. He started the year in such great form, almost making the GSL finals and winning IPL4, but it's been down hill from there and back to being a good, but not great Terran.
Losers Round 4: Preview
by Waxangel
ST_Curious vs SKTelecom_RainIn typical Curious fashion, his smackdown of KeSPA's Rain on opening day of WCS was quickly overshadowed by the KeSPA winning streak that came after. It would be fair to say that Curious outclassed his KeSPA challenger in their first meeting, and it will be interesting to see how much Rain has improved in the last two weeks.
Curious won with a one two punch of a baneling bust, followed by a length macro game where he showed off his spectacular management skills. Rain didn't look bad in those games, just not as good as one of the best ZvP players in Korea right now. However, we caught a glimpse of a possible weakness for Curious yesterday, where he lost to consecutive all-ins from his teammate PartinG. PartinG is a player Curious would be favored against in a long macro game, but his vulnerability to all-ins suggests a way out for Rain.
Because of Protoss' various two base all-in options, PvZ is a match-up where you can never be sure of the result in Bo3's or less, whether it's Proleague or GSL. Just like the match vs PartinG, Curious seems to be the safer bet to win, but you can't rule out an upset if the Protoss player plays his cards right.
Prediction: Curious 2 – 0 Rain
TSL_Polt vs Liquid`HerOWhile all of the other players have insurance in form of the 9th/10th place consolation matches, HerO must win this match. Having qualified for the group stages of the upcoming MLG Raleigh, HerO will be unable to play in the consolation matches should he lose here. Talk about added pressure for a player who isn’t exactly famous for his crunch time play!
Yesterday's matches can't really be looked at for much info. Polt may have lost to Seed while HerO crushed Reality, but the skill gap between Reality and Seed makes it hard to draw any conclusions. HerO beat an opponent he was supposed to beat, while Polt understandably lost to the best Protoss player at present. In the end this should be an even match between two players who have some of the best micro in the match-up.
Prediction: HerO 2 – 1 Polt
SlayerS_Puzzle vs CJ_herOThe last time these two played, Puzzle came out with a narrow 2 – 1 victory. CJ's HerO looked strong in defeat, taking one victory with good immortal drop tactics while losing the deciding game at the end of a laser show that could easily have gone the other way. From what we've seen so far, CJ's Hero can flip with the best of them in PvP, and this will be a GomTV vs KeSPA match where there's a very narrow gap in skill.
Mentality could be the deciding point here, but that's hard to judge. We've seen multiple sides of Puzzle in this tournament. Against Reality, he somehow convinced himself a stalker-colossus build – one that he had "seen, but didn't know the exact timings for" – was going to be enough to beat a well prepared KeSPA opponent. On the other hand, he also showed great composure and strategic risk-taking to make a comeback against Reality in the same series, winning a game that looked 95% lost. CJ's HerO has looked focused and well prepared for every series, so it's going to be on Puzzle to decide the result of this mirror.
Prediction: Puzzle 2 – 1 herO
SAMSUNG_RorO vs SlayerS_MiyaAfter defeating aLive last night, Miya went on record yet again to talk about how nervous he becomes in the booth. We didn't really need any reminding right now, considering that we're all familiar with how he combined with horror to play the worst series in the entire WCS tournament. He definitely looked much improved in his victory against aLive, suggesting that there is hope after all. But against a KeSPA player, we fear that he might return to his jittery worst.
On the other hand, RorO's gone into each match with nothing to lose, and has impressed in all of his matches. In the WCS match most relevant to this one, he outplayed Leenock in straight up games. If that doesn't convince you that he's going to beat Miya, then I don't know what will.
Prediction: RorO 2 – 1 Miya
