EPT
MBCGame HERO vs STX Soul
14:00 Korea Time on Ongamenet
The Shinhan Bank Corporation must be extremely pleased with their sponsorship of a total of four OSL seasons in a row has yielded, leading to their decision to now sponsor the only thing that is bigger than OSL: the Proleague. Here is where the focus lies for the teams!
After the almost excruciating schedule of the regular first season with a double round robin between the teams and 5 playdays a week it is now time for the playoffs. You can find the completely compiled results and statistics of the season in my thread.
Playoffs mean that all the teams ranked lower than fourth are out! The first playoff match is played between the fourth ranked team (STX Soul in this case) and the third ranked team (MBCGame HERO). Next week the winner of this match will play against Lecaf OZ who came in second during the season in the second playoff match. And, to finally conclude the season, the winner of playoff match no2 will play against Samsung KHAN in the finals!
So let's have a quick look at MBCGame HERO and STX Soul!
MBCGame HEROAccomplishments:
2007 2nd KeSPA Cup Winner
2006 SKY Proleague 2006 Grand Final Winner
2006 Proleague 2006 Round 2 Winner
2006 SKY Proleague Round 1 Runnerup
Last match & Current streak:
3-2 vs OGN Sparkyz / 7 wins (4 of those were 3-0!)
Stats this season:
Overall 53-34, 1v1 42-22, 2v2 10-12
STX SoulAccomplishments:
2004 SKY Proleague Round 2 Runnerup
2003 LifeZone KPGA Team League Runnerup
2003 KeMongSa KPGA Tour Team League Runnerup
Last match & current streak:
2-3 vs Samsung KHAN / 1 loss
Stats this season:
overall 52-42, 1v1 43-29, 2v2 9-13
The lists of accomplishments clearly speak for themselves: Soul's achievements all date back to 3 or 4 years ago, while HERO won not only the last Proleague Season (2006 SKY Proleague Round 2), but also its Grand Final as well as the lastest edition of the KeSPA Cup!
Game 1 - Bisu vs Calm @ Sin Peaks of Baekdu
Bisu's 6-5 record in this Proleague season is pretty disappointing for a player of his caliber. It is, however, not quite as bad as you may think, because he started into the season with an abysmal 0-5, but he won his last 6 games.
Calm on the other hand has mainly played 2v2 this season, he stared in 18 of the 22 2v2 games STX played this season, winning 9 of them. He only played 5 1v1 games, of which he won 4, with notable wins against Savior and iloveoov.
Seeing as how Sin Peaks of Baekdu has an almost perfect PvZ record of 22-24 and Bisu certainly being a much better player than Calm (he didn't win the last 2 MSL seasons for nothing after all) he is the absolute favourite to take the 1-0 lead for his team!
Game 2 - Light vs Hwasin @ Tau Cross,
Light is one of those players I consider failed prodigies or at the very least someone who didn't live up to his hype. His overall record isn't bad by any means, yet he still never managed to really stand out the way he was supposed to. Light has been pretty decent in this Proleague season, winning 5 of his 7 games with and he is responsible for one of only two losses of Firebathero in this PL (a game was that played on Tau Cross coincidentally).
STX does not have any players who really stood out this season and Hwasin is a good example for that with his decent, but not spectacular, record of 9-6. Although he managed to make it to the quarters of both Starleagues while also having to play Proleague for his team.
This is may be the only game STX Soul is likely to win
Game 3 - Jaehoon/TheZerg vs SoO/By.Hero @ Chariots of Fire
Jaehoon is 4-5 in 2v2 this season, TheZerg is 8-5 and as a team they are 3-2. By.Hero has only played 1 2v2 game (with SoO though), which he lost and SoO is 4-3.
2v2 can be really complicated, especially on a map like Chariots of Fire so it's not easy to make accurate predictions, but Jaehoon/TheZerg are more experienced (not only in this season, but also last one) and have had better overall results this far, so they should win.
Game 4 - Sea vs Sheis @ Python
Have you met Yom Bo Sung?. Sea has been an absolute beast in Proleague, coming in as a close 2nd behind Free for the most 1v1 wins during the regular season (16-5 stats overall, 5-2 in TvT).
Sheis has also done pretty well by going 8-4 (4-3 TvT) thus far, even though he lost his only Python TvT (against Ganzi, bleh), while Sea won both the TvT games he has played on it.
Sea is the much better and much more experienced player, there is no reason why he would not win this game.
Game 5 - Pusan vs Kal @ Monty Hall
I'll make this one short: Pusan's overall PvP record during his career is 21-9 (70% win), while Kal's is 2-6 (25%). Their win percentage pretty much reflect their chances to win this game, the 5 missing % for 100% prepresent the possible margin for errors. Specifically for the current Proleague season Pusan's PvP stats are 3-0 (all on Monty Hall!) and Kal's are 2-4 (0-1 on Monty).
Actually, I think Pusan's chance to win is higher than 70%
Game 6 - 910/Saint vs Bestgod/Terror[fOu] @ Vampire
Vampire is said to advantage T/Z teams over P/Z teams (I don't have the stats though, sorry), but I really don't know if that means anything for this specific game. To me both teams seem likely to lose:
Saint was one half of a deadly 2v2 team last season (with Bisu), but this season he hasn't won a single 2v2 game (0-5), while 910 is 1-2 (they have not played together this season).
On the other hand Bestgod lost his only 2v2 game of the season and for Terror[fOu] this would be his first televised game ever.
Really, this doesn't look good for any of both teams.
Game 7 (Ace Match) - ??? vs ??? @ Geometry
If STX Soul somehow manages to get to 3-3 (and I'm almost 100% certain that they won't) they still pretty much autolose the series, since the map for the Ace match is Geometry of all maps. Sea would be the obvious choice for MBC here and I am extremely confident that he would win vs. whoever Soul sends out. Even though we have seen a couple of TvP games on it instead of TvT after TvT after TvT and a few of those were actually won by Protoss it is still an extremely Terran favoring map and Sea is no less than 7-1 on Geometry (3-1 vs Terran) with his only loss coming from Midas.
Resume
STX made it to playoffs and they should be content with that. They played well during the season, but the regular season games are only best of 5, while the playoffs are best of 7, which is a huge advantage for teams that have a really broad lineup of good players and MBCGame HERO is one of the best examples for such a team.
I think MBCGame will win either 4-0 or 4-1, depending on whether Light manages to win his game or not, although I realize that this would be a pretty harsh result for STX Soul.
I asked around what others think and as an advocate for MBCGame I couldn't find anyone better than Fakesteve, he said:
- MBC Hero is a team in which every player is an Ace, and their 2v2 is bold and inventive. With players like Bisu, Light, and Pusan backing up the free win from Sea[Shield], no team is putting up four wins against MBC Hero. Other teams will put up a win or two, of course, but even if they get three, the match goes to ace, and someone has to play Sea. Suckers.
- I'm not sure if there's any reason to be too huge a fan of STX.
It's not that their players are necessarily bad, they just really lack a lot of flair. Honestly, before this proleague, STX was that team that had all the leftover junk players: they regularly had no team members in Starleagues, and those that did manage to make a showing (think Yooi/Child) got trashed.
Now that STX is doing well, it's interesting to note how the team doesn't REALLY rely too heavily on a single player. If you say Samsung proleague performance, I immediately think Firebathero and Stork. Bring up Lecaf, and i think Anytime and Jaedong. However, mention STX to me, and there's Kal, Hwasin, Mind, Sheis, Child, Soo etc. All players have won key games in various matches, and as a result, no player really stands out in my mind. It's difficult to have a huge passion for a team when you don't have much of a passion for any of the players individually.
So at the end of the match we will probably see something like this:
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Carnac/pl20071po1/mbccoach.jpg)
Your game by game analysis was well thought out and supported. 
