WCS Korea Season 3
GSL Code S

WCS Korea Placement Matches
PartinG, Trap, Rain, jjakji

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Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

One ticket to the WCS Season 3 Finals on the line

by Waxangel

The final four of this season's Code S have been determined, but there's one more thing we have to do before moving onto the semi-finals: find out who will win the last ticket to the WCS Season 3 Finals.

This season's quarter-finals were some of the most one-sided in Code S history, meaning the losers Trap, PartinG, Rain, and jjakji didn't get a chance to look very good. This is their second chance to show their skills and earn a valuable ticket to Toronto, Canada.

Match 1: Trap vs. PartinG

Poor, poor Soul_Trap. The famed PvZ specialist had a great run this season, playing solely PvP's and PvT's as he worked his way to a career best top eight finish. Unfortunately, Trap's PvP looked to be the worst of his match-ups (going a combined 0 – 5 against Rain and Dear), and now he has to face a PvP master in PartinG.

SKT_PartinG also enters this match after having made a strong run up to the Ro8, where he got dumped out after getting crushed in his worst match-up of PvZ. If we're allowed to put our hipster hats on for a second – did anyone really think PartinG was such a big favorite against soO? He played what some called "the worst PvZ series of his life" against soO the previous time they played, and he managed to play even worse last weekend (check out our recaps).

In any case, this match-up looks to favor PartinG heavily. While he can't seem to execute anything correctly in PvZ these days, he looks near perfect in whatever he does in PvP. Whether he's going for a risky fast expansion or all-in build, PartinG plays with machine-like efficiency and precision.

In Trap's case, he can execute an all-in pretty well, but he doesn't have anything going for him besides that. In his five losses to Rain and Dear, I don't think he managed to win even a single fight. PartinG's PvP mechanics are at least on par with Rain and Dear, if not even better, making victory difficult for Trap unless he gets some huge build order advantages.

Match 2: Rain vs. Jjakji

In an ironic twist of fate, mYi.jjakji's best GSL run in over a year was ended by a player who was determined to not become the next jjakji. OSL champion Maru's legitimacy had been questioned by many, but his return to the top four confirmed he was not going to become a one-and-done champ.

It's hard to say exactly what changed for jjakji to allow him to do so well in Code S this season – his play didn't seem especially better than it had been in the past. Honestly, it seemed like he was always a pretty good, Code S level player (like a Keen or YoDa) and it just took a couple of seasons for him to finally get the right combination of brackets and in-game luck to make a deep run again.

Being a good Code S Terran isn't going to be enough to defeat SKT_Rain, one of the best PvT players at present. Some might point to jjakji's 4 – 0 over First during the group stages to say he has a decent chance, but that win included three SCV-pull timings against a player known to be very weak against them. Rain and PartinG are maybe the two best players in the world at forcing long PvTs, and jjakji is going to need more than conventional SCV-pulls to defeat Rain.

That's not to say Jjakji is dead in the water. He has the huge advantage of being able to prepare for just one match-up, and he's bound to have some very strong TvP builds prepared. Jjakji even said in his Code S interviews that he switched his preparation style to only place special focus on his first opponent on a given day, which means Rain will have to be particularly cautious. But all in all, I have to take the ever solid Rain to pull through with a victory.

The 5th Place Match

Here's a brief look at the possible 5th place match cards.

Trap vs. Rain: Trap making it by PartinG AND Rain in the same day would be pretty incredible, given how poorly he played against Dear. I can't see Trap winning this, unless he was actually jet-lagged, food-poisoned and had JYP touching both of his shoulders during his series vs. Dear.

Trap vs. jjakji: Guess who's kinda sneaky-good at PvT? Yes, it's Trap. Though sometimes he makes weird mistakes like forgetting to get warpgate research, in general he's a solid macro player who can hold off SCV-pulls and enjoys super annoying warp-prism harassment. Given that jjakji has only shown us SCV-pulls lately, it's hard to guess how he would match-up against Trap.

PartinG vs. Rain: This has the potential to be the highest level PvP we've seen all year. For whatever that's worth – it's no secret that PvP doesn't interest that many people. While this has potential to be great, it also has potential to be awful as PartinG and Rain have been very clear that they talk and learn a lot from each other. When team-kill mind games go wrong, they tend to go very, very wrong.

PartinG vs. jjakji: After seeing the way PartinG outplayed both Flash and Maru in the late game, it doesn't seem like Jjakji has much of a chance if he doesn't SCV pull with all his might. I think there's a small chance PartinG shoots himself in the foot by trying one too many all-ins. While he's capable of some brilliant micro, his penchant for aggression might be too predictable by now.

Overall Predictions:

PartinG defeats Trap
Rain defeats jjakji

PartinG defeats Rain to take fifth place in Code S and win a spot in the WCS Season 3 Finals.