We're now down to the final four in the GSL's final event of the year. The first semi-final features two elite Protoss players in Dear and Rain, ensuring one representative from Aiur in the grand finals. In the other match, Soulkey and Maru will fight to see whether Terran or Zerg claims the one remaining spot.

Semifinal 1: Dear vs. Rain

Ew, Protoss vs. Protoss.

Rain and Dear look to be quite evenly matched in the Protoss mirror. Rain coming in with a 58% win rate in HotS, while Dear is marginally better at 59.6%. That 60% is about as high as any top Korean Protoss gets in the mirror match-up right now, with the one very notable exception of PartinG whose 74% win rate makes him the only player we can really say stands out above all the rest.

Going by recent trends we'll see a lot of oracle and counter-oracle play figure into this match-up, which could end up making this series mercifully/disappointingly short, depending on your tastes. Another thing to look out for is Dear's 1-DT into robo expand build, which has become a bit too predictable from Dear as of late. In Rain's case, he hasn't played a meaningful PvP match in quite a while, so we can expect anything and everything from him.

Prediction: Rain (flip) Dear

Semfinal 2: Maru vs. Soulkey

It was surprising to see Maru bring out mech play in two of his three games against soO in the quarterfinals, but it does make some sense when you think about it. Despite his great bio control, his TvZ has never been quite as impressive as his TvT or TvP. Like many other players, he's looked to the newly buffed mech for a boost, and has come out with something interesting and unfamiliar to his opponents for now. Unfamiliarity alone is often worth it in a short-term tournament—at IEM Singapore, Curious just couldn't find a solution for Mvp's banshee mech 2.0 in time and was eliminated from the tournament as a result.

Soulkey, despite being the avatar of consistency, hasn't always fared so well against surprises. Bomber used his slightly off-kilter bio compositions to defeat Soulkey at Blizzcon, and gave him a ton of trouble in the quarterfinals of the Hot6ix Cup as well. Soulkey will have had to have made the best of this one day break to break down and analyze Maru's mech play if he doesn't want to get caught floundering about. Of course, the even more devious strategic ploy for Maru at this point would be to bring something different entirely, messing with Soulkey's preparations even further.

Prediction: Soulkey 3 - 2 Maru