Round 3, Week 2

Week 2 Results
SKT and KT Go Top

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

After suffering humiliation in Round 2, the telecom titans have gotten their rears in gear for Round 3. SK Telecom T1 and KT Rolster have taken the #1 and #2 spots with commanding leads over the rest of the competition, and look to be locked into Round 3 playoff spots barring some kind of ridiculous collapse. And it's only week two.

Sometimes embarrassment alone is strong enough a motivator to get your players to perform. In SKT's case, they also decided to cut Sacsri, Journey, and HyuK as well, putting the fear of god in their players. Seeing as they've attained a 3-0 record with a 9-1 map score, their methods seem to be working for now.

The playoff race is still wide open for the six other teams that are all tied at 1-2. With SKT and KT Rolster going on a rampage this round and Jin Air slumping after winning the Round 2 championship, we might very well see a 3-4 team limp their way into the playoffs.

Cool Things That Happened Last Week

by TameNaken

• Sunday was the shortest Proleague day of the entire season with two consecutive clean sweeps. Incredible Miracle swept up Prime and SK Telecom swept MVP. Surprisingly, it took two rounds for this to occur, even after the format change from best-of-seven to best-of-five.
  
  Sweeps aren't necessarily bad if the actual content of the games is good, but that wasn’t the case on Sunday. There just wasn't much entertainment to be had, whether it was because the losers were completely outplayed like in Ruin vs. MKP, or because build orders decided the games outright like Trap’s one base blink vs. Salvation’s triple CC. At least there's FPL to keep things exciting!
  
  
• KT decided to move away from their ‘Fantastic Four’ line up of TY, Flash, Zest and Stats by playing their Zerg Action against CJ Entus. So far they’ve played Action exactly once per round, almost as if KT feels obligated to remind the audience that they have more than four players. Although Action replaced Stats against CJ, Stats would end up playing in the ace match to fulfil the Fantastic Four pact.
  
  Action recently showed some good play in the GSL Global Tournament as well as in Code A. Though he didn't look good enough to permanently supplant any of KT's core four, his recent rise in form suggests that KT might send him out a few more times this round. With TY departing to compete at DreamHack in week three, it will be interesting to see which player among Hitman, Action, and MyungSiK will step in.
  
  
• SKT and Prime restored order to Proleague by going 6-0 and 0-6 respectively. SKT are now 9-1 in maps, giving them a +8 differential in only 3 series. Admittedly these wins have come against bottom teams Prime, IM and MVP. They're all teams you expect SKT to beat, though perhaps not by such a huge margin. SKT's match against Jin Air will be their first real test of the round. It will also be a very important match, because a win would essentially guarantee them a playoff spot with a 4-0 record and at least a +9 map differential.
  
  As for Prime going 0-6, it’s unfortunate for Prime fans but not an especially surprising result. The good news is that win or lose, Prime might have found some much needed stability with their own, weaker version of the Fantastic Four. SalvatioN and Leenock joined MarineKing and Creator last week, giving Prime a fixed roster for both of their matches. Salvation might be on the bubble (with Departure looming on the bench), but it seems that at least Leenock will be their steady third player alongside MKP and Creator. If they can take two wins between the three of them, then you never know what could happen in a Bo1 ace match.
  
  
• As a community we appreciate close games for keeping us on the edges of our seats, and comeback stories for taking us on an emotional roller coaster ride. But every now and then, it’s fun to see a plain, good old-fashioned beatdown. Last week, it ended up being KT_TY who demonstrated just how damn scary a professional Terran player can be when armed with a well-prepared build.
  
  
  
  Matching up against CJ_herO on Outboxer, TY went for an initial opener of 2 siege tanks that made some spectators think he was blind-countering a blink build that wasn’t coming. Instead, TY used the tanks to gleefully abuse the architecture of the map, denying the gas at herO's natural from a faraway perch at another base.
  
  
  Mouseover the picture for even more abuse.
  
  From there, everything started to come undone for herO. Not only was he starved for gas, but TY started hitting him with drops and runbys whenever the Protoss army was even an inch out of position. After killing over 50 probes throughout the course of the game, TY almost mockingly pulled his own SCVs to join his army on a game-ending push. TY forced the ace match with the win, allowing Stats to defeat herO once more and close out the series 3-2 for KT Rolster.

Writers: TameNaken and Waxangel.
Photos: KeSPA
Editors: Waxangel.