Last night, viOLet advanced in first while HuK narrowly squeezed his way through to the Ro16. Meanwhile, the young American Arium put on quite the incredible performance and came only one game short of the next round. This 14-year-old kid showed a lot of potential and we will be seeing a lot more of him in the future.
The first game of the night was played on Nimbus, where Arium beat Courage for his Premier League spot. Things got off to a rocky start for Arium, who had two different planned all-ins detected by viOLet. Thankfully, Arium did not commit and instead tried to play from a disadvantage. viOLet had an opportunity to finish the game early with his roaches but instead chose to play a passive SH style. He played very patiently and Arium was never able to break him cost-efficiently. After a long macro game, viOLet elected to open with an 8-pool on Overgrowth. Unfortunately for Arium, his zealot was caught off hold-position and the zerglings did massive game-ending damage. viOLet took the series convincingly by simply outclassing his opponent. Perhaps Arium was a bit nervous, as he made some poor judgement calls and micro mistakes.
Whenever HuK’s playing, you can expect to see some shenanigans. Against his former teammate Revival, HuK opened with a successful cannon rush on King Sejong Station. Revival recovered well by canceling HuK’s third (twice) but then followed that up with a disastrous roach/hydra attack. HuK hit the perfect force fields and cleaned up the entire zerg army with ease. Having retained most of his units, HuK simply pumped out two colossi and marched across the map for the win. Showing us his love for gateway timings, HuK went for a 4-gate in game 2 on Nimbus. This gamble paid off as the Canadian protoss got the third, two queens, and a handful of drones for his investment. Economically behind for most of the game, Revival opted for swarm hosts. After getting out a few colossi, HuK easily broke the contain and Revival could not get out the reinforcements he needed from a limited economy. Overall, HuK played some cool and clean PvZ.
Going into the loser’s match, Arium met yet another tough Korean zerg. Once again, the young American went for the same oracle/7-gate all-in that he wanted to try against viOLet. This time around, he had much better success as Revival started his roaches a bit late and failed to kill the forward pylon. Revival hung on as best he could, but Arium controlled good enough and eventually reached a critical mass of units to win his first Premier League game. On the next map, Revival responded with his own cheese that’s currently quite popular on Overgrowth. He opened with a hatch block at Arium’s natural into a speedling all-in. This caught the unexpecting Arium unprepared as he was trying to expand to his third base location. Now with his tournament life on the line, Arium decided to go for a blink stalker all-in against Revival’s 3-hatch before pool. Revival had the resources he needed to hold but got too confident and took a bad fight off-creep. Blinking to near perfection, Arium powered his way into the zerg’s natural and pulled off the big upset of the night.
For the tenth time this year, HuK and viOLet went head-to-head in a tight winner’s match. Game one ended quickly as HuK was able to punish a greedy viOLet with his signature 8-gate all-in. viOLet gambled with three early hatcheries and couldn’t hold on with only slow lings. Moving on to Overgrowth, HuK was able to snipe two of viOLet’s bases as the zerg was transitioning into SH. However, HuK’s army was sandwiched, forcing both to transition into the late game. Every time HuK tried to take a fight, he was crushed by viOLet’s brilliant SH/viper control. While HuK kept losing one army after another, viOLet built up a bank and dealt the finishing blow with a mass-mutalisk switch. Game three on King Sejong Station went similarly with both playing a passive chess match. In a split map situation, viOLet was able to deny HuK mining and slowly starved the protoss out. HuK’s one final massive attack took down a few bases and drained viOLet’s bank but it wasn’t enough to break his back. With no more resources to work with, HuK had to call “gg”. Through both series, viOLet branched out from his usual aggressive mid-game style and showed some fantastic defensive SH play and great improvement in his late game.
The last match of the day came down to a PvP between HuK and Arium. In game one, Arium opened with proxy DTs but killed nothing. Meanwhile, HuK’s faster three gates granted him a larger army which he used to snipe Ariums natural. From there on, it was an easy win. HuK tried the same build again on Merry Go Round but lost four stalkers while his attention was elsewhere. He tried to play from behind but Arium was able to muster out a larger army, and he took a decisive fight to tie up the series. Now it all came down to one final PvP between two unpredictable players. Arium was basically in control for most of the mid-game; he had map control, faster colossus tech, and he defended well against all of HuK’s harassment. Arium was always one step ahead, even transitioning into tempests first. However, the resilient HuK took a dream engagement up a ramp while down in supply and simply out-microed his opponent. From there on, Arium lost his entire army, his fourth, and his hopes of reaching the next round. While he may have been a bit nervous in his first PL appearance, the young American showed great play and a lot of heart. Arium didn’t make it through today, but he has the potential to become a serious contender come next year.
Huk's control was really impressive in that decisive fight vs Arium. He charged up the ramp down 20 supply and by all means should have been destroyed; I really have no clue how he did it and managed to kill those tempests. Seriously someone needs to post a youtube link it was something else. All the series today were quite good was refreshing to see Huk win he's always been my favorite player. And as for Arium it looks like this kid has a bright future as he already showed he can contend with some real plaayers
On August 07 2014 15:40 Liquifier88 wrote: Let's be real , Huk makes it to tournaments , then loses.
lol, you are going to last a long time here on this website sir, wonderful 3rd post...
Lets be real, HuK always has and always will have a lot of potential to win, guy has been a contender since beta.
Don't feed this hardcore Fanboy who thinks the fact he has posted on this site over 4k times means he's been a teamliquid follower longer. I don't post my every thought on teamliquid like you 12 year old girl .
On August 07 2014 15:40 Liquifier88 wrote: Let's be real , Huk makes it to tournaments , then loses.
lol, you are going to last a long time here on this website sir, wonderful 3rd post...
Lets be real, HuK always has and always will have a lot of potential to win, guy has been a contender since beta.
Don't feed this hardcore Fanboy who thinks the fact he has posted on this site over 4k times means he's been a teamliquid follower longer. I don't post my every thought on teamliquid like you 12 year old girl .
So edgy. I don't know a lot of 12 year old girls on TL.
On August 07 2014 15:40 Liquifier88 wrote: Let's be real , Huk makes it to tournaments , then loses.
lol, you are going to last a long time here on this website sir, wonderful 3rd post...
Lets be real, HuK always has and always will have a lot of potential to win, guy has been a contender since beta.
Don't feed this hardcore Fanboy who thinks the fact he has posted on this site over 4k times means he's been a teamliquid follower longer. I don't post my every thought on teamliquid like you 12 year old girl .
So edgy. I don't know a lot of 12 year old girls on TL.
I remember Husky saying 95% of his viewership was male, I expect similar results here.
Twitch chat strikes me more as a 15 year old boy type deal.
On August 07 2014 16:35 Centrin wrote: Huk's control was really impressive in that decisive fight vs Arium. He charged up the ramp down 20 supply and by all means should have been destroyed; I really have no clue how he did it and managed to kill those tempests. Seriously someone needs to post a youtube link it was something else. All the series today were quite good was refreshing to see Huk win he's always been my favorite player. And as for Arium it looks like this kid has a bright future as he already showed he can contend with some real plaayers
Well well, doesn t look too bad for foreigners. I guess at least scarlett, major plus X will although make it into the next round. So we have about 50% foreigners. And i must say, that after seeing major the last weeks, i wouldnt be surprised to see him winning the whole thing.
On August 07 2014 15:40 Liquifier88 wrote: Let's be real , Huk makes it to tournaments , then loses.
lol, you are going to last a long time here on this website sir, wonderful 3rd post...
Lets be real, HuK always has and always will have a lot of potential to win, guy has been a contender since beta.
Don't feed this hardcore Fanboy who thinks the fact he has posted on this site over 4k times means he's been a teamliquid follower longer. I don't post my every thought on teamliquid like you 12 year old girl .
User was warned for this post
But he was right, you aren't gonna last long... especially with that attitude and if you are baited so easily.
Quite surprised by Revival doing this poorly, probably having a bad day. Great job by HuK, wasn't expecting him to pass this group.
EPT
viOLet advanced in first while 
HuK narrowly squeezed his way through to the Ro16. Meanwhile, the young American Arium put on quite the incredible performance and came only one game short of the next round. This 14-year-old kid showed a lot of potential and we will be seeing a lot more of him in the future.![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/lichter/WCSAM/2014/season3/wcsampremgrpe.jpg)
Neeb, 
