EPT
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In EPT Cup #92,
Zoun won his 2nd cup in Korea this season, Reynor defended the cup against Koreans in Europe, and Zest took the crown in America.KR cup: In the Korean edition of this weekly cup,
ByuN almost managed to accomplish the first ever four-peat, but ultimately failed to win four cups in a row. The Shopify Terran struggled a bit against Hong Kong Protoss Bistork in the earlier rounds but made up for it with a clean 3-0 against Zest in the semifinals, furthering his lead in that particular head-to-head.However, Zoun was out for revenge after losing in the finals of Cup #91, and earned a rematch against ByuN after taking out
Solar 3-1 in his semifinal. The Alpha X Protoss ultimately took his vengeance, toppling ByuN by a 3-1 score in the finals. Game one saw him take the lead with an early timing of 8 Stalker-1 Adept that forced ByuN to lift his expansion, and he snowballed that advantage into a win. Zoun went on to take the second map as well, using Oracles to deal a lot of economic damage while simultaneously defending the 3-rax timing of ByuN. Still, ByuN wasn't about to go down without taking at least a map, and recovered a point after a chaotic battle on Romanticide. However, Zoun was able to close things out in game four. The final game lasted 15 minutes with ByuN never having more than 2 bases and was pretty action-packed, but Zoun managed to hold off his aggression to win his second KR cup from EPT KR season 2. Upset(s) of the day: There weren't any HUGE upsets in week 91, but Rex beating Percival 2-0 was still noteworthy as the young Terran managed to qualify for Code S in season 2, and was favored 70-30 by Aligulac at the time of the match.
*****
EU cup: We have seen Korean players such as ByuN, Zest, and Gumiho participate in the European cup more and more often recently. While usually the king of the cup
HeroMarine manages to prevail, he couldn’t find a way to beat Zest this time in spite of the server advantage. ByuN had a good run, beating EU Protosses goblin (2-1) and Krystianer (2-0), but was abruptly stopped by a conquering Reynor. The Italian Zerg won the cup without losing a map, and defended the honor of Europe by beating Zest 3-0 in the finals. The first game was a long macro game that Reynor quietly dominated, and the other two were quick aggro games that he won both as the attacker and defender.Reynor does not participate in these cups often, but when he does, he really manages to do very well! Indeed, in his twenty-two cup outings in the modern EPT system, Reynor has won eleven of them for an impressive 50% win-rate. For comparison, the two EPT cup monsters HeroMarine and Clem are at 37/90 (41.1%) and 22/73 (30.1%), respectively.
Upset(s) of the day: Zest managing to defeat HeroMarine 3-1 in his home turf was kind of a surprising result. Sure, Zest beating HeroMarine should be no upset at all in other tournaments such as the DH: Season Finals or Asus ROG, but this cup was played on EU, where the ping is said to be horrendous for players in Asia. While Big Gabe has defeated Zest in three previous ESL EU Cup matches, it's a testament to Zest's ability that he managed to win this time around.
An honorable mention goes to Krystianer for beating DHM Latin America champion
SpeCial. *****
NA cup: After a very good run in the European cup, Zest decided to keep on playing and participated in the American cup a few hours later. Avoiding his nemesis ByuN on the other side of the bracket, he avenged DPG's WTL week one loss by taking out
Cham (the Mexican Zerg had defeated Dark and Rogue to lead Team GP to a shocking upset). After that, Zest demonstrated his mastery of the PvP match-up by beating the Taiwanese trickster Has 2-1, halted the string of upsets of TriGGeR in a clean 3-0, and wrapped it all up by taking out KR cup winner Zoun 3-1 in the finals. Zoun had reached the finals by continuing his PvT momentum alive from the KR cup, beating SpeCial (2-0) and TIME (3-1) in the previous rounds. However, he was unable to stop Zest from winning at least one cup this week.In the finals, Zest won game one against Zoun by successfully defending the 2 base aggression, and then took game two by countering Zoun's fast-Carrier build with a well-timed attack. While this clever and unusual build almost worked in Zoun’s favor, Zest knew exactly when to strike. Romanticide allowed Zoun to preserve some of his honor, as he won with a very aggressive 1 base build. Ultimately, Zest closed things out on Jagannatha with a strong timing, and tied Solar with fifteen EPT AM victories in the process.
Upset(s) of the day: TriGGeR took two big upsets in a row! The new Alpha X signee had already made some waves in the previous NA cups, and he did it again in week #92 by beating both PartinG and MaxPax (the previous AM cup winner) by 2-0 scores. Even with the slight server advantage, these are huge upsets if we go by Aligulac odds. The stats website gave him around ~6% odds to beat PartinG 2-0, and an ever slimmer chance of 3.66% to 2-0 the Danish Protoss at the time of the match. It seems like picking up the young Canadian Protoss could be a very canny decision by Alpha X going forward.
by Poopi
European Server Cup #92 (Click for full bracket)
Americas Server Cup #92 (Click for full bracket)
