EPTDreamHack Masters Winter: Season Finals
While the 2021/22 season of the ESL Pro Tour still has a couple of more stops remaining, DreamHack Masters is ready to bring its 2021 year to a close with the Winter Season Finals. Once again, almost all of the top players in the world have been gathered for one grand tournament, with the winner claiming $10,000 in prize money and 450 EPT points that are sure to come in handy come IEM Katowice.The DHM Winter Season Finals will be held from November 9th to November 11th, with all match days beginning at 13:00 GMT (+00:00).
RO16 - Group A Preview: Trap, Cure, Scarlett, TeebuL
by PoopiStart time: Tuesday, Nov 09 1:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)
Some might see this group as the group of life, with the unheralded TeebuL taking Probe's seed out of the Oceania/Rest of Asia region. Also, Scarlett, is still 'merely' the North American champion. That makes it easy to predict that Trap and Cure, a semifinalist and champion of the latest Code S season, will advance easily. Yet, I think an upset is a real possibility in this group. I will not make any exaggerations about TeebuL's chances, but Scarlett, in my opinion, actually has a real shot at taking the second place spot.
To begin, predicting Trap to beat TeebuL is a no brainer. Still, seeing how the UK/Pakistan Protoss managed to beat Probe, he still deserves some respect. It seems like he did not abuse cheeses heavily and instead won straight-up games, with good use of DTs. I doubt he can take a map off Trap, but this should be a useful experience for the rarely seen major tournament player.
The other initial match of Cure versus Scarlett should be closer, but I see Cure as the clear favorite in this clash of regional victors. In fact, he has never lost a series against the Canadian Zerg, and leads 12–3 in map score. Some of Cure's recent results suggest that he's suffering from a mild championship hangover, but I do not think this match will be really difficult for him. There's no GSL in sight for now, so it's about time for the fearsome online-Cure to return.
A likely winners' match between Cure and Trap should not be too much more difficult for the GSL champion. He dismantled every single top Protoss on his way to the championship, including Trap in a one-sided 4-1 semifinals. Since then, he beat Trap again 2-0 and 2-1 in the King of Battles qualifiers, and I doubt the momentum is going to swing back towards Trap soon. As mentioned before, Cure has been stumbling here and there since winning Code S, and he recently lost to SKillous in the TSL8 EU qualifier and NightMare in the King of Battles qualifier. But there won't be any server disadvantage against Trap, and you can expect him to be more prepared for a pre-scheduled main event match than one of many qualifier games. Cure advancing as first place is the likely, predictable result—the real upset odds are in the decider match for second place.
Indeed, Scarlett should advance easily from the losers' match against TeebuL, with more than 900 Aligulac rating points separating the two in PvZ (that comes out to a 92%+ win chance for Scarlett according to the stats website). That would set her up for what would certainly be a much more difficult match against Trap, but hardly one that's impossible to win.
I think she has a real shot at beating Trap—in fact, she already did it back during the Summer Season Finals!. Although Trap was one of the favorites to win the entire tournament at the time, he lost consecutively to Scarlett and Lambo and their Queen walk all-ins. Sure, new maps have arrived and the meta around Queen walks and defending against them might be different, but Scarlett remains a scary ZvP player. Superb ZvP was the main reason she won the DHM North American regional, beating Astrea before dethroning Neeb as the regional boss. Neeb is hardly a slouch in ZvP, even beating Reynor in two BO3 series soon after at StayAt HomeStory Cup #4 (though he lost to Lambo and Solar soon after). You must take care when using transitive property in StarCraft II, but with those results in mind, I'm made to believe that Scarlett has a real chance of beating Trap in a BO3.
Trap’s PvZ is very hard to gauge. He's played very close series against Serral in recent tournaments (3-4 in PiG Sty Festival, 2-3 in Stay At HomeStory Cup)—yet he's also lost BO3's lately against slightly weaker Zergs like Solar, Lambo and Armani
Overall, the two players' recent results suggest to me that they are both capable and somewhat as likely to win a decider’s BO3 against each other, therefore my prediction will be based on my gut feeling. And that means I'm predicting Scarlett to advance over Trap.
Predictions:
Trap > TeebuL
Cure > Scarlett
Trap < Cure
TeebuL < Scarlett
Scarlett > Trap
Cure and Scarlett to advance.
Group B Preview: Clem, Zest, Neeb, Cyan
by WaxStart time: Wednesday, Nov 10 1:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)
Like Group A, this group also had two ostensible favorites in Clem and Zest, but the underdogs are too dangerous to write-off out of hand. Neeb has thwarted Clem in the past, and the unpredictability of PvP gives him a fighting chance against even a top two PvP player in Zest. Cyan would have been easy to dismiss in the first half of 2021, but he recently showed us an improved version of himself by upsetting TIME to become the first new Chinese champion in years.
The Season Finals always seem to present the same kind of test for Clem: How good are your non-TvZ match-ups? With some of his recent losses in TvZ—including losses to Serral that saw him lose his EU crown—Clem now has some questions to answer on that end. However, TvP and TvT have always been the more 'traditional' thorns in his side. As we've often repeated on TL.net, the quality of Clem's TvP gameplay looks to be top-tier, but he always seems to lose the match-up in crucial moments. We saw that unfold rather starkly in the last Season Finals against PartinG, where Clem seemed to be ahead in a crucial game on Lightshade. Yet, perhaps due to impatience (or TOO much patience), he managed to throw the lead and eventually lose the series.
Neeb has already beaten Clem in two DHM Season Finals group stages, while Zest famously defeated him in IEM Katowice (though Clem actually has a winning record against Zest in smaller events). Even Cyan, with quality wins against TIME under his belt, could present a threat. This is one of the worst possible draws for Clem, but it's the kind of adversity he'll have to overcome to become a real championship-class player on the global stage.
The PvP bloodbath between the remaining three non-Clem players has a fairly clear hierarchy, with Zest way ahead of the other two at #1 in the Aligulac.com PvP rankings, Neeb holding the middle at #10, and Cyan way down below at #31. With 400 rating points between EACH of the three players (800 between Zest and Cyan), it's hard to predict any kind of unexpected outcome, even considering the variance and chaos of PvP.
Zest has just been a beast in general, going all-out in his final year of progaming in a way that's both admirable and a bit uncanny. At this point, I kind of want him to spend a month on vacation, see some friends, and check out the autumn scenario at Seoraksan national park. But, instead, he insists on being good at StarCraft and playing in every tournament possible, so it wouldn't surprise me if he manages to win DHM Winter as his own retirement gift to himself.
On the other hand, Neeb's form has been shaky in the last few months, notably going 4-3 in his DHM North America group and only advancing to the playoffs on the difference of a single map. While he recovered in the playoffs and dominated his NA peers once more (until he ran into Scarlett), that moment of inconsistency was enough to plant some doubt in my mind.
As for Cyan, it's still unclear how 'real' his surprise run to the top of DHM China was. Ever since he beat TIME in an epic grand finals reverse-sweep, his results in other tournaments have remained mostly the same, still struggling to defeat players on the level of Clem, Zest, and Neeb. On the plus side, he did steal a 1-1 against Zest in the World Team League about a week ago, so he might not be totally doomed in PvP.
All in all, I'm going with the safe prediction and picking Zest and Clem to advance. Despite Clem's historic TvP troubles, I don't think Neeb or Cyan will be threatening enough to eliminate him from the group stages this time.
Predictions
Clem > Cyan
Zest > Neeb
Zest > Clem
Neeb > Cyan
Clem > Neeb
Zest and Clem to advance.
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