2022 GSL Super Tournament 1 - RO4 Preview

Start time: Thursday, Jan 27 8:00am GMT (GMT+00:00)

Headed into the last day of the Super Tournament, a grand finals clash between #1 and 2 ranked Korean players Maru and Dark seems to be the likely outcome. However, the Protoss challengers can't be counted out—Zest is rounding into championship form ahead of IEM Katowice, while Zoun has a history of pulling off upsets in the Super Tournament.

Round of 4 - Match #1: Zest vs Maru

by Poopi

This is a clash at the pinnacle of the PvT match-up, with the two players holding the #1 spot in Aligulac's PvT and TvP rankings. Despite this, this match-up feels like a tough draw for Zest, which really goes to show how dominant Maru has been over the last few months. After a late 2021 triple at ASUS ROG Fall, King of Battles #2, and DHM: Winter where Maru beat virtually all the top players in the world, his momentum was briefly halted by Rogue in Super Tournament 3. However, he had another title run at DHM: Last Chance to start 2022 (albeit without Protoss opponents), making him look like one of the scariest title contenders ahead of IEM Katowice.

In terms of relative rating, Maru's TvP isn't quite as dominant as other #1 match-ups such as Serral's ZvP or his own TvT. But he still gaps Zest by nearly 200 points on Aligulac.com, which gives him a 65.66% chance of winning this BO5 series. In general, Maru does not really lose to Protoss nowadays. Ever since his painful quarterfinal loss 1-3 to Trap in Code S Season 3 of 2021, Maru is 20-2 in TvP matches (plus 2 draws in WTL). His only losses were to Prince's clever cheese in a WTL ace match (part of the Team GP miracle run that felled the likes of Dark and Rogue as well), and a 1-3 loss to Harstem playing cross-server on Europe during the TSL8 qualifiers. As for his wins, he's defeated plenty of mid-to-high tier opponents, including the likes of Neeb, MaxPax and ShoWTimE among foreigners and Trap, Classic, herO, Creator and Zest from the Korean contingent.

Zest is playing very well against Terran as well (he is the #1 rated PvT player after all), holding a 70%+ match win-rate at nearly all points during the last six months. The huge number of games he plays in online tournaments makes it hard to list every single notable win and loss, so it will suffice to say he's gone back and forth with all the top Terrans… except Maru (more on that in a bit). There's reason to be optimistic about Zest in the general, as he seems to be holding on to the chance of being able to play at IEM Katowice—though he won't 100% confirm it—and practicing hard for the opportunity. He previously admitted to taking things easy around November-December, but he seems to be returning to the impressive form that saw him become the only player to ever beat Rogue in an offline BO7 match in Code S Season 3.

Another ray of hope for Zest is that herO made Maru bleed in their RO8 match, narrowly losing the series 2-3. I however do not think that it is a good indicator for how this Zest vs Maru match will go, as herO leaned on cheesy tactics to get his wins—something Zest has been hit or miss with in the past. Still, herO isn't the worst proxy for Zest against Maru—I think he's one of the best PvT players at the moment, and he mows through plenty of non-Maru Terrans on his way to winning ESL Open Cups.

While I expect Zest to play well against Maru, I think predicting an outright victory is too much of a stretch. His long term head-to-head record against Maru paints a pretty grim picture: their overall match record is 20 wins, 12 losses, and 1 draw in Maru's favor, with Maru having won their last seven meetings. Not only that, but Maru won their last two GSL meetings in extremely one-sided fashion (albeit, they occurred long ago during Maru's dominant 2018 run), smashing him 4-0 in the Code S finals and 4-1 in the Code S RO4.

Also, as impressive as Zest's PvT record is, it's concerning how poor he can look when he's off his game. His Code S finals against Cure was particularly painful to watch in that regard, with Zest taking good leads and containing his opponent to an inferior economy, but throwing his entire army in doubtful trades to achieve very little. He gave Cure opportunities to claw his way back into the game, and like elite players often do, Cure capitalized and won the championship.

More recently, in his Super Tournament RO8 match against Bunny, Zest was nearly reverse-swept by Maru's teammate. His game on Glittering Ashes had him in a good spot with his Void-ray / Battery cheese, but committing too hard without a viable escape route cost him the game. He did not really throw the game on 2000 Atmospheres, but he went for the overzealous attacks that cost him once or twice per series, and he definitely can’t afford to do that against Maru in his current form. At least Zest seemed aware of this problem in an earlier Super Tournament interview, and he should be working on cleaning up his mistakes.

With Zest performing well nowadays, I expect him to take a game. However, he probably won't snap his losing streak to Maru just yet, Maru should qualify for the Super Tournament finals once more.

Prediction: Zest 1 - 3 Maru

Round of 4 - Match #2: Dark vs Zoun

by Wax

While perhaps not a 'rivalry' in a strict sense, Dark and Zoun had one of the more peculiar StarCraft II relationships of 2021. After establishing himself as a Code S regular in 2020, Zoun showed even further improvement to start off 2021, finishing second place in the first Super Tournament of the year. Despite this, few would have predicted him to become a huge thorn in Dark's side midway through the year, not only eliminating him from Super Tournament #2 in a massive 3-2 upset, but also dealing him two BO3 defeats in NeXT Masters to cause a surprising group stage elimination.

Dark briefly set things straight by earning a close 3-2 victory over Zoun in TSL7, but Zoun got Dark back later in the World Team League by taking a 2-0 victory to lift underdogs Alpha X over Dark's super-team of Dragon Phoenix Gaming. Despite being an extremely strong ZvP player otherwise, it really felt like Dark was snake-bitten by Zoun in particular. It was as if Serral had an explicable weakness against Spirit, or Maru constantly found himself getting constantly tripped up by Solar—those kinds of things almost never happen in StarCraft II.

Since then, Dark has corrected course once more, winning his last three matches against Zoun—albeit in smaller events and qualifiers. Dark fans will want to believe he's put the 'Zoun problem' to bed: the plucky Protoss got lucky for a few months, but Dark is never going to underestimate him ever again. Personally, I'm not so sure, as a major tournament match differs greatly from any other setting.

Interestingly enough, Zoun hasn't needed to be particularly cheesy in order to defeat Dark—he's pulled off the upsets in fairly straight-up games. This is a bit of a surprise because we've seen him get utterly demolished by the likes of Rogue and Serral when playing his predictable Glaive-Adept into Disruptor builds, but he seems to have a little bit more success going for the ground-game against Dark. Also, it's often been defense that clinches the victory for Zoun, holding off the occasional Nydus or Queen-walk from Dark. Skytoss is also a strength for Zoun, but one might say that of most Code S-tier Protoss players these days if they're allowed to put their composition together.

Their quirky individual relationship notwithstanding, Dark is clearly the huge favorite on paper with a 73.44% chance of winning according to Aligulac.com. He stands as the #2 ZvP player at the time of writing, compared to Zoun who trails quite a bit at #7 in PvZ (he's recently been surpassed by herO and Creator, and even SKillous is right behind him). Yet, there are enough extenuating circumstances to make a case for Zoun. Not only does he have a history of success against Dark, but he's been exceptional in the Super Tournament as well. He's taken out the likes of Dark, Rogue, and Zest in previous tournaments, and in the current competition, he has already scored a massive 3-0 upset against one of the best TvP players in Cure.

When I add it all up, I still have to take Dark to win here—it's really only Rogue and Maru who have been able to challenge him in Korea in the last few months. Even though Zoun is looking red hot in this tournament with a 6-0 record so far, Dark has the same record and is looking even more dominant.

Prediction: Dark 3 - 2 Zoun

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