EPT
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Week #110 was likely to be the final edition of Cups with full-strength participation ahead of IEM Katowice, as Week #111 will overlap with players' travel to the event.
As usual, the allowed players to practice with minor stakes before the most important tournament of the year.
Zest came back after missing the previous week to win the KR cup, Clem impressively won his 4th EU cup in a row, while MaxPax won another NA cup after two unsuccessful finals appearances. [ESL Open Cups are no longer awarding points for the EPT 2021/22 season. Cups will continue to be held and award prize money as before, but will only resume awarding points once the EPT 2022/23 season officially begins.]
KR cup: The Korean cup had a few less top Koreans participating than usual, but there were some strong foreigners to make up for it. Protoss had plenty of representatives such as Astrea, Classic, Creator, Has, herO, MacSed, MCanning, trigger and Zest. This stood in stark contrast to Zerg who only had ByuL and TRUE as notable participants, and Terran who had veterans ByuN and Gumiho joined by less established players in PREP Esports' HonMonO and Jinioh in the cup.
The top side of the bracket was filled with more non-Korean players despite it being the Korean cup, which was an amusing reversal of the situation in the "North American/Americas" cups. Zest got past fork and trigger (who notably beat TRUE and MacSed 2-1) rather easily with 2-0 victories, to face off against Astrea in the semifinals after the American protoss beat Australian zerg Oreo 2-0 and Creator 2-1 in the PvP. Zest's one week absence did not alter his strong form, as the Super Tournament champion swept Astrea to go to the finals without dropping a single map.
The bottom side of the bracket was a bit more friendly and herO got to the semifinals without much difficulty, defeating MCanning and ByuL (who managed to take out Has the round before) 2-0 each to meet Gumiho there. The Terran player had a good run up to that point, taking out two very strong opponents: Classic 2-0 in the TvP and ByuN 2-1 in the mirror matchup, and he proved resourceful in the semifinals versus herO. After leading the series 2-1, herO could not win another map and Gumiho beat him 3-2 to go up against Zest in the finals.
Gumiho had a great start in the final series, beating Zest on both 2000 atmospheres and Hardwire, but he got reverse swept by Zest who won the series 3-2 to get his 44th gold medal overall, cementing his lead over HeroMarine who is still at 40.
Upset(s) of the day: The most glaring upset for me was the good run of Gumiho overall, beating opponents he was the slight underdogs against in consecutive matches: Classic and ByuN in BO3's, and herO in a BO5. His odds of winning these matches were respectively 43%, 31%, and 32% according to Aligulac, which makes his overall performance in this cup even more impressive.
*****
EU Cup: The European cup was another occasion to see some of the best European players duke it out before Katowice. With ShoWTimE and Reynor not participating, a spot opened up for an underdog to reach the semifinals—of course, the three favorites in Clem, HeroMarine, and MaxPax seemed almost certainly locked in.
The top side of the bracket had Clem once again dropping a map to an underdog Terran in Brat_OK, winning the series 2-1 (he won 2-1 versus MilkiCow in cup #109 ro16) before beating MaNa 2-0 to qualify for the semifinals. His protoss teammate notably defeated Reynor’s younger brother BabyMarine, who impressively beat goblin 2-1 before losing to MaNa 1-2. Spirit ended up seizing that 'vacant' semifinal spot, with victories over MilkiCow and Rattata 2-1 among others. Unfortunately for him, Clem was as dominant as in the previous cups and destroyed him 3-0, making a statement that he is one of the favorites for Katowice among the European players.
MaxPax and HeroMarine met in the semifinals as expected on the bottom side of the bracket, with both of them having relatively easy runs. The Danish protoss beat notably DIMAGA in the PvZ and DisK in the PvP without dropping a map, while Big Gabe beat countryman BattleB 2-0 in the mirror matchup and Krystianer 2-1. Like in cup #109 though, HeroMarine proved too strong for MaxPax and beat him on the same 3-1 score to qualify for the finals and get another shot at defeating Clem, who had won the last 3 EU cups in a row.
While in the previous cup, HeroMarine managed to take the first game of the series off Clem, this time the French terran decided that he could go to bed earlier and did not let his opponent breath, winning the finals 3-0 which could have been a perfect run if he did not lose a map to Brat_OK. After these 4 EU cups victories in a row, Clem is approaching #2 in overall gold medal count HeroMarine with 35 wins.
Upset(s) of the day: There weren’t many upsets this day, but BabyMarine beating goblin 2-1 is impressive to me, and he had only around 19% chances to do so according to Aligulac. Brat_OK taking a map off Clem is also an upset, especially considering stronger Terrans such as Spirit and even HeroMarine failed to do so with more shots at it this week (BO5 compared to BO3).
*****
NA Cup: The North American edition was not super stacked, but there were still strong favorites such as Zest, ByuN, Gumiho and MaxPax participating.
Zest expectedly dominated his side of the bracket, winning versus former Terran Jason 2-0 in a PvP, CuKu 2-0 in PvT, and Gerald 3-0 in PvP during the semifinals. Gerald notably beat HonMonO 2-0 and Spatz 2-1 in PvP (after the German protoss took out DisK) before his semifinals loss to Zest. The bottom side of the bracket was almost as predictable as the top side, with ByuN beating NightMare 2-0 before winning versus trigger 2-1 in consecutive TvP matches. His semifinals opponent was MaxPax, who beat Gumiho 2-0 in quarters, and managed to reverse sweep ByuN 3-2 to qualify for the finals.
After losing to both Zest and herO in the NA finals of cups #108 and #109 respectively, MaxPax finally got his revenge on the DPG protoss, and beat Zest 3-1 to get his 8th gold medal to tie ByuN for the 11th most cup wins.
Upset(s) of the day: The biggest upsets for me this week in the NA cup were MaxPax victories over ByuN and Zest in BO5 series. He had only 33:66 odds versus ByuN in a BO5, and even odds versus Zest—overall it was an impressive result.
by Poopi
