EPT
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Week #114 was the last series of cups before the new balance patch went live.
Classic won in Korea for the third time in the last four weeks, Clem managed to win another European cup, and finally MaxPax took a back-to-back victory in North America.[ESL Open Cups have temporarily stopped awarding EPT points. 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: This week's Korean cup had an unusually small number of participants: only 14 players tried their luck day. There were zero 'notable' players among Terrans (according to Liquipedia), while Zerg had just a single strong participant in Solar. Protoss had the best representation with Classic, Cyan, MacSed, and Zest showing up.
One could have easily predicted that the finals would be contested between Classic, Zest, or Solar, but only one of them was even able to reach the finals. Zest was upset in his first match with a 0-2 loss against Bistork in a PvP, while Solar suffered a shock 0-2 defeat to Cyan in the semifinals. Only Classic lived up to his billing as one of the favorites, beating MacSed (2-1) and Bistork (2-0) to claim a finals spot. Unfortunately for Cyan, Classic proved to be too strong and solid of an opponent in the finals, as he took a 3-0 victory to claim his third off-season cup title on the Korean server.
Upset(s) of the day: Despite having a very small number of participants, we still saw two major upsets with Bistork taking down Zest and Cyan beating Solar by 2-0 scorelines. Aligulac.com's formula said Cyan had only around an 18% chance of winning, while Bistork was even more of an underdog with a puny 1%-ish chance of beating Zest. At the time of the match, Bistork had 1498 PvP rating while Zest stood at 3007, which makes this one of the biggest upsets in the history of professional StarCraft. Not surprisingly, none of the streamers we checked decided to broadcast this huge PvP mismatch, so we're left scratching our heads as to how this happened.
*****
EU Cup: In contrast to Korea, the European cup was once again very stacked. The seeding reset meant that MaxPax still began as the #1 seed, placed on the opposite side of the bracket from both Clem and HeroMarine. Before the reset, Clem and MaxPax were usually on the same top side of the bracket while HeroMarine was “alone” on the bottom side.
Given these starting positions, MaxPax seemed favored to come into the finals from the top side of the bracket and face the winner of HeroMarine vs Clem. However, Denver threw a wrench in the works by catching fire and making a deep run, defeating Rattata (2-0) and YoungYakov (2-1) before scoring a big 2-0 upset over last week's winner HeroMarine in the quarterfinals (Big Gabe had defeated arrogfire and Krystianer in the earlier rounds).
Clem had a relatively tough bracket run before meeting Denver in the semis. He started with a 2-0 victory in the TvT versus the EU-based-Brazilian Kelazhur, a win versus German Protoss ForJumy with the same score, and then a difficult 2-1 victory against TIME to reach the semis. Though Denver has upset Clem in previous cups, this time Clem managed to prevail with a 2-1 victory to reach the finals.
Waiting for him there was MaxPax, who came out of his side of the bracket as expected. The Danish Protoss didn't drop a single map against against Indy, Brat_OK, GunGFuBanDa, and SpeCial (who defeated a lot of good protosses, namely Neeb, goblin and Gerald all 2-0 before facing MaxPax) to reach the finals. Even though MaxPax had a pristine run compared to the bloodied Clem, the French Terran was still able to remind viewers that MaxPax had the IEM Katowice absences to thank for his recent EU Cup success. Clem delivered a particularly painful beatdown to his frequent open cup foe, sweeping his opponent 3-0 to win another gold medal. This puts Clem at 36 total victories, closing in on #2 HeroMarine who has 41.
Upset(s) of the day: The biggest upset this week was obviously Denver beating HeroMarine 2-0, which is particularly impressive after seeing Big Gabe's recent performances in the match-up. Denver was the clear underdog with around 25:75 odds of pulling off the upset in a BO3, but he made it happen and also gave Clem a run for his money in the next round.
*****
NA Cup: The NA cup saw the usual contingent of players turn up, minus Clem who might have been satisfied with his victory in EU. Astrea, Gerald, MaxPax, trigger and Zest were the notable Protoss representatives while GuMiho and TIME were the strongest Terrans to try their luck. Zerg had several familiar faces show up as well, but no one quite on the level of the aforementioned Protoss and Terran representatives.
The top side of the bracket went rather predictably: Zest destroyed all of his opponents until the semifinals where he met GuMiho to have his first big challenge. He proceeded to win their encounter 2-1 to get a shot in the finals. The bottom side of the bracket was dominated by MaxPax: he notably beat TIME and trigger among others, all without dropping a map. The Canadian Protoss had a nice run before that, winning 2-1 versus KR terran HonMonO and 2-0 vs Gerald in the PvP.
The finals between MaxPax and Zest was hard to predict headed in, with the two players having similar Aligulac ratings. While the Danish Protoss was up 7 matches to 4 in their 2021 head-to-heads, the two had gone 1-1 in their 2022 BO5 matches. The finals was tied 1-1 after two games, but MaxPax won the next two games to secure a 3-1 victory. Not only did MaxPax reaffirm his status as a world class PvP player, but he also tied Clem and Cure with seven 1st place finishes in the NA cup. In some more impressive statistical feats, MaxPax won four out of the last five NA cups, and reached the finals in six of the last seven.
Upset(s) of the day: There weren't any big upsets in NA—regular viewers of the ESL Open Cups wouldn't be surprised to learn that MaxPax was actually the slight favorite over Zest. Therefore, GuMiho beating Astrea 2-1 takes the cake for me, with the Towel Terran being the minor underdog with around 4:6 odds on Aligulac.
by Poopi
