EPT
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Week #116 was the last week of the off-season, with the 2022/23 season of Open Cups set to begin in week #117. While the cash prize will stay the same, the return of EPT points should entice more players to compete (it may take some time for this to ramp up, as players don't get desperate for points until later in the season).
In any case, week #116 saw
GuMiho win his first KR cup, HeroMarine win his 42nd EU cup, while MaxPax won North America for his third victory in the region.[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: As usual, the Korean cup saw the smallest number of participants try their luck, but most of them were pretty strong contenders. Indeed, Dark made a surprise appearance to represent Zerg, while Cure, GuMiho, and Percival showed up for Terran. Finally, Protoss had Astrea, Classic, Creator, and Nice headlining their delegation.
The two favorites Cure and Dark were put on the opposite side of the bracket, so many viewers would have expected them to meet in the finals. Both of them progressed smoothly to the semis, with Cure beating Percival 2-0 while Dark beat both Prince and Nice without dropping a map.
While the GSL championship duo from 2022 were the favorites, it was the military service returnees who shined on the day. GuMiho won against Bistork (2-0) and Puzzle (2-1) in the earlier rounds, and then scored a big upset over the most recent Code S champion Cure 2-0 in the semifinals. Classic had a harder time beating his earlier opponents with 2-1 wins over HonMonO and Creator, but pulled out his own upset of beating Dark 2-1. It seems like Classic went up in level at the same time his opponents got stronger, barely beating better and better opponents.
Classic drew first blood in the grand finals against GuMiho, but perhaps GuMiho having a cleaner run up to then meant something as he rallied to take the next three maps in a row. With this victory, GuMiho was able to secure his first ever gold medal in the ESL Open Cups.
Upset(s) of the day: Puzzle beating Astrea 2-0 was an unexpected result for me, even on the KR server. Since there are usually not many upsets in this cup due to the small number of participants, it might have been my upset of the day another week, but this time around there were even bigger surprises.
I am not sure what was more impressive between Gumiho beating Cure and Classic winning against Dark, so I'll defer to Aligulac for giving out the Upset of the Day 'award.' The formula gave GuMiho around 29% odds of beating Cure (this was after the model took the win into account, so the odds would have been lower at the time of the match), while giving Classic a slightly better chance at around 33%. Thus, despite the numbers being very close and both players having won great victories, I'll give GuMiho the nod by the difference of a few percentage points and his superior 2-0 scoreline.
*****
EU Cup: The European cup had a very deep list of participants, making it easier to simply point out the regulars who declined to participate this week. Reynor's absence meant Zerg was missing a super-strong representative, while Clem rare no-show meant Terran was missing a top player as well (although he took part in the NA cup later that night). Most of the European Protoss crew was in attendance besides ShoWTimE, but his empty spot was more than filled by North American Neeb.
Indeed, Neeb made a deep run which was quite peculiar, as he managed to qualify for the finals beating only Protoss players from RO32 onwards: 2-1 Harstem, 2-0 ForJumy, 2-1 MaxPax (an especially impressive result) and 2-0 DnS (who notably beat SKillous and Kas 2-0 each to get to the semifinals).
The other side of the bracket did not feature as many upsets. Clem was not there to bother his cup rival HeroMarine, making TIME (temporarily playing from North America due to some issues returning to China from Katowice, according to TL.net posters) the biggest challenge to Big Gabe on his half of his bracket. HeroMarine took a 2-0 victory, moving on to face Spatz in the semifinals. The underdog German Protoss managed to reach the top four for the second time ever (the last time being in week #99), defeating ArT (2-0), Gerald (2-1), and Nicoract (2-1), but fell 0-2 to HeroMarine one step before the grand finals.
Although Neeb proved his PvP was stellar, HeroMarine did not let him breath at all in PvT in their grand finals match. The EU Cup behemoth won the series convincing by a 3-0 score, getting his 42nd overall gold medal (all won in EU). This victory brought him closer to Zest who is current the most successful cup player with 44 golds across all servers.
Upset(s) of the day: Neeb winning 2-1 over MaxPax was obviously a nice upset, but this is not the most surprising given the volatile nature of BO3 PvP.
Spatz vs Nicoract being one of the quarterfinal matches was a pretty big upset in itself, with Nicoract defeating goblin 2-0 along the way, while Spatz also had a good run with wins over Gerald and ArT beforehand. Finally, kudos to veteran Terran Kas for also reaching the quarterfinals by taking a 2-0 over SpeCial.
*****
NA Cup: The NA cup featured a healthy mix of high-level players from all regions. Astrea, Gerald, MaxPax, Nice, and trigger stood out among the Protoss representatives, Dark was once again the sole top Zerg, while Terran could look to Clem, Cure, GuMiho, SpeCial, and TIME to claim the cup.
Dark got upset pretty early in the bracket, winning 2-0 over ReBellioN but then losing 0-2 versus Astrea. Considering that he had no trouble making out of his Code S group in the previous week, it was curious to see how he lost to both Classic and Astrea in week #116 of the ESL Open Cups. Since Dark was the only Zerg with a realistic shot at making a deep run, his elimination allowed for an amusing bracket: there were the same number of Terrans and Protosses in both quarterfinals and semifinals, yet no mirrors happened until the grand finals!
MaxPax got his first strong opponent in quarters, facing GuMiho and beating him 2-1 after the KR cup champion eliminated trigger 2-0. SpeCial beat strong opponents to get into the semis, having to defeat both TIME and Gerald, which he did with respectively 2-1 and 2-0 scores. Unfortunately for SpeCial, he narrowly lost to MaxPax by a 1-2 score, and was unable to defend his title from NA cup #115.
In the bottom side of the bracket, Cure had a nice TvP run, winning against StephenCurry, Spatz and Nice without dropping a map to face Astrea in the semifinals. The American Protoss was on fire, having beaten Dark 2-0 and Clem 2-1, and perhaps this momentum helped him defeat Cure as well, doing so with a 2-1 score.
Although MaxPax lost in EU against NA Protoss Neeb, he got his revenge by beating another NA Protoss in the person of Astrea, who got the first map but then lost the next three consecutively. MaxPax took his 8th NA cup, having won 5 cups out of the 11 in off-season 2, ahead of the second most dominant player of that period Zest who has 3 victories.
Upset(s) of the day: Astrea’s entire run was spectacular, but unfortunately not rewarded with the final victory. Still, beating any of Dark, Clem and Cure would be a great performance for most players, but beating all three in the same cup? That’s quite insane. According to Aligulac (with the same caveat that we only have access to odds after his victory was taken into account), he only had 27%, 32%, and 35% chances of winning in those three matches.
by Poopi
