EPT
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Week #117 was the first official cup of the 2022/23 ESL Pro Tour, awarding the first batch of EPT points outside of the GSL. In the Korean server cup,
Cure was finally able to taste victory once more, claiming his first cup on his home server since week #97. In Europe, Clem was back to his dominating ways after not participating in week #116, which made him miss out on a potential 'four-peat'. Finally, MaxPax showed he's still THE player to beat in the Americas cup, taking another victory to make it six wins in the last eight weeks.KR Cup: The KR cup had a pretty small number of participants, but it was very stacked toward the top. Classic, MacSed, NightMare and Trap represented the Protoss faction, ByuN, Cure and TIME carried the Terran banner, while the fearsome duo of Dark and Rogue showed out for Zerg. That is a very high number of GSL:ST, GSL Code S and World Championships in a single cup of only 16 players. Hopefully, this means that more top Korean players will come to fight for the EPT points in the 2022/23 season, but it could simply be that the timing worked out for players in the short break between the Code S RO20 and RO10.
The round of 16 was pretty straightforward, with all favorites managing to advance. The only small upsets we can talk about are NightMare 2-0'ing MacSed, TIME losing a map in TvZ versus Rex, and Classic losing a map in PvZ against MeomaikA.
Things started to get real serious in the quarterfinals though, which was to be expected with such an impressive line-up. NightMare was on fire and managed to extinguish Rogue with a 2-1 victory, while Cure got the best of ByuN with a 2-0 win in the TvT mirror. Trap managed to beat TIME 2-0, which is encouraging as the Protoss seemed to have more troubles than expected in the match-up during his Code S group. Dark defeated Classic 2-0 seemingly without much trouble, which is not super surprising given how their Group A match went in the GSL.
Despite some upsets in quarters, the semifinals were as straightforward as the round of 16: Cure beat NightMare 2-0, while Dark looked dominant with his 2-0 victory over Trap. Many fans would probably have bet on Dark destroying Cure in the finals, given the poor performances of the Terran as of late, and the match started just like that with a victory from Dark. However, Cure was able to win all three next games to grab the victory. After 19 cups in KR without a single win, Cure was able to get another gold medal and is now in #2nd place with 15 compared to the 14 of #3 Solar.
Upset(s) of the day: It is very hard to top NightMare defeating Rogue 2-1, so that will be my pick for upset of the day! Beating MacSed was a doable but welcome performance, but it was unexpected to win versus Rogue even though the Zerg is not particularly known for being great in small online cups. The aligulac numbers speak for themselves, with NightMare having less than a 22% chance of winning a bo3 against Rogue.
*****
EU Cup: France wasn't just dominating /r/place on Monday—their players came through strong in the first official EPT cup of the season as well! Indeed, 7 out of 32 players in RO32 were French, 4 were still there in ro16, 3 in ro8 and 2 in semifinals. Leading the pack of hungry French players was obviously Clem, who did not attend the previous cup but had won cups #114 and #115. Other than French players, most of the notable non-Korean players except Serral, Reynor, and ShoWTimE were there. HeroMarine, MaxPax, Elazer, SpeCial, Neeb, Harstem, uThermal, SKillous, and TIME were all participating, which made for a very stacked day of games.
There were numerous upsets all over the bracket: even though he got first seed back, Big Gabe could pull off a back-to-back as he lost 1-2 versus Elazer in quarters after beating Krystianer 2-0 the round before. The Polish Zerg looked strong on the day, as he also upset MaxPax 2-0 in ro16, making his run even more impressive. The competition was fierce on that side of the bracket, with Denver barely beating French Zerg Shino 2-1 in RO32, but beating SpeCial without dropping a map the next round. Although this was a victory for EU against NA, Neeb was left to fight for his region. The American Protoss made a hard-fought run all the way to the finals, beating Gerald, Denver and Elazer with a 2-1 score, but he managed to be clutch in each and every match to get a shot at winning the European cup.
The bottom side of the bracket was also very contested: Chinese Terran TIME (who still seems to be playing from the US) narrowly defeated Protoss arrogfire 2-1 while Harstem did the same but in reverse, being a Protoss to defeat a Chinese Terran 2-1 in Coffee. PtitDrogo made a deep run as well, going 2-1 against Puzzle, 2-0 vs Rail (who notably defeated uThermal 2-1 previously), before winning another PvP 2-0 against Harstem. Clem also had to defeat a lot of Protosses—in fact his whole run from ro32 onwards was TvP with 2-0's versus Spatz and DnS, and 2-1's against SKillous and PtitDrogo to meet Neeb in the finals.
It looked like he could finally have a clean victory in TvP, with a 2-0 lead over Neeb, but his opponent was clutch all the rounds before and would not simply lose 0-3. The series got tied 2-2 before Clem was ultimately able to close it out with a win on Blackburn to get yet another victory in Europe. With this, he is at 38 gold medals across all regions at #3 place behind #2 HeroMarine with 42 and #1 Zest with 44.
Upset(s) of the day: There were several results that could be considered upsets: Elazer beating both MaxPax and HeroMarine, Denver beating SpeCial, Harstem winning against TIME, or Rail beating uThermal. The result that impressed me the most though was Elazer with his victories against possibly the strongest Protoss and Terran in Europe, at least when ShoWTimE is not there and Clem is on the other side of the bracket. Neeb's run was also quite impressive for his relentless ability to close out narrow series.
*****
NA Cup: This week's NA cup had a rather familiar summary: around sixty players battle it out on StarCraft 2, and in the end, MaxPax wins. This continued NA domination from the Danish Protoss has been very impressive, especially this week considering the first seed was none other than Dark.
The top Korean Zerg tore through his side of the bracket: going 2-1 versus Nitix, 2-0 versus JimRising, 2-0 versus Gerald (who beat PtitDrogo 2-1), and 2-0 against TIME to get his spot in the finals. SpeCial managed to defeat NightMare 2-0 but could not win versus TIME in the mirror, losing 0-2.
The bottom side of the bracket was dominated by MaxPax even more than Dark with the top side, as the Protoss simply did not lose any map to get to the finals. Indeed, he won 2-0 versus ShaDoWn, trigger (who impressively beat ByuN 2-1 in the ro16) and GuMiho, among others. Similarly to the KR cup, Dark won the first map of the finals, before his opponent won the next three to win the cup. MaxPax has now 9 gold medals in NA, which puts him at #4 behind PartinG (12), Solar (16) and Zest (23), and ahead of Clem and Cure (7 gold medals each).
Upset(s) of the day: trigger’s victory 2-1 over ByuN was the biggest upset for me this cup, and Aligulac seems to agree with me as ByuN was the favorite with more than 83% chances of winning according to the website. Surprisingly, MaxPax beating Dark was not that big of an upset according to Aligulac with Dark being around a 60:40 favorite (though fans would probably measure things differently should they meet in a major tournament).
by Poopi
