Effort got green at 12 while Kal spawned at 8 in white on Great Barrier Reef. Effort opened overpool while Kal went for pylon gateway in main, a very unusual throwback to the 20th century. His scout probe went the wrong way but reached Effort's natural in time to block a FE, not having to urgently scout the main the way a standard protoss FE opening would. Effort responded by expanding to the natural at 5, following it up with a third hatchery at his natural.

Kal feigned some pressure with one gate zealots but it was just to limit drone production and he quickly rewalled his ramp with zealots rather than risk having his single gateway overrun. He then hid a citadel at the bottom of his main, killing the scout overlord before it was seen and adding a stargate. Then the moment the overlord died Kal cancelled the stargate, upgraded zealot speed and added two more gateways. The build he was faking, DTsair/reaversair rush, has several counters. One of them, a greedy hydralisk/spire with overlord speed, would have been hard countered by the speedlot rush. Unfortunately for Kal, Effort opted for a different counter, a quick ling allin to hit the one gate tech before it gets its important units.

Effort cut drones completely, barely mining either of his expansions, focussing on a mass zergling allin to break Kal's 'tech build'. Effort caught Kal before his three gateways kicked in and easily busted through the ramp. With three gateways, Kal was able to make a group of zealots large enough to not get flanked and overwhelmed but by this point Effort had seen what was up and any momentum Kal might have hoped for was gone. Effort had gotten lair up and added a spire while setting up a speedling concave at the base of Kal's ramp, keeping him contained.

Two mutalisks arrived and started taking free shots at Kal's zealots, forcing them to pull back to a single cannon at his nexus. The mutas went to work killing the single pylon powering the gateways and Kal decided to sacrifice his zealots to buy time to get anti-air. The zealots ran down the ramp into the waiting zergling concave with mutalisks raining fire from above. Although they bought enough time for a cannon to cover the gateways they extracted little value for their sacrifice. Effort had spent the last minute fixing his economy, spending his gas on mutalisks and his spare minerals on more drones. He'd gotten a second gas up and a decent clump of mutalisks, enough to start sniping probes. Meanwhile Kal had cut probes to speedlot allin and now found himself having to retech to dragoons while contained and without much money. Eventually he was forced to move out and the mutalisks promptly sniped all but five of his probes for negligible losses. His mass dragoons allined against a zerg with three hatcheries, a spire and speedling tech with predictable results. GG.

In many ways Kal was unfortunate here. He faked a tech rush perfectly, enough for me to believe he was going 2005 era dt sair. However I don't know if Effort recognised the possibility of mass speedlots and went for a counter that would work against both or if he just tried to break one gate tech and got lucky (Wax: Interview says he went speedlings because he was suspicious). Either way, once he saw the situation he played it perfectly. His mutalisk switch was extremely difficult for Kal to follow with a switch of his own and the speedling muta combination forced Kal to engage unfavourably over and over. Kal went for a clever cheese, faking a build while countering the counter to his fake but after Effort went massling and then saw the speedlots it was over.

Kwark's Player Ratings
Effort: 4 of 5
Kal: 2 of 5

Effort 4 for a competent game with no mistakes and the possibility of an excellent read on Kal's build.
Kal 2 because I really don't know how good he's playing because he did something weird. His straightup play is top notch so I'm knocking him down from a 3 simply because not playing normally is a bad strategy when your standard is as good as Kal's.

WaxAngel's Match Rating: 1 of 5.
One base tech losing to 3 hatch lings is one the most boring, one-sided ways a match can end.

Kal got teal at 1 while Effort got brown at 7 on Fighting Spirit. Kal opened FE while Effort went for an overpool. Kal scouted with a single probe, first to 5, then to 11 natural, before going forge-nex with a late forge. This is of course terrible play that loses instantly to a nine pool opening but I'm sure Kal thought the gains were worth the risk of an instant loss some of the time. Effort followed his overpool with an expansion and a wave of lings which were able to break through the wall of Kal which had a single cannon, killing four probes, stopping a maynard and wasting a lot of mining time.

Having punished Kal for his gambling opening Effort felt free to powerdrone, expand to 9, tech to lair and scout around Kal's base with a single remaining ling. Four more zerglings kept Kal playing completely blind by denying probe scouting, while Effort headed to mutalisks with a very strong economy. Effort took that strong economy and added three more hatcheries, going up to a six hatch macro build with powerdrones and mutalisks for map control. Kal's corsairs came too late to compete with three active hatcheries of mutalisks and despite Kal's four gateways of units Effort still had total map control.

Mutalisks harassed Kal's natural with scourges behind them threatening quick death to corsairs if they dared to intervene. In the meanwhile, the rest of the hatcheries came to life and pumped hydralisks and drones. A +1 zealot stab at the zerg natural was thwarted with a solid simcity and mutalisk support, and a dt that went to 9 found Effort's overlord and sunken coverage was perfect. Kal added gateways for a big push, unable to take an expansion without map control, but mass units was not a game he was going to win.

Mutalisks sniped a high templar but were forced back by a huge number of corsairs. Effort refused to accept this setback and responded with a huge flock of scourge to overwhelm the corsairs by force of numbers, and returned to sniping ht with a new group of mutalisks. With most of the templars dead he was free to attack move hydralisks into Kal's natural, and despite attacking head first into a big concave of speedlots and dragoons he was still able to batter Kal down with sheer numbers. GG.

This was a money game and Effort had the resources to play it exactly like he wanted. The ht sniping was a great example of it, Kal knew Effort wanted to snipe ht and made seven or so corsairs, destroying the mutalisks for a single ht loss the first time Effort tried it. Rather than accept this setback and allow Kal his air control Effort was able to respond by retaking air control by force thirty seconds later, and a few seconds after that sniped all the ht with a new group of mutalisks. It didn't matter that Kal anticipated his actions and countered them. So the question is how Effort got such an advantage. Kal's build was bad, one cannon was bad, losing those probes was bad, playing blind was bad, getting scouted continually by a ling was bad. Effort didn't have to make a single zergling more than was absolutely required throughout the early game because he could see exactly what Kal was doing. And that meant that at the point where a zerg usually goes five hat spire Effort could go six. Kal was in the opposite position, playing blind, afraid of possible cheeses and forced to do general builds capable of countering anything. Add into that the probe losses and the resource battle wasn't even close.

Game of the Week
Kwark's Player Ratings
Effort: 4 of 5
Kal: 2 of 5

Kal 2 for his bad opening, his play was average from then on but when you've already lost the game in the first four minutes you deserve a 2.
Effort gets a 4. His play was good, he scouted the situation and he played it correctly. Macro, micro, strategy and tactics were all on form. The only thing stopping him from getting a 5 is that he didn't have to do anything special to win after that opening. The victory with the hydralisks wasn't the result of some exceptional play, rather the extrapolation of a lot of early drone production.

WaxAngel's Match Rating: 3 of 5
Clinical zerg play from effort.

Kal spawned at 1 in purple while Effort got 7 in yellow on Match Point. Effort overpooled again while Kal went for a FE. Effort went for an eleven hatchery at the 6:00 neutral expand, following it with a quick third hat at his natural with just two zerglings. Effort pumped drones and took his gas, heading for lair, while Kal scouted 11 and 9 hoping to find the third hat. Effort eventually killed the scout probe and pumped out a dozen lings but Kal had added a second cannon and made enough units to be safe against speedlings.

Kal transitioned into stargate, reavers and mass sairs while Effort went for three hatch spire into six hatch hydra as he did in game 2. Corsairs and scourge clashed, Kal displaying some decent scourge bugging micro when he was paying attention, and gave away sairs for free when he wasn't. The net effect was about what he'd have gotten if he'd just attack moved, saving a few corsairs and throwing a few away. Effort's hydralisks moved to 3 and began to threaten Kal's natural but reavers and zealots pushed them back.

Effort's army was composed entirely of hydralisks and scourge while Kal had reavers in speed shuttles, speedlots, corsairs and HTs on the way. However in one moment of sloppy micro Kal managed to lose six of his eight corsairs to scourge for no kills other than the scourge suicide. Realising his army was now defenceless against a mutalisk switch Kal immediately pushed out, his speedlots and reavers pushing the hydralisks back with two good storms. Trying to make the most of the seconds before mutalisks retook map control Kal took his mineral only at 3 and switched to dragoons. The mutallisks succeeded in killing a reaver and a ht but there were sufficient dragoons and corsairs out to protect Kal's army by the time they were done. Effort used overlords to check Kal's push across the map, and he split his forces and launched a simultaneous counterattack at Kal's natural and mineral only.

By the time Kal saw this counter, his army was too out of position to return and he was forced to try for a base trade. Kal charged into Effort's natural as his mineral only fell. A round of zealots from his gateways combined with two reavers and a shuttle should have severely delayed the hydralisks pushing up the ramp into his natural, but the Kal was focusing on the wrong place at the wrong time, allowing the hydralisks to kill the two exposed reavers for little trouble. With cannon support, blocking buildings, room to retreat and a narrow choke, reaver-shuttle micro and speedlots flooding in could have stalled the hydralisks indefinitely, but instead both reavers met a meaningless death.



Kal and Effort's naturals both died at the same time and neither player was able to kill the other's main, as lurkers and dts were defending respectively. Kal made a hidden expansion at 5 and covered it with cannons while Effort camped at 6. Unfortunately for Kal his robo had been at his natural and has been destroyed, leaving him with just one observer. As lurkers hit his main it was defenseless and easily destroyed. Kal's observer had gone with his army to 6 so Effort's main, defended by lurkers, had survived. Effort had all his tech in his main, allowing him to crucially scourge snipe Kal's only observer. Effort was able to retake his natural with a few lurkers and scourge, killing the observer and recovering his economy.

The game calmed down briefly as neither could attack the other but it was clear that Effort had more money to fuel his recovery. His natural hatchery was followed by two more in his main and then another two at 9 and 11 bringing him back up to six hat and although Kal's new robo was finally complete he had only two gateways. An attempted harass was thwarted by Effort's mutalisk switch and Kal was left with just a tiny corner of the map against Effort's four bases. Effort's mutalisks and lurkers were together able to destroy Kal's dragoons and Effort just steamrolled him. GG.

Kal wasn't actually in a bad position when they were forced to allin trade bases. The game was decided by inspired play by Effort in relying on lurker defences to offer a base trade and then hold his main and by terrible play by Kal in not microing those reavers and not killing the main. Kal had a single observer and a big army, along with two possible targets, the expansion at 6 and the main at 7. The main had the spawning pool, spire and lair while the expansion had two hatcheries and more minerals. Kal attempted to attack both but his one observer went to 6 and Effort held his main. With his own expansion coming at 5 I feel Kal could have allowed 6 to survive and still have been in the game (especially because 6 is way too cramped to add more hatcheries) while by allowing the main to survive (which still had a fair few minerals) he allowed Effort to remacro considerably faster than he could without any damage to his tech. If he had killed Effort's main then he would not have had to deal with the scourge or the muta or the quick four hatcheries, assuming Kal's army maintained map control. Effort's money would have stacked up but without map control or anywhere to place hatcheries it would have been pointless. A great game by Effort of course but I feel Kal lost this by neglecting to add micro to the defence of his natural and by destroying the wrong base.

Kwark's Player Ratings
Effort: 4 of 5
Kal: 2 of 5

WaxAngel's Match Rating: 3 of 5
Base trades add a certain degree of excitement to a game, but Kal's play should have been smarter in a chaotic situation.

Effort won the series 3-0

Effort won the series 3-0

Effort won the series 3-0

Effort won the series 3-0

Round One
go.go <Match Point> Shine
go.go <Eye of the Storm> EffOrt
EffOrt <Great Barrier Reef> Shine
Three way tie

Round Two
Shine <Eye of the Storm> go.go
EffOrt <Match Point> Shine - This game was re-played due to a hardware error
EffOrt <Great Barrier Reef> go.go
Three way tie

Round Three
Shine <Great Barrier Reef> go.go
Shine <Eye of the Storm> EffOrt
EffOrt <Match Point> go.go
Three way tie

Round Four
Shine <Match Point> go.go
go.go <Eye of the Storm> EffOrt
EffOrt <Great Barrier Reef> Shine

Effort qualifies for Korean Air OSL quarterfinals.

I gave both Effort and Flash 4s for their semifinal games so off that basis this final should be rather interesting with whichever player ups their game to a 5 taking it. My instinctive urge is towards Flash, both because he's Flash and because we know he has much more to give than he has recently. Obviously Effort's recent win over him has to be weighed into any judgement but I just don't believe that Flash was properly prepared or using his best builds. With commitments in all three leagues and recent Protoss opponents Flash faced disadvantages in those games that will not be repeated in the final. The final will show us Flash playing like Flash, rax FEs without any mech nonsense, valks or fOrGG style mass rax allins. He'll play safe, solid and standard and, with his skills, he'll take it down. In the past there has only ever been one man capable of taking on Flash's 1 rax FE and Effort is not that man. Flash will be at his best and I just don't think Effort has it in him.

Set 1: Effort > Flash

There's something with Flash and Match Point. He's 3-4 against Zergs on this map, and seeing how Effort took down Flash on Judgement Day after Flash made a couple of mistakes, if Effort is in shape, this is one set that he should definitely be taking.

Set 2: Flash > Effort

Both players' stats on this map are pretty good, but seeing how T > Z on this map overall, unless Effort pulls out a really good strategy, it'll be Flash vs Type-B all over again (fixed game apparently). And that wasn't pretty for the Zerg.

Set 3: Effort > Flash

Effort had a really good (but somewhat sloppy) game against fantasy on here not too long ago. If Flash opens and stays with a bionic build, Effort has a good chance of taking this one as long as he doesn't let Flash take another main expansion.

Set 4: Flash > Effort

I have a feeling Effort will try an all-in build here. Flash will defend it easily for the win. Even if Effort does not all in, this El Nino remake favors the Terran. The semi-island style also works well with Flash's strong mechanics and harassment.

Set 5: Flash > Effort

If this goes to the 5th set, I feel like Flash will most likely win. Although Match Point TvZ seems to get Flash often, I don't think Flash will lose to the same person on the same map twice. He even beat JD on this map in proleague after losing to him in the MSL finals.

Going into this finals, with the maps all being Terran favoured, plus Flash being the favourite over EffOrt anyway, it's hard to say that "oh well even though X is better, map is favourable toward Y." Even given EffOrt's recent hot streak, it'd be hard to think that he could take this OSL (and golden mouse opportunity) from Flash.


It is interesting that Flash is 3:4 on Match Point, which is pretty heavily TvZ favoured. At first, I was like "oh well Jaedong probably accounts for two of these losses" but then it turns out that he's 1:1 with Jaedong on this map... with losses to Hyun, hyvaa, and ZerO otherwise. EffOrt also has a losing record vT on this map, to lesser terrans like go.go, Bogus, and Lomo. EffOrt has shown that he can beat Flash in a straight up game, and he is on a monster streak, but let's be real here: Flash is still Flash, and because he is he should win the game, but I wouldn't be surprised if EffOrt does.


This map is also TvZ favoured, but it's not by that much. Flash is 4-0 vZ and EffOrt is 3-0 vT, but EffOrt's wins were over go.go and CuteAngel... Going to call for Flash taking this one as well, unless EffOrt brings a tricky strategy a la Jaedong on Fighting Spirit last MSL.


Another TvZ favoured map, with Flash being 7-2 and EffOrt being 1-2, but with the 1 being most recently against fantasy with a cool build. Bringing up Jaedong again, and barring power outages (for this isn't MSL) if EffOrt takes an early lead and keeps Flash from tank-switching for long enough, he could take this one.


There haven't been too many matches played on this map (8-6 TvZ) but since it's close to an El Nino clone, you'd expect it to behave as such. As such, the semi-islands will support Flash's defenses and mechanics, and should allow for strong dropship use for harassment. Flash takes this, and takes the Golden Mouse.

Oh, and if it gets down to it, Flash wins the 5th set because he's Flash.

I haven't watched the CJ vs KT games, and probably won't, but holy s***, Flash showing a chink in his armour, so close to the finals? I'm worried - losing 2 games in a night is not good form, especially when the second match is the ace match against some noob called Snow. Then again, what am I getting upset over. Flash has won basically every damn game he's played since 2010. He's probably the only progamer ever to get people anxious over a single loss. I'm going with Flash 3-2 Effort just on gut feeling.

Hoping for EffOrt, predicting Flash 3-2. EffOrt is good enough to give him problems, and the series opening on Match Point is a tick in his favor. Unfortunately for him Flash is fighting for a golden mouse which means 20 hour practice days are probably on the short side for this week.