Table of Contents

Losers Round 3
Recap


Losers Round 4
Preview


Players, brackets, and schedules on Liquipedia

by Fionn

Results from Live Report Thread by Probe1.
+ Show Spoiler [Results] +

Need a Hero?
- Both Heroes advance into the top twelve, eliminating two KeSPA players, Reality and Effort, in the process.

Liquid's HerO, a player once known for his terrible nervousness in the booth, has emerged as the unlikely hero for GomTV in this tournament, slaying his third KeSPA elephant last night. We've seen weaker players crumble under the pressure of expectations, but Hero has stuck it to his critics and has performed exceptionally well where other players have collapsed spectacularly.

Hero's last victim, Reality, ends the tournament going from the player with the best credentials against top GSL opponents, to a player that will need to do more if he wants to be remembered months from now. His wins versus Symbol, Shine, Happy and others were impressive, but as everyone knows, the SC2 community only cares about what you've done lately. With both WCS and OSL out of his grasp, he will need to prepare for the upcoming Code A qualifiers and advance if he wants to stay in the limelight. He's a good player, but was shown in his past two series that his TvP will need a lot of work before going head-to-head with the current crop of Protoss.

For our other Hero, the one from CJ Entus, he got into the final twelve by dispatching of his ZvP inept teammate, Effort. Along the same lines as Reality, he has shown great games Zerg and Terran, but has looked lost against Protoss. You can say that it's because the Protoss players in this tournament were just better than the rest, or because Protoss is all-around the strongest race in the game, but Reality and Effort can't deny that they have to work on this match-up going forward.

herO[join] is still a mystery. He has played well in all four of his series, and he now has a 3-1 record, but what can we take from two PvP's, a win over the scared-to-death YuGiOh, and a stomping over a Effort, a player who still hasn't won a televised game against Protoss? A match against Curious, Polt or even Miya might give us a clue on how good this elephant really is, but unfortunately for curious viewers, he gets a rematch against Puzzle in the next loser's round. Having already played Puzzle close once in PvP, there is a strong chance he can pull the upset and be the first KeSPA player to qualify for the Asia championships, but you might as well flip a coin when it comes down to a KeSPA Protoss vs. a GOM Protoss.

Melancholy Marine
- With aLive's upset loss to Miya, only one Terran makes it into the final twelve

Okay, it's about time we start preparing a Melancholy Marine fanclub. In the first three Code S tournaments of the year, only three Terran have made it to the semifinals, and Mvp had to use every all-in and sneaky strategy he could throw out to win the title in the second season over a strong opponent in Squirtle. Zerg and Protoss players have been dreaming about the death of GomTvT for a long time, and finally they can start shoveling some dirt on its grave.

This is by far the worst tournament Terran has ever had in Korea. You can make excuses that Taeja couldn't compete because he was at MLG Arena, Mvp got a bad draw against Polt and then had to forfeit, and MarineKing was too sidetracked with OSL that he fell to horror in the preliminaries, but we are now left with only one of the final twelve players in the tournament being Terran. Alive and Gumiho, the other two Terran players who were expected to make it in, both fell before reaching the cutoff point for at least getting into consolation matches.

Miya's ZvT has been hyped up for ages. People were saying that he could beat any Terran in the world if he put his mind to it, and he finally delivered with his series against Alive. After being called a choker and someone who was too scared of the bright lights, Miya stepped up his game and gained by far his most important victory of his career with a win over the former Code S semifinalist.

Alive is now, like a lot of Terran players, in a difficult situation. He will be competing at MLG Summer, but with his Code S spot for next season still to be decided through Up-and-Down matches and no place in either WCG Korea or WCS Asia, he will need a good result in Raleigh if he doesn't want to truly become the Invisible Terran of Starcraft 2. He started the year in such great form, almost making the GSL finals and winning IPL4, but it's been down hill from there and back to being a good, but not great Terran.