EPTTable of Contents
Losers Round 4
Recap
Winners Semi's + Losers R5
Preview
Players, brackets, and schedules on Liquipedia
Losers Round 4: Recap
Results from Live Report Thread by Probe1.
+ Show Spoiler [Results] +
Curious vs. By.Rain
Curious <Entombed Valley> 
By.Rain
Curious <Crux Daybreak> By.Rain
Curious <Shakuras Plateau> By.Rain
By.Rain wins 2-1!
Polt vs. HerO
Polt <Entombed Valley> HerO
Polt <ESV Ohana RE> HerO
Polt <> HerO
HerO wins 2-0!
RorO vs. Miya
RorO <Entombed Valley> Miya
RorO <Antiga Shipyard 1.2> Miya
RorO <Crux Daybreak> Miya
RorO wins 2-1!
Puzzle vs. herO[jOin]
Puzzle <ESV ClouD Kingdom> herO[jOin]
Puzzle <Entombed Valley> herO[jOin]
Puzzle <> herO[jOin]
herO[jOin] wins 2-0!
Curious <Entombed Valley> By.Rain Curious <Crux Daybreak> By.RainCurious <Shakuras Plateau> By.RainBy.Rain wins 2-1! Polt vs. HerO
Polt <Entombed Valley> HerOPolt <ESV Ohana RE> HerO Polt <> HerOHerO wins 2-0! RorO vs. Miya
RorO <Entombed Valley> Miya RorO <Antiga Shipyard 1.2> MiyaRorO <Crux Daybreak> Miya RorO wins 2-1! Puzzle vs. herO[jOin]
Puzzle <ESV ClouD Kingdom> herO[jOin] Puzzle <Entombed Valley> herO[jOin] Puzzle <> herO[jOin] herO[jOin] wins 2-0!The Protoss Empire
- With three wins on Tuesday, Protoss claims seven of ten spots for WCS Asia.
Well, see you in hell, GomTvT.
Ciao, all Zergs not named Roro.
Get ready to welcome our new Protoss overlords. We were blind to the oncoming onslaught with the debut of the KeSPA players, but after this tournament, we will not forget the dominance shown in this tournament. With seven of the final eight players being Protoss, and two among them being KeSPA players, things are only looking scarier for the Zerg and Terran as we enter the upcoming OSL and GSL seasons.
herO[join] and Rain both answered the questions on how they would respond given a week to prepare for opponents they lost to once in the first round. There were two options on how it was going to turn out: either the GOM players would get more info on their opponents, be prepared, and crush them even more easily, or we would see the KeSPA pros adapt, show improvement in a short time frame, and get their revenge. herO[join] and Rain emphatically chose the latter, taking down the two players who put them in the loser's bracket in the first place
Curious tried to change up his style, throwing in more unorthodox attacks to take Rain off his game, but the SKT1 ace wasn't phased. He played like a competitor who had years of experience, and pulled out a close 2-1 victory to send Curious into the consolation matches and be the first player to qualify for WCS Asia from the KeSPA Seven. With his amazing results in the hybrid Proleague, strong showing in WCS Korea, and qualification for the current season of OSL, Rain deserves to be talked about as a Code S seed candidate. Out of all the KeSPA players, he has the strongest case to be getting a call from Mr. Chae.
herO[join] also got revenge, beating Puzzle in a rematch of their first round series to reach the top eight. He had already shown great play in his first series against Puzzle, but with another week to prepare for his Protoss opponent and more info on him, the CJ Protoss prevailed in the second go around and qualified for WCS Asia. We now know his PvP is very good, and he will get a chance to prove his PvZ is strong as well with a series against Roro in the fifth round of the loser's bracket.
- Polt falls to HerO, leaving Terran hopes dangling by a thread
For Terran, all we can say is that hopefully they do better in Code S and OSL. Polt, for the second series in a row, had a lead in the first game and threw it away. He had a stronger economy, had a much faster third base, and was poised to snowball his advantageous position into a late game victory. Throwing that position away, Polt lost four fully loaded medivacs to Hero's blink stalkers and essentially lost the game right there. He fought valiantly after that, holding onto a fourth base and defending even with a thinned out army, but Hero's resources were too much for him to handle.
Also mirroring his series against Seed, after losing the first map where he really should have done better, he looked deflated in the second set. Instead of going for an all-in like his match against Seed, he tried to play another long macro game against Hero. Again, for the second straight game, Hero's drop defense and scouting was at the top of his game, and he turned the tables by wreaking havoc with a warp-prism in Polt's main. With his economy dwindling and his last desperate drops being stormed to oblivion, Polt tapped out and officially removed his race from title contention.
With his loss, Polt has become another victim to Seed's ability to suck out a player's talent. Going into his series against Seed, Polt was 25-8 in his last 33 games, and he hadn't lost a BoX series the entire summer. After losing to Seed, he immediately got beat up in his best match-up against a player he has beaten plenty times in the past. He now joins Symbol, Byun, MC, Coca and Gumiho who have all shown worse results after playing and getting beaten by Seed. Even in WCS, every player Seed defeated dropped to the loser's bracket and was immediately eliminated by their next opponent. This is either one of the greatest coincidences in e-sports history, or we're in a situation where MVP.Vampire should consider giving up his ID.
In the final series of the night, Roro beat Miya, a player with a horrific ZvZ record. Encompassed by Effort's and Roro's good showing in ZvZ, you would have to say that the KeSPA Zergs are adapting well to ZvZ in Starcraft II. They're not shabby at ZvT either, and the main problem for KeSPA Zergs so far have come against Protoss. Then again, can't that be said about all of the GomTV Terrans and Zergs as well?
As the dust settled, it was confirmed that three of the KeSPA Seven will be traveling to Shanghai for the WCS Asia Finals. After a disastrous first round with five of the seven getting knocked to the losers bracket, a comeback where nearly half of their players qualified for the Asian finals is a big accomplishment. Especially when you consider that they lost two of their brothers to team kills.
Winners Semis + Losers Round 5 Preview
by Fionn
ST_PartinG vs. LG-IMSeed&
ST_Squirtle vs. CreatorPrimeSo this is how it's going be from now on, friends? Covering PvP every night over and over, flipping a coin to predict a winner, and acting like that maybe if the best Protoss players in the world play each other over and over, every night, that maybe, just maybe, PvP will stop being about build order rock-paper-scissor and laser beam wars? Is it even medically advisable, to sit here and watch colossi wars when the risk of getting a seizure is very real?
Please, can someone save me?
RorO is the last remaining non-Protoss in the tournament, so if you're cheering for anything but PvP, jump on the bandwagon now. With eleven potential matches left in the tournament, you may see ten, that's right, TEN PvP's in the next three nights. You thought you had it bad with just a single Bo7 final between MC and Seed? I hope you are either an eager Protoss wanting to learn new PvP builds, or a die hard fan of one of the players left in the tournament, because if you aren't, this might make GOMTvT look like Starcraft Paradise.Hey, it isn't all that bad. You do have some intriguing stories with the final eight players:
Seed: Trying to win back-to-back major titles and confirm without a shadow of a doubt that he is the best player in the world. You can also follow the developing story where every player he has come across and beaten in a BoX series in the past month has gone on to plummet in skill right after facing him. Call it the Seed Curse if you like, but players should be frightened to not only be playing against Seed, but how well they do after losing to him. (Seed used Leech Seed! It's super effective!)PartinG: He talked a big game and now it's time to back it up. In the first Code S season of the year, Parting was on track to be a royal roader. Then he met DongRaeGu in the quarterfinals, got put in his place and sent out of the tournament. He improved on his quarterfinal effort with a semifinal placing in the second season, but once again, after talking a big game and staring straight at a championship, he got rolled by the eventual champion Mvp and got sent back to the end of the line. With a disappointing third Code S season, he is now doing everything he can to reclaim his place as the heir to the Protoss throne. With only three Bo3 wins away from his first big title, Parting might finally be able to back up his ceremonies with a trophy.Squirtle: The loss to Mvp in the second season finals could have begun a terrible slump for the Startale Protoss. One all-in defense away from becoming a GSL champion, royal roader, and the new Protoss President. All he had to do was stop Mvp from all-inning him, and he would secure his place in the record books. He stopped the first Mvp all-in, but failed to stop the second, and lost everything in the blink of an eye. With his second place finish in GSL and IPL, he is sitting alongside Alicia and others in the Kong Line. This tournament is helping Squirtle keep up his reputation as an elite Protoss, and he might get another chance at either exiting the Kong Line before this is all over.Creator: Is the time now for Creator to live up to his billing as the next big thing? Ever since his almost upset of Mvp last year in the Super Tournament as a fourteen-year-old, it's just been a matter of time until he developed into something special. Coming into his own in the later parts of 2011, helping Prime get to two straight GSTL finals and even winning one, he is starting to become one of the better Protoss in the world. With his current destruction of the TSL4 competition, great play in WCS Korea and other accomplishments online, he might be the dark horse to win this entire tournament. If MarineKing doesn't start getting deeper in Code S, he might find himself watching his sixteen-year-old teammate become OptimusPrime before he does.Liquid`HerO: Oh, he forfeited. Hey, one less PvP! Thanks, Hero!herO[jOin]/RorO: Out of the seven players in this tournament that came from the KeSPA faction, these two would have have had the least people picking them to go the furthest. Roro has a famous reputation as a destroyer of Liquibets and Fantasy Proleague, and he hasn't let Brood War hipsters down with his performances in this tournament. With only a loss to Squirtle, one of the best Protoss players in the world, Roro is the only non-Protoss left standing in this tournament. People may still be tempted to pick against him, but they'll sure be hoping that he gets through to the finals to save us from PvP Armageddon.herO? Still don't know how good he is in any match up besides PvP. YuGiOh was his only non-Protoss test this tournament, and I don't even know we if we should count his win against him as we all saw how bad YuGiOh's Pachydermophobia is. Now only stuck with a series against Roro and then maybe many PvP's after that, I guess we'll have to wait until the Code A qualifiers to see if he knows how to play against Terran or a GOM Zerg. He still an intriguing player and someone you cannot overlook to make a deep run. Too bad if he beats Roro, he will condemn the entire tournament to be PvP the rest of the way.
By.Rain: With a forfeit win against Hero, SKT's SC2 ace finds himself in the final six. Looking at the lack of players who could get a Code S seed for the upcoming season, could there be any KeSPA player with a better case than Rain? He's in the OSL, has done amazingly well for himself in the Frankenstein Proleague, and has now taken out big names in Jaedong, Leenock, and even a revenge victory over the only person to defeat him this tournament, Curious. Stephano has declined, Nerchio is studying, and with Mana already getting an Up-and-Down seed, who else could be getting a seed except for possibly Alicia? If Roro or herO don't get deeper in the tournament than Rain, don't be too surprised if he is the first KeSPA player in Code S starting next season.
Predictions:
Oh right, there's games tonight. Time to flip that coin!
Seed 2 - 1 Parting (First rule of WCS Korea: Don't bet against Seed)
Squirtle 2 - 0 Creator (Second rule of WCS Korea: Don't put a lot of stake in your PvP Predictions)
herO[join] 2 - 1 Roro (Welcome to Hell, Starcraft fans)
We may or may not re-direct you to this article for all future previews, should Roro be eliminated tonight.
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