Thanks to xpaperclip for formatting!

We're finally back to good old classic Proleague. A friendly reminder for you all that Saturday's matches have been moved back to Friday, which means you can expect to see the first games in a few hours from this post.

Round 3 Week 1 Matches

Finally, a week of Proleague where we have some real marquee match-ups! While the Proleague format gives lesser known players a chance to shine, its unfortunate drawback is that you rarely see a head to head duel between the big guns of two teams unless it goes to an ace match. This week, we are blessed, for the stars have aligned to bring us some regular line-up matches you won't want to miss.

If I had to pick one single match to look out for this week, it has to be Flash vs. Argo (Jan 31). Changing his name to Argo really did give Jaehoon a fresh start in StarCraft II, and he's gone from being one of the most mocked players in Brood War to Team Eight's indispensable and trusty captain. He's already taken down aces like Rain, Stephano, ZerO, and Innovation, and now Flash will be his next target. Flash has been fantastic at TvP in his short SC2 career, and he will be the favorite going in. But Argo has really shown hidden depths in the Proleague thus far, and he's more than capable of giving Flash a real fight.

Other than that, Soulkey vs. Fantasy (Feb 4) features everyone's favorite match-up in TvZ, and two excellent players who have shown a preference for being active over turtling up and playing safe. Fantasy will be on double duty as a headliner, as he gets to face CJ Entus' EffOrt (Feb 3) as well. While EffOrt's SC2 ability isn't close to his Brood War ability yet, he recently managed to break through the Code A prelims to prove his worth. For the old timers, this is a must see match.

And for those who just want to someone who's not Korean win, Stephano is scheduled to go up against Terminator (Feb 3). Terminator hasn't been doing so hot lately, whereas Stephano will be playing his best match-up. Regardless of whether or not Stephano gets it done in Code S, this match should give everyone their weekly Stephano fix.

Match of the Week: This week, we're going with Samsung KHAN vs. EG-Liquid. First off, the two teams are right next to each other in the rankings table. EG-Liquid would overtake KHAN for 6th place with a victory, while KHAN would achieve a season best 5th place should they take the victory. But the more interesting thing will be to see how the two rosters respond to being into two very different situations.

Samsung KHAN were absolutely dreadful in round one, and it looked like they would be destined to be bottom feeders after starting the season with a 1 – 6 record. No one seemed to be any good at all, and even their ace RorO couldn't find a way to win. Midway through round two this all turned around in an incredible way. Their rotation players started putting in clutch performances, Jangbi and Stork started to look like their Brood War selves, and RorO finally began to show why he was in Code S. Now, Samsung KHAN is on a six game winning, and no one can tell if this is who they really were all along, or if it's a dream that's going to come crashing down.

Meanwhile, EG-TL is a team going through the exact opposite situation, finding new and creative ways to lose with every match. The loss of TaeJa to injury has been crippling, and their lack of a solid close-out player has led to several painful 3 – 4 losses. With Stephano's Code S matched scheduled at the same time, things look even more grim for EG-TL as they go up against the red hot Samsung KHAN. Yet, it's a chance to see how the rest of the line-up responds to adversity, and if they're capable of stepping up when things are at their worst. Zenio and PuMa are the two pivotal players in this match, as they are part of a weak bench that has received much criticism. Coach trOt has a point when he says you need to show your players that you have faith in them–now they will get a chance to show they deserve it.

With round 2 abruptly drawing to a close, we barely had enough time to say goodbye before round 3 began and round 3 of Fantasy Proleague began with it. Now's our chance to sit down and really look back at how round 2 panned out, and what better way to do it than to bring back Fantasy Proleague Awards!

Player/Team Awards

The "Patch-Zerg" Award for Biggest Improvement
goes to Hydra for scoring 27 points even though he had a cost of 3. This was over three times the value he was expected to be worth in the beginning of the round. Of course, we're not suggesting that Hydra is a PatchZerg. That's for you to decide and argue over.

The "Bisu" Award for Biggest Disappointment
is a tie between TaeJa and Ty. Taeja only played one game this season and due to his wrist injury, stopped showing up in the lineup from there. Ty actually played four games last round, but did not fulfill his ace duties, losing all four of them.

The "FXO.KR" Award for Biggest Surprise Team
goes to Samsung KHAN for going 5-2 in round 2. They currently hold a six game winning streak going into week 2 of round 3.

The "Prime" Award for Worst Slumping Team
goes to SK Telecom T1. Even though they were by far the most desired team with 44% of team picks, they flopped the hardest.

The "RorO" Award for Worst Anti-Team Pick
goes to the Stork/JangBi combo. Even though the top most picked players for anti-team with 1164 and 917 picks respectively, both scored among the top ten this round. The other player who screwed over teams by a similar amount was RorO, but he was by far less picked because of his reputation of screwing over fantasy teams.

The "Creator" Award for the Optimal Team without Trades

Team Owner Awards

The "MVP" Award for First Place
Congratulations to Pornografia, a lurker with 0 posts who seemed to have registered just to play fantasy proleague. Unfortunately, Pornografia was not available for comment.

The "MMA" Award for Best Slump Predictor
is awarded to DocSchlakk for somehow lucking out with Taeja being unable to play this round and his two other picks, Bisu and sSak, not scoring any wins. This is the lowest possible anti-team score for this round.

The "Wall Street" Award for Best Trader
is a tie between jabberjaw and StickyFlower who made two and three trades respectively, both netting a cool 34 points.

The "EG Curse" Award for Worst Trader
IIIIII takes this award home with 6 trades, none of them netting positive gains totaling up to -42 points.

The "MC" Award for Refusing to Change Anything
is awarded to GenesisX, who finished 5th place by picking four of the top five scorers this round in his initial team.

The "TheBest" Award for Lowest Scoring Team Attempting to be a Legitimate Team
goes to mastakilla[Xp] who really got unlucky with his anti-team. He finished at -40 points. Special mention goes to Runer2k4 who started off with a bad team and tried his hardest to claw himself out of his hole, only to dig himself in even deeper. He finishes second to last with -39 points.

The "Apex" Award for Lowest Scoring Team Attempting to be a Low-scoring Team
goes to TBO. With a host of 1 pointer picks and a Rain/Flash/Fantasy combo on his anti-team, TBO was definitely gunning for this award. Honestly though, he didn't do a very good job, as a total of eleven other teams who tried to be legitimate teams finished below him.

The "Pick All KT" Award for Best FPL Strategy of the Round
goes to the strategy of "Pick all the players who were good in Brood War". Most of the players who did well in round two were all top Brood War players, including Flash, Hydra, Jangbi, ZerO, Effort, free, Stork, and Fantasy. Looks like they just needed some time to catch up and show their true skills. Note: Sorry Bisu =(

The "Manifesto7" Award for Best Staff Performance
goes to Mikilatov, an old Brood War writer who just picked all his favorite Brood War greats. He finished 44th but peaked at rank 1 after week 3. This proves once again how the above strategy of picking Brood War champions played off in spades this round.

The "Kennigit" Award for Worst Staff Performance
is shamefully accepted by DivinO with a -2 score, finishing at rank 5016. With a terrible anti-team and no trading, DivinO never stood a chance. Note: Kennigit did not actually play this round.

The "LaLush" Award for Best SC II Player/Personality Performance
for the first time ever is awarded to LaLush who finished a respectable 11th place. By capitalizing on Hydra/Argo picks, LaLush, with some smart trading, was able to catapult himself near the top.

The "CatZ" Award for Worst SC II Player/Personality Performance
also for the first time ever is awarded to ROOTCatZ with his -4 score, finishing at rank 5095. Mistakes such as betting on his pal Major and over-trading led to about 40 points less than what he would have gotten if he had just stayed put. Note that CatZ was actually the second worst trader in all of round 2, only being surpassed by a barcode user, IIIIII.

Ok, all you Fantasy Proleague junkies and noobs, this one is for you. Picking fantasy teams for some with little experience of the scene or strategy behind the game can be daunting for some. Well, no more. Right here, right now, you can learn to be a pro at the game that is Fantasy Proleague and construct teams that actually make sense. Hopefully one day we can get the number of people picking RorO on their anti-teams all the way down to zero.

An Overview of Player Picks

Popular Main Team Picks

There are four common strategies that are employed when picking players for your team:

• Undervalued as measured by round one record
  Let's face it. Round two was kind of random. With the winners league format, some players could be argued to have lucked their way to multiple wins and a high value for round three. In addition, if a player was not top four on his team, he probably didn't get played a lot in round two winners league. This strategy takes ignores round two and chooses the players who have the most value according to round one statistics. Players that fall into this category include JYP, P7GAB, soO, herO[jOin], Soulkey, Crazy, Stats, Action, and Bbyong.
  
  
• Line-ups
  Players picked using this strategy will have extremely favorable match-ups in week one. If you use this strategy, be prepared to trade away your player should he win in favor of a player with a more favorable match-up. Also be prepared to be potentially stuck with a rather undesirable player should he lose his match-up. Match-ups that were considered extremely favored for players among the top picks include:
  
  • JYP over hyvaa
    
  • Flash over s2
    
  • P7GAB over BeSt
    
  • soO over Motive
    
  • Innovation over Zenio
    
  • Fantasy over Crazy
    
  • Revival over Trap
    
  • Action over Sacsri
  
  
• Perceived Potential
  These are players who are hyped to have the most potential. One way of measuring StarCraft II potential is with Brood War success. Although this might be the least scientific method, it sure did well in round 2, where all the Brood War greats including free, Zero, Stork, and Jangbi did amazingly well. In this round, players such as Flash and Jaedong certainly fall into this category. Then there's Revival, who hasn't played enough matches for a real assessment, but his memorable wins against Gumiho and Leenock in IPTL are still burned into everyone's' minds.
  
  
• Go all-in on a team
  This strategy is simple: pick the most undervalued team, and pick every player from that team. As silly as this sounds, this strategy actually as an extremely high success rate. In the history of Fantasy Proleague, two teams have won rounds with this technique, one on Brood War with SK Telecom T1 and one more recently, TerrorTerran in Round 1 of StarCraft II Fantasy Proleague with KT Rolster. From these statistics, it looks like KT Rolster is currently the most popular team to pick, though you'd be hard pressed to fit all their heavy hitters on your fantasy team.

Popular Anti-Team Picks


More than any previous StarCraft II round, this round's anti-team picks were difficult. There was no version of Round 1 Stephano or Round 2 Jaedong/Taeja who just happened to be guaranteed to be benched every week; you could no longer simply depend on news about who on EG-TL just happened to be sick or out of town that week. For many, this was a first experience constructing a real anti-team. Similar tactics employed in picking your main team can be used to construct an anti-team. For example, Terminator, Stork, Light , and Cure are overvalued if you compare their results from Round 1. On the other hand, if you pay attention to line-ups, Stork had a tough match-up against Hydra while Last wasn't even in the line-up at all.

Team Picks


Last round, SK Telecom was deemed the runaway best pick for a team with 44% of participants choosing them as their FPL team. But boy, how they all got burned when SK Telecom crashed and burned in a round they were supposed to dominate. This round, they're the most picked team yet again and with their first week win over KT Rolster, they seem to be worth it and them some. Other popular teams include the Flash-led KT Rolster that dominated round one and the fan favorite EG-TL.

As we've previously alluded to, there are at least four main strategies commonly employed in Fantasy Proleague. As a demonstration, we have constructed four sample teams, each strictly following one of these strategies. Once again, these four strategies include:

• Round 1 Continuum- Winner's League has come and gone and it's time to go back to the previous format. Will the previous round one winners continue their streaks and dominate the competition once again?
  
• Picking based on lineups- Sometimes the odds are so much in the favor of a player that you just know one player will overcome the other. This team will try to prioritize weekly match-ups over everything else.
  
• Looking for potential: BW Elephants- A infamous article once described the StarCraft2 scene as a joke that was waiting to be crushed by the immanent switch of the "Elephants", the best of the old BW players. Let's see how they fare now.
  
• All-in on a team: SKT- Since an all KT team had so much success in round one, we will attempt to duplicate that success with their arch-rivals, SK Telecom T1.

Looking to the Past

The second round was a king of the hill format, very different in terms of dynamics from a traditional Proleague round. As player costs are mostly assigned by round 2 results, we decided to build a token team based on the first round results to see if there would be a significant difference in terms of outcome. This team will be subject to trades both on the main and anti teams with the same limitations as a normal fantasy team.

Team Draft

Team : KT Rolster - (4p)

This choice is quite self-explanatory; KT Rolster did extremely well in Round 1.

Captain : Rain - (8p)

Players :

• Crazy - (3p)
  
• Soulkey - (5p)
  
• SoO - (3p)
  
• BrAvO - (3p)
  
• JYP – (3p)

Rain is the captain of this team, he was 6-1 the first round including 2-0 in ace match. That's incredibly dangerous and considering his status right now, very valuable. Soulkey is was his team ace and he had good results particularly in ace matches. Being at 5 points, he is very attractive despite not doing particularly well in round 2. soO brought home 17 points in Round 1 while being 4-3, win wise it's not outstanding but point wise it's decent. Crazy-Hydra was 3-1 during Round 1 and costs a measly 3 points. The remaining two players had decent results for their worth with JYP being among the top 9 players and BrAvO being a TvT sniper with a 4-2 record.

Anti - team :

• Shine - (3p)
  
• Stork - (7p)
  
• Reality - (3p)

This list was relatively easy to construct. Shine was 0-5 in round 1 and looked bad. Reality was 2-5 and has tried so hard to win that it was painful to watch while Stork who once stood at 3-4 and has the worst first round among the high priced players(7+). All of them did relatively badly during the first round and either OK or well during the second. We weren't sure about these picks but it was the best we could come up with the set draft spirit we limited ourselves to.

Week 1 Recap - Unpredictable history

Team : KT Rolster - (-1p)

KT Rolster lost in a surprising fashion against SK Telecom. Much about this match has been said in the other team previews and it would be redundant to restate our surprise.

Captain : Rain - (1p)

Players :

• Crazy - (3p)
  
• Soulkey - (0p)
  
• SoO - (4p)
  
• BrAvO - (0p)
  
• JYP – (0p)

A average wierd for out players. While soO asserted his dominance over the newcomer motive, the rest of the players didn't shine despite being somewhat favored. Everyone except Crazy who beat the Terran powerhouse named FanTaSy.

Anti - team :

• Shine - (4p)
  
• Stork - (1p)
  
• Reality - (4p)

Unfortunately, a lot of 3 points players who weren't favored this week won anyways. These players are at that value because they either are inconsistent or didn't play that much during the second round. Bong, an up and coming player from CJ, failed a risky dark templar build, giving Reality the easy win. Shine won a ZvZ despite having 0% record in that match-up this season. Meanwhile, Stork lost against a better player, Hydra, in his match.

Week 2 Preview and Trades - Back to the probabilistic world

No trades this week. As most of our players failed to secure points in the previous week, they decreased in value. Thus, there are very few trades we could make if our sole criteria is trading for player who did well in round 1 (or badly for the anti-team).

Living each week as if it were the last: using lineups

Each week, there are some match-ups that we believe are hugely in favor of one of either team or players. This « per week » team will be drafted on week one and we will try to find the best trades each week with no consideration as to how the players can do in the future.

Team Draft

Team : STX SouL - (1p)

The team we choose for this round is STX SouL. While it might not be the best team around, it didn't cost a lot and as much as it pains us to say so, EG-TL without TaeJa and Stephano (who have to prepare for GSL Code S on top of being injured for TaeJa and lazy for Stephano) has to rely on HerO, Jaedong and support players to win 3 games. It was going to be tough for them from the get-go.

Captain : EffOrt - (7p)

Players :

• Innovation - (6p)
  
• P7GAB(Wooki) - (5p)
  
• Light - (4p)
  
• soO - (4p)
  
• JYP - (3p)

Starting with the captain, EffOrt has to play the unknown hOpe on a relatively conventional map. A solid player like him is likely to come out a winner for his team. Innovation has the delight of playing Zenio twice in a week and the Liquid Zerg has trouble in every match-up but ZvZ, so we have to give it to the STX player here. Another potential one-sided match is the game between P7GAB, a PvP master with a 6-2 record, and BeSt, the SKT captain who had an overall 2-5 record. The next potentially unilateral confrontation we found is between JYP and hyvaa; the Zerg has a disastrous 4-9 record and shouldn't do much against JYP's best match-up. The last player for this week isn't as highly favored as the others but Light has certainly shown more clever preparations in the past than TRUE.

Anti - team :

• Last - (3p)
  
• Stork - (7p)
  
• Savage(Ryul2) - (3p)

If we're basing our team picks on lineups, then we have to pick Last, the only three pointer who wasn't on the line-up for week one. Because Last is a decent player, we'll probably have to trade him off at a later point. Thus, picking Last is the equivalent of taking a direct -1 point, but it's better than gambling on a supposedly weak player most of the time. Zerg players have troubles beating Protoss in this PL but Hydra is above that and Stork, while coming ahead recently, didn't show enough mastery to be considered better in PvZ than Hydra. With the remaining 3 points, we took Savage, playing in the sixth and last spot against ZerO. In a match that Woongjin should probably sweep, Savage either won't get to play or will probably lose should he get the chance to play.

Week 1 Recap – Upsets everywhere!

Team : STX SouL - (4p)

With a 4-1 victory, STX showed than anyone can win (or lose for that matter) against EG-TL, the foreign team really is the roller-coaster of this PL.

Captain : EffOrt - (2p)

Players :

• Innovation(Bogus) - (4p)
  
• P7GAB(Wooki) - (0p)
  
• Light - (0p)
  
• soO - (4p)
  
• JYP - (0p)

This week was horrible for this team and many other teams built in this fashion. First of all, EffOrt was chosen over herO as an ace for CJ which could have been fantastic had he won. But a loss against RorO set him back to a meager 2 points. After that, we had two players who held their ground against weaker players, namely Innovation grabbing his second win of the week against Zenio and soO besting the newcomer Motive. Everyone else on the team lost, something you wouldn't except from a team that attempts to pick favorites of the week.

Anti - team :

• Last - (1p)
  
• Stork - (1p)
  
• Savage(Ryul2) - (4p)

Losing 6 points in a half-game week is tough. Last lost a point as predicted and Stork lost, but his team won anyways. Savage however prevailed against ZerO in a nice fashion but it's often the case in ZvZ when an early lead is kept safely.

Week 2 Preview and Trades – Staying out of trouble

Team : STX SouL

SouL face both Stars and CJ this week and the match-ups look terrible for them.

Captain : EffOrt

Players :

• Innovation(Bogus)
  
• P7GAB(Wooki)
  
• Light for Bong
  
• soO for Revival
  
• JYP

EffOrt only has to prepare for ZvT this week and should come out at 1-1 at worst. Innovation is blessed by the gods and will play two rather unknown players on GSL maps; we aren't worried for him at all. We share the same feeling for P7GAB who'll also face two weaker players.

Among the remaining players who aren't as much clear favorites, we had to make a choice. Light will only play one game week and thus should be traded immediately. We traded him for Bong who has to play PvZ against rather mid-tier or weak opponents. Similarly, soO had to face free a PvZ specialist and Hydra, who is riding a tidal wave of momentum right now. Revival appears as a much wiser choice considering he avoids his dreaded ZvP matchup and plays some ZvZ he's clearly familiar with from his time at TSL. Lastly, we decided to keep JYP who isn't favored in his matches but has the potential to get out unscathed against Stork and Cure.

Anti - team :

• Last for Classic
  
• Stork
  
• Savage(Ryul2)

Stork will net wins eventually; it's something nobody can avoid in their anti-teams at this point. Trading him can only bring disaster at this point. Savage plays against two players on our main team and is not favored in both cases; he's another definite keeper. Thus we ended up trading Last for Classic who is playing a single game against sOs; we don''t see him winning this one.

The Elephants arise

Proleague was, for more than a decade, the main event in Korean Brood War. Salaries were negotiated based on Proleague results and many known players made themselves a name before moving on to win Starleagues. The paradigm of this team is simple: we pick the big BW names and reminisce.

Team Draft - Assembling the Dream Team

Team : SKT T1 - (1p)

In BW, there is something called legacy. Boxer, Iloveoov, Bisu, Fantasy: This is the line of players who have made one team place top three in almost every year Proleague has been active. And while KT's results were more significant in the latter years, the cycle was complete when Bisu won the ace match against Flash during the final BW Proleague. SK Telecom T1 costing at a measly one point is our choice for a proleague team.

Captain : Jaedong - (6p)

Players :

• EffOrt - (7p)
  
• Stats - (5p)
  
• Light - (4p)
  
• SoulKey - (5p)
  
• BeSt - (2p)

Although we wanted to take good BW players, we had to make this a bit competitive. None of these picks are particularly shocking aside from BeSt whose level has considerably diminished but he was previously a big element in SKT. Stats was always overshadowed by Flash but he certainly was the second best player from KT at the end. Soulkey was an up and comer that many thought he could well win a Starleague one day. Speaking of which, EffOrt won one in 2010 and was CJ's best player for a long period of time. Light, the last player, was perhaps not the most accomplished in Starleagues but he was a long standing consistent player throughout his career from MBCGame to Woongjin.

Anti - team :

• Argo - (8p)
  
• Terminator - (4p)
  
• Hyuk - (1p)

We couldn't resist picking Argo(Jaehoon) for this anti-team. After all, in Brood War, many jokingly referred to him as Failhoon after he repeated failed recall after recall. Hyuk hasn't played a single Proleague game yet and considering his shenanigans it is not surprising as he may Hyuk it up once again. Lastly Terminator (or Sang for the old guard) just had a terrible record in BW and that's good enough for us.

Week 1 Recap – Old guards stand strong

Team : SKT T1 - (3p)

Captain : Jaedong - (3p)

Players :

• EffOrt - (2p)
  
• Stats - (3p)
  
• Light - (0p)
  
• SoulKey - (0p)
  
• BeSt - (4p)

Compared to the other teams we decided to follow, this one didn't do as badly as one could have thought. BeSt won, against all odds, a PvP versus P7GAB. The same day, Stats showed Rain that being a star in SC2 doesn't prevent you from losing PvPs. Curiously enough PvP was Stats' best match-up in BW while it was Rain's worst. Light and Soulkey had a difficult time this week while EffOrt was finally overthrown by the younger RorO.

Anti - team :

• Argo - (1p)
  
• Terminator - (4p)
  
• Hyuk - (1p)

Hyuk didn't play so there isn't much to say about that. Terminator however was able to beat BrAvO on Entombed Valley in an usual late-game PvT where the Terran looked away for two seconds and lost. Argo lost against free, another very good (and very old) BW player.

Week 2 Preview and Trades – Asserting the dominance

According to our paradigm, we have to trade for players who were good at BW, but we don't want to trade foolishly and lose points. Unfortunately, none of our players scored enough points to be able to trade up. As such, we didn't do any trades this week.

All-in on SKT T1

We all saw that an all KT Rolster team could win a round during round 1. This round, it's impossible to take all of KT's best with 30 points but it's possible to do so with their arch-rivals SKT T1. With only 28 points in total and no anti-team, let's see what they can do. Trading will be employed if needed.

Team Draft

Team : SKT T1 (1p)

Captain : Rain - (8p)

Players :

• Fantasy - (8p)
  
• soO - (4p)
  
• s2 - (3p)
  
• BeSt - (2p)
  
• Sacsri - (2p)

The team is fairly simple to describe : FanTaSy and Rain in the double-headed ace threat, soO as the main support player and the players who have been fielded the most in previous rounds pondered by their results : the captain BeSt and the zerg duo s2 and sacsri. Considering those are the most used players on the roster, there is no better pure SKT team than this one.

Week 1 Recap

Team : SKT T1 (3p)

Winning 4-2 after a terrible round 2 must be a magnificent ego and moral boost for them. Still this win was a weird indeed.

Captain : Rain - (1p)

Players :

• Fantasy - (1p)
  
• soO - (4p)
  
• s2 - (4p)
  
• BeSt - (4p)
  
• Sacsri - (4p)

Somehow I doubt this could have gone any better for SKT this week. They were coming into this match as underdogs and most of their players all had unfavorable match-ups (s2 against Flash, BeSt against P7GAB and Sacsri against Action). Remarkably though, all SKT's supporting players won their games.

Week 2 Preview and Trades - Riding the momentum

There will be no trades this week as it's not worth to pay a fee to get ParalyzE for a single game he isn't favored in. Otherwise, since we're going with an all-in on SKT strategy, no other trades will be considered.