Even with the length of the matches reduced to best of five, it's hard for anyone but the most devoted fan to watch every Proleague game in a week. To help you all out, here are our recommendations.

Grand Opening - Team MVP vs. SK Telecom T1

The opening match of Proleague could either be thrilling classic or a complete stomp. With the addition of Soulkey, SKT have assembled the most deadly team in Proleague. Not only is Soulkey an individual league champion and the most consistently great player in Korea, he was also the ace of the former SPL runners-up Woongjin Stars. On one hand, the total upending of parity and balance between teams is worrisome. On the other hand, you have to be fascinated by the creation of this super team.

MVP's players are about as consistent as the price of bitcoin, fluctuating between championship-level and junk, sometimes in the same match. Would it be shocking to see MVP score the upset against SKT? Not really. Would it be shocking to see them utterly crushed? Nope, that's in the cards too.

DRG is perhaps the epitome of inconsistency, playing some of his life's best ZvT against Innovation in WCS Korea Season 3 and convincing everyone that he was back to being his old self before getting curb-stomped in the Ro16. Dream, Keen and Super – all pinned as 'the next big thing' at one time or another – share DRG's proclivity for unreliability.

Against a line-up like SKT's, it would be foolish to bet on the entire MVP line-up bringing their A-game, but you get the feeling that at least one of them is going to play fantastic and steal a map off SKT. All four of the match-ups for MVP are winnable on a good day. By tuning into this match, you're accepting that you may be served some of the most intense Starcraft II in the world, or three consecutive bops and a ceremony. Both would be entertaining, to be sure, but for completely different reasons.

Focus Match: Dream < Yeonsu LE > Rain

Rain almost lost the Hot6ix Cup to Soulkey two weeks ago. There, his ability to stay calm in the face of pressure and make the correct calls allowed him to persevere and take the championship. It was a series that showed why he is Artosis' dream player: a safe and standard macro Protoss whose strengths lie in the defensive aspects of the game.

Dream is his polar opposite. He is everything Rain isn't: hyper-aggressive, risk-seeking, and fond of many battles rather than few. It isn't rare that Dream bites off more than he can chew with his aggression and finds himself behind as a result, but his complete dedication to attacking often lets him get back into the game. Keeping up with Dream's tempo is no easy task, and many players have found themselves tripping over their feet.

The dynamic for the match is the the classic immovable object vs. unstoppable force. Rain, the dedicated defender who'll take his time and only move out when he feels he has the victory within reach, versus Dream, a wild berserker who has broken Rain's shield in the past.

CJ Entus vs. KT Rolster

More than any other player in Proleague, Flash is intimately familiar with what it's like to carry a team. Thus, the change to Bo5 must have had Flash leaping for joy. No longer does he have to hope that the weak KT bench can win enough games to force an ace match – the trio of him and his lieutenants Zest and Stats are enough to claim victory. The addition of TY (Baby) didn't wow anyone like the Soulkey or sOs signings, but it was still a good move for KT. They now have a strong core four, capable of going up against any team in the league.

Even so, their match against CJ will be a tough one. Despite not signing any big players, the acquisition of former SKT and EG-TL head coach Park Yong Woon has more than made up for it. The team's overall skill level has risen dramatically under his regime – Hydra, Effort, and herO showed potential last season, but they've truly gotten it together in the off-season. herO looked incredible as he beat his countrymen to win IEM Singapore, while Sora made a strong run up to second place in WCG. Additionally the online qualifier scene has been dominated by CJ Entus players, with team-kills being the most frequent cause for their elimination. Even Bbyong, dubbed the heir to the Ensnare throne, blazed through the IEM Sao Paulo qualifiers just last weekend, showing that he's much more than the generic Terran player he was before.

Compared to CJ, KT players have barely shown themselves after the end of the last Proleague season. It's hard to judge exactly where they're at, but right now KT feels a bit lacking when compared man-for-man to CJ Entus. Even so, we know from last season that Proleague is where they bring their best performances.

Focus Match: Flash < Bel'Shir Vestige LE > Sora

Devoted fans of the Korean scene will have seen Sora's name popping up all over the place these last few months. Since his stunning WCG Korea performance, CJ's latest recruit has been making waves both online and offline. He brought home another silver from the WCG Grand Finals where he finished second behind Soulkey, and has been doing well in IEM qualifiers (but is getting team-killed constantly).

Flash has been receiving attention for different reasons. Lacklustre performances at Dreamhack Bucharest and IEM New York, and narrow elimination from yet another difficult group in the GSL have many fans wondering if Flash is truly championship caliber in StarCraft 2. He has played a total of five broadcasted games over the last two and a half months, easily dispatching CoCa in Code A and then getting easily dispatched of by CJ's Bunny.

The rapid improvement he was showing after the initial transition to StarCraft 2 has slowed down considerably, and he did nothing in the off-season to make us think otherwise. Normally, five games doesn't provide enough information to extrapolate anything meaningful, but what was most worrying about Flash was the manner in which he lost his games. He didn't look helpless, but he did look lost at times. Throw Sora's 80% PvT into the equation and things look grim for Flash going into his first match of the season.

But if there is anywhere Flash feels that he is completely in his element, it has to be Proleague. He was arguably Proleague's best player last season, finishing with the most wins while dragging his team to the playoffs. Sora, on the other hand, is a complete rookie in Proleague. If they both play at their best, and we can be reasonably sure that at least Flash will, this match could be a great one, and the one to decide how the teams start off their season.

Hipster Match of the Week + Predictions

This week's Hipster MotW features Samsung Khan going up against whoever they're going to lose to. Samsung weren't good last season, and the "retirement" of their ace JangBi left them looking like a bottom two team headed into the new season. With expectations at an all-time low, Samsung have brought out the most unexpected line-up of week one. They've fielded three relative newcomers in Solar, Trend and eMotion, dropped RorO, and kept only Stork from last season's regulars. On paper it's a team that could even lose to Prime, but you have to assume the former b-teamers improved a lot during the off-season and earned their starts.

You have to commend Samsung for being willing to take risks. They have absoultely nothing to lose this season, and many fans are already assuming they're going to finish close to last. At worst, Samsung will ride their newcomers to the bad finish everyone is expecting anyway. At best, they can be like last year's Team Eight, with multiple players stepping up out of nowhere to put them in playoff contention. Hipster team of the week? Hipster team of the season, we say.