Rivalry of the Ages
SK Telecom (3-0) vs. KT Rolster (2-1)

There are plenty of other great matches in week three, but the Telecom derby overshadows them all. SKT vs KT is the El Clásico of Starcraft. Both teams have produced some of Brood War's greatest players, and combined they have won over half of all Proleagues. Although STX SouL stole their collective thunder in the first StarCraft 2 season, the two telecommunication giants have come back looking as strong as ever. The two teams have some of the strongest line-ups in Proleague, and this is a match very much worth anticipating.


The most anticipated game of the series and perhaps also the most important one, Parting vs Flash will set the tone for the series and give the winning side a huge advantage. Flash, along with TY, is the cornerstone in KT's line-up and has to be relied on for wins as always. So far, Flash has seemed more than suited for the role - beating Rogue, eMotion and Solar after his loss to Sora in week 1. But it has to be said that with the exception of Sora, none of the players Flash has beaten so far can (yet) be regarded as being elite-level. Solar and Rogue are great players, but can they truly be compared to Soulkey or Life at their very best? Can eMotion truly be compared to the likes of Parting and Sora?

The last three times Parting and Flash faced off, Parting showcased his excellent PvT, preventing the KT ace from advancing in GSL twice and ultimately playing a pivotal role in the derailing of God's hype train. This isn't to say that Flash by any means looked completely out of his depth against the ex-Startale Protoss, but Parting's play seems smooth where Flash's still has its jagged edges, refined where Flash's still has flaws for him to work on. Flash's vastly superior experience with the Proleague format will be a key factor, as he showed last season that he remains capable of engineering a build or out-thinking his opponent to take a quick win where it would be otherwise hard to get. Neither player has been at his best in the match-up recently, with Parting taking an 0-2 loss to Byun online a few weeks ago and Flash playing few matches and looking good but not astonishing. All in all it's a difficult match to call, but the edge should go to Parting given his peak level PvT play.


Myungsik is that guy, the guy that pops up every few months to tear through one or two qualifiers, striking like lightning and taking out players he shouldn't even get close to beating, and doing it convincingly. People begin to notice and pin the guy as a future star, but then - much like San, the hype is never realised. For Myungsik, it was the IEM Shanghai qualifiers that led people to believe that it was only a matter of time before he would translate his online results to offline fame. Not so. After IEM Shanghai, he's never really had a period where he looked world-class again. As with most Korean progamers, the potential is there, but the question if that potential can be turned into a key win for KT in this match.

Against soO, probably not. Over the last few months, soO has played against a full who's who of Korean Protoss players and come out with a 19-19 record. Not astonishingly good but a very respectable win rate considering his opponents were players like Dear and Trap. soO looked good against both Super and Trap this season, and save for unexpected builds or Myungsik suddenly going online-mode, the SKT Zerg should walk out of this match the victor.


The third match pits Soulkey – the best Zerg of 2013, one of the few to be able to keep up with Innovation even when the STX Terran was at his best – against TY – the baby prodigy that never was. Only right now, the roles seem almost reversed. Since joining SKT, Soulkey has looked mediocre at best, whereas TY has shown nothing but good play since joining KT. Though he hasn't played a Zerg yet, the relentless multi-pronged aggression he showed against Protoss and Terran opponents lead us to believe that he'll be able to make things very hard for Soulkey.

While on the subject of aggression, it has to be brought up that Soulkey was once known as the Iron Wall of Korea for his impeccable and almost unbreakable defensive play. Not only that, the GSL champion also showcased incredible mental fortitude and composure. Pressure has little effect on Soulkey and he can usually be relied on to bring his A-game. While he hasn't done so thus far in Proleague, it seems very unlikely that he won't eventually shake off his stint of mediocrity and return to his top form. However, with how good TY has looked these last few weeks while Soulkey has looked anything but, it would be somewhat of a stretch to bet on a the SKT Zerg in a best of 1.


While his PvP mojo may have been stolen by Parting, Rain remains a formidable opponent in the Protoss mirror. As is the case with many Korean progamers, the most difficult part about Rain is judging how good he is in the match-up right now. He played 2 matches in December, beating Dear and Creator without much trouble. Stats similarly beat White, Terminator and Trend for a combined 6-0 in the Code A qualifiers just a few days ago. Unfortunately, none of the latter's matches were broadcasted which makes telling exactly how good Stats is in PvP right now difficult. Rain still seems to excel in macro PvP, often opting to expand earlier and more frequently than his opponents. Further, Rain no longer seems quite as fond of colossus play as he did in the WCS Asia-era, where his masterful position trumped more than one Protoss' aggression. Rain has also developed a fondness for warp prisms and their various uses - utilising them for both harassment and quickly moving immortals around in key engagements. Against Creator, he used a warp prism to drop immortals right on top of the Prime Protoss' colossi, forcing Creator to focus his attention on the clumsy units while Rain's archon-heavy army tore apart zealots and stalkers.

In the end, a lot of things can happen in PvP, especially in Proleague's Bo1 format. Stats is free to study Rain's recent PvPs to devise a strategy or choose to put his faith to an unexpected build and good micro. Oracles are still a factor and any number of early game timings can end a game in the favor of Stats, but in a straight-up games - which PvP seems to end in more and more often lately, Rain holds the edge.


Last season, Flash was almost always going to come out as ace for KT Rolster, and Rain (later on, occasionally Fantasy) was almost a lock for SKT. In the '14 season, there are many more potential ace match-ups than the most likely Flash vs. Rain of last season. KT has two reliable ace-level players in Flash and TY, while SKT has 3-4 players that could all potentially come out in an ace match - Rain, Parting, Soulkey and maybe soO. The fact that there is no definite ace for either team makes an ace match all the more exciting and much more difficult to prepare for as a team. Should the match reach the ace match, we could see a Parting vs Flash rematch, we could see Rain vs TY or even Soulkey vs. Flash.

Flash vs Rain is probably the most likely match-up given their experience with ace matches and playing in tight spots, but the fact that the match-up is what many would expect might have the teams thinking twice, instead opting for mind games and an unexpected pick. One can analyze the intricacies of the ace match forever, so I'll end with a bold prediction: if KT manages to make it to the ace match, which will be a difficult thing to do given SKT's current roster, they will take the match.

Week 3 Predictions