EPTDay 2 Preview: Groups A & B
The first day of IEM Sao Paulo's StarCraft 2 tournament was held in the dark, with the on-site open qualifier taking place without the benefit of online streaming. While Brazilians and elitist hipster fans around the world lamented this choice from ESL, we have to cynically admit that it probably didn't matter to most fans as none of the open qualifier players are likely to have a significant impact on the tournament.
Now it's time to move onto the second day of the tournament where things begin in earnest with the first two groups of the Ro16 group stage.
*Groups are played GSL double-elimination tournament style.
Group A: jjakji vs. WM, Bomber vs. puCK
Countdown: [unparsable timestamp format]Let's start off by introducing
mYI.jjakji, a one time GSL champion and the second player after TaeJa to give up a Code S seed to go play in an easier WCS region. The last time we talked to jjakji he was brimming with confidence about his ability to win WCS Europe, but we wonder how he feels about his chances against the Korean player pool at IEM Sao Paulo. The jjakji we saw finish in the top six of the previous WCS Korea tournament would have been more than capable of taking them on, but the jjakji of the present is coming off several months of European training at the mYi house in Switzerland. The question is, did his overseas stay change him for the better like Polt, or see him regress like ForGG?Even if the latter is the answer, jjakji should have no problem defeating
WM, one of the four players to advance out of the open qualifying bracket. As mentioned above, we didn't get to see the games so we barely have any information on the open bracket players. But we do know one thing: even CJ Entus coach trOt managed to make it through the open brackets (he got placed into Group D) after signing up as a replacement for an absent player. Now, if trOt is at best a low GM player in Korea and jjakji is at worst a Code S class player... nope, things don't look for our local hope.The other initial match in the group pits the newly independent
Bomber against North American representative 
lvD_puCK. Bomber has fallen off a bit after finally breaking Bomber's Law and taking a championship, particularly in TvP where was somewhat over-reliant on SCV-pull all-in timings. Yet, most would take even a slightly declined Bomber against in this match. With strong TvT to boot, Bomber is even a favorite to top this group and get a favorable seed heading into the Ro8.puCK has remained one of the best Protoss players in North America, for whatever that's worth in the global scheme of things. He's rolling along in WCS America, having made it to Premier for the third straight season. Now, as we said above, most people would look at this match and call it an easy win for the Korean Terran Bomber. But for the sake of arguing, let's just point out that recent games show that TvP is hard to win when players not named Maru or TY are involved. Sure, Bomber is on the level of Maru and TY when he's on his game, but a diminished Bomber could be the victim of an upset.
...but really, Bomber is probably going to win.
Predictions: Sure we like to root for the underdogs, but can we really go against two championship winning Korean Terrans?
jjakji and Bomber to advance.
Group B: hellokitty vs. MC, TLO vs. shakti
Countdown: [unparsable timestamp format]Group B might only have one championship winning Korean compared to group A's two, but this Korean Protoss has still won more championships than jjakji and Bomber combined. Of course, we're talking about the Bosstoss
MC, a player who is drawn to foreigner money like a shark is to blood. As fearsome as MC's reputation is, there is one thing that we have to touch on here: MC hasn't actually won a championship in nearly two years. As warranted as some concerns about MC not being the player he used to be are, you can't read into that championship drought too deeply. During that period he still achieved plenty of second place or top four finishes while taking home big piles of cash. You get the feeling that sooner or later he'll be lifting the trophy and breaking Carmac's back again, and the relatively shallow player pool at IEM Sao Paulo could make it his golden opportunity.
The second qualification spot will likely be fought over by the foreigner duo of
Fnatic.Hellokitty and 
Liquid`TLO, who made it IEM by winning in their regional qualifiers. While most would favor the European player over the American, Hellokitty does have one advantage TLO does not in the fact that he gets to play MC in a PvP. The Bosstoss has struggled in PvP over the last few months, and while HelloKitty hasn't exactly been a world beater in the Protoss mirror, he has every chance of flipping his way to a win in the match-up famous for creating foreigner > Korean upsets. In contrast, it's hard to see TLO getting by MC's arsenal of assorted Protoss bulls***, whether it's macro play or those signature "I don't care if you know it's coming, you're losing anyway" all-ins. Oh, and even Hellokitty himself could take out TLO – before Hitman wrested it away from him, the North American all-in-or-bust title belonged to Hellokitty.Well, at least TLO gets a fairly easy first match against the Brazilian
shakti. We'd love to believe the local player is going come through and shock everyone, but chances are he's going to get wiped 0-3. Aside from Scarlett in 2012, players without TLPD a profile don't just suddenly appear at tournaments and cause a stir.Predictions: Korea > Europe > NA until proved otherwise.
MC and TLO to advance.
Coming Up On Day 3
Group C:
herO, Polt, Tunico, KelazhurGroup D:
Bbyong, MajOr, ABomB, trOt
