Samsung Galaxy: Underdog quest

By reaching finishing round one in second place, Samsung Galaxy have already exceeded all expectations. They seemed doomed to a tortured existence at the bottom of the table when ace player JangBi departed in the off-season, with no new signing coming in to fill the gap. Instead, Samsung became the surprise team of the round by accomplishing an exceeding rare feat: they made most of their existing players get better. Solar is almost certainly the most improved player of the season so far, while RorO looks close to recovering his old championship form. Shine is growing into a Korean elfi, while Stork now looks more likely to reach Code S than the SSL. Last but not least, players like eMotion and Trend have gone from being completely unknown to being serviceable in a pinch.

The most incredible performance of Samsung's underdog run came just a couple of weeks ago against SK Telecom T1 where they scored a massive 3-1 upset. It was that result that propelled Samsung to second place while forcing SKT to go up against Jin Air in an initial round playoff match. With a previous win against SKT in the books, fans of Samsung are hoping for a repeat performance that would send their team into the round 1 finals.

Unfortunately, we're now in the all-kill zone. This is where SKT's obscene collection of super-aces can really flex their muscles, with every single player a threat to defeat entire teams. The problem for Samsung is that while they've grown a deep and well-rounded roster, that kind of roster is far better suited for the Proleague format than the all-kill format. Depth can be useful in Bo9 all-kill, but in Bo7, multi-kill power is the most important factor. In this kind of situation, you'd rather have one Classic than eMotion, Trend, and Armani combined,

Solar is the breakout player of the season so far, but we don't yet know if he's a player who can put a team on his back. After he got shellacked by Rain in Code S, we have to wonder if he's really capable of running a gauntlet that includes Rain, PartinG, and Classic. Still, he has that "can beat anyone on his best day" quality that makes him a threat.

For better or for worse, it's probably going to be RorO who Samsung will end up relying on. Throughout his career RorO has been the quintessential "anti-expectations" players. If people start to write him off and put him on their FPL anti teams, then he'll inevitably have a great round. If people get excited about his play and start hyping him up, then he's nearly guaranteed to flop.

RorO is on an upswing right now, which should have Samsung fans rightfully fretting. He's figured out how to play a really abusive swarm host based style on narrow, long maps, mangling players like Classic, Creator, Sora, and Stats so far. You'd think that would make him an excellent candidate to take out Rain, PartinG, and Classic, but then you remember that he got crushed 0-3 by Rain just 2 months ago in the Hot6ix Cup. Samsung fans need to pray it's championship RorO who shows up on Sunday night.

Before we move on to talking about SK Telecom T1, we have to mention Stork and the decision to place him as the first player. We wouldn't blame you for being surprised by this decision, as Stork only recently broke his thirteen game losing streak in Proleague. However, I think we should reserve judgment on this one. Samsung's acting head coach Oh Sang Taek has been willing to take risks this season, such as benching all his veterans in week one or playing all Zergs in week five, and those risks have paid off. Samsung won't beat SKT with a normal game plan, so I trust his judgment in going for something unexpected.

SK Telecom T1 and the totally unfair roster

We didn't really learn anything new about SK Telecom last night in their 4-1 win over Jin Air. soO lost to Rogue in a close ZvZ where both Zergs played well, but Rogue just played a bit better. It was more a testament to Rogue's strong ZvZ than a sign of soO's weakness. PartinG played aggressive builds as is his wont and showed his usual, impeccable micro. All SKT did was reaffirm that they are an all-kill waiting to happen.

Match-up wise, SKT should have a slightly trickier time against Samsung than they did against Jin Air. RorO, Solar, and Shine are all strong ZvZ players, and there's really no advantage to be gained by playing soO or Soulkey against them. RorO and Solar are strong ZvP players as well, which means Samsung's two best players can feel fairly confident against any of SKT's best five. That contrasts with Jin Air's situation, where they had to worry about Maru vs. Soulkey being a serious liability. There's even a match-up where Samsung is the team with an unusual advantage: Shine holds a 7-0 record all time against Soulkey in SC2 and Brood War.

In the end, SKT should just batter Samsung down with sheer weight of numbers and aggregate skill. Even if we're optimistic and say RorO and Solar are on equal standing with soO, Classic, PartinG, Rain, and Soulkey, it's still just the two of them against up to four ace-class players from SKT.

Overall thoughts and prediction

Everyone knows SKT should win this match. They have an completely unfair roster of players, which could arguably have been split into two different teams that both reached the playoffs. Quite frankly, it was an embarrassment for SKT to finish in third place. The all-kill format will let them exploit their roster's strength to the fullest,

Even so, you always have to keep the inherent volatility of the all-kill format in mind. In tournaments such as GSTL and ATC, we've plenty of upsets where the underdogs charged to victory because one of their players got hot for a day. Seal sank Incredible Miracle, Gumiho slayed SlayerS, Dayshi outvalued MVP, and so forth.

We're going to do the smart thing and predict SKT to win here. But if someone on Samsung can get hot first...

Prediction: SKT wins 4-2