This night is going to be huge, as a potential result of 9 matches can come out of this play day. It will be very important to win these matches, since there is only one chance for a free ride to the next Starleague.
For information on how these players got here, see this thread.
Bracket A
Jaedong (Z) vs Sea (T)
Hitchhiker
Monty Hall
Python
Bracket B
Shudder (T) vs Yooi (T)
Python
Monty Hall
Hitchhiker
Bracket C
Rock (P) vs FirebatHero (T)
Monty Hall
Fantasy
Hitchhiker
Winners of Bracket A and B face eachother next week, Winner of Bracket C will face the 4th Place finisher in this season's Daum Starleague
Jaedong (Z, Lecaf OZ) vs Sea (T, MBCGame HERO)
The record of Jaedong vs Sea is only at 1-1, but with the talent both of these players have, this is obviously the most anticipated match of this season's Starchallenge. Sea with his superb TvZ, while Jaedong with his own ZvT style. This will bring on some very entertaining matches.
Jaedong proved he can roll over anyone that is Terran, taking out Mind in the group stages winners match. Although Jaedong has only played one game on Hitchhiker versus Terran, if you see the game, he played very intelligently. Sea though, is no stranger to Hitchhiker as well, convincingly beating Orion also in the winners match of his group. With losses to both GoRush and Reach though, you kind of feel that Hitchhiker is Sea's weak map though. I think Jaedong will take this game comfortably, but don't be suprised if it ends early due to a Sea cheese.
Both ZvT games Jaedong has played on Monty Hall have been losses, against oov and Light. No suprises there. Sea though is in the same vein. Although beating the out of form Zergman, he lost to GoRush in the MSL quite recently. The only way that Jaedong will probably win though, is to demonstrate a strategy similar to Silver's Guardian/Hydralisk Power Rush. Don't be suprised if Jaedong win's this, but most likely, Sea will take advantage of Monty Hall's weaknesses and win.
Woot! Finally a map which isn't terribly imbalanced some way or another. Looking statistically wise, Jaedong is 2-2 vs the humans on Python, with losses to Casy and Flash, great TvZ players, so no suprises there. Sea has only played a Zerg once on Python, which was Keke, where he won quite easily. This game will all depend on wits and strategy. If any of you remember, sAviOr lost to FirebatHero on this map due to a smart 2 barrack proxy build from FBH, where sAviOr could not do anything because he had no sunkens. Will this happen again? No idea. Tough one to predict, we'll just have to see what happens on the day.
Shudder (T, SK Telecom T1) vs Yooi (T, Hanbit Stars)
Ugh, here's one that you'd probably want to miss. Two mediocre terran's which aren't entertaining at all. The only positive thing is that the winner of this will have to play either Jaedong or Sea, which means most likely a battle of pride here. In other news, both of these players have never played eachother before!
Interesting, Shudder has only played one game on Python, against the bird, Stork, where he got absolutely humiliated. No games at ALL for Yooi on Python. I feel so bland going for Shudder here.
Shudder beat BestGod (a Protoss) in the group stages, woop de doo, Yooi beat ZergBoy in the group stages of the OSC, lost to Soo in Proleague, woop de doo again. Shudder will probably take this one out in this game.
If it goes to a third game..... One game from Shudder on Hitchhiker, beating Frozean on the way to arriving here. Same with Yooi, beating Mujuk in the same winners game.
Rock (P, Pantech EX) vs FirebatHero (T, Samsung KHAN)
Yay! Finally, a non-boring set of matches to finish off the night. Both Rock and FBH have never played eachother before, so we'll see some interesting games here.
If my memory serves me right, Rock smashed fOrGG with a fast carrier rush on this exact map. Not really the prettiest of strategies. He has also beaten ChRh. Then lets take a look at the more active FBH. Losses to Stork and Free aren't really impressive. I'd say I'll give this one to Rock.
Fantasy, the map where anything can happen, literally. Both players have not played this map once. So with statistical analysing, this will go to FBH.
Both FBH and Rock won the winners match on this map versus Hero and TheMania respectively, not really great opponents. Some while ago, FBH also lost to Anytime during Shinhan 2006 #3. Rock though, has only played that one game vs Mania on this map. As said before for Jaedong vs Sea, we'll have to see what will happen.