by Poopi

The stakes are higher than ever at the ESL Masters Spring Championship, and not just because the total prize pool has been raised to $100,000. It’s the last stop on the 2023/24 pro tour before the EPT World Championship at the Esports World Cup, and for some players, it will be their best opportunity to earn a spot. The top four finishers will earn direct seeds to the EWC, while for the rest, they might earn just enough EPT points to qualify based on their position in the standings. So for this preview, we’ll be taking an EWC oriented look at the tournament and lay out what the scenarios and goals are for the top competitors.

Astrea, Clem, Cure, Dark, Oliveira, Serral

For these six players, DreamHack Dallas will be played for the ‘normal’ stakes of prize money, glory, and love of the game. Serral, Clem, Dark, Cure, and Maru pre-booked their tickets due to their high finishes at previous EPT events, while Astrea and Oliveira are mathematically locked in to have the most points of anyone in the Americas and Asia regions (which each receive a single EWC seed).

While there are no personal EWC stakes for these players, they could still have an effect on the overall qualification scenarios. It’s highly likely that one or more of them will finish in the top four and ‘double qualify’ (triple qualify in the case of Serral), which would roll down those extra qualification spots to the EPT Global Standings (this could benefit players like ByuN and herO—more on this later).

Regardless of the stakes, all eyes will be on Serral who will be playing in his first major tournament since he began his military service in April of this year. According to Finnish media, the reigning world champion is able to engage in some degree of SC2 practice during his military service (even renting out some office space to do so), but one still has to worry that being part-time has affected his skill level. Serral has only played one match since he started his military service: a 2-0 against Coffee in the World Team League. While it was a one-sided bout, the result was still open to interpretation. A pessimist might say Serral should have destroyed Coffee more thoroughly and there were clear signs of rust, while an optimist might say Coffee has actually been playing quite well lately and Serral played at his usual level. As for me, I’m going to cautiously say Serral is probably still the favorite to win the entire event.

Contrary to Serral, we have seen Clem participate in many tournaments lately—most notably in the recent EPT Europe regional where he won yet another championship. While he did show one moment of weakness when he suffered a 2-3 upset against Spirit in the upper bracket, he made up for it with a very impressive losers’ bracket run to the title. Indeed, Clem ended up 3-0’ing Reynor, HeroMarine, and Spirit to reach the finals, where he beat his arch-nemesis MaxPax by a 4-3 scoreline (one of those losses being a free point for MaxPax due to his winners bracket advantage). It is pretty clear that without Serral actively participating, Clem is simply the best player outside of the Korean region (Reynor played EPT Europe with a big server disadvantage from Korea, but given his current slump, it’s hard to put him on the same level as Clem). With Clem breaking his offline tournament jinx at DreamHack Atlanta, where he even beat Serral in a truly unforgettable series, he has to be right up there as one of the main title contenders. As always, the biggest danger for Clem will be top Korean Terrans. While his TvT consistency has improved over the years, it’s still the match-up where he’s proven to be most vulnerable.

That brings us to Maru, IEM Katowice runner-up and recent winner of Code S Season 1 and StarsWar 11. If Serral isn’t at 100% peak form this weekend, then Maru might be the actual favorite to take home the trophy from Dallas. He has a monster 35-6 match record in 2024 (88-36 map record), and comes in as the #2 ranked Aligulac.com player behind Serral. Besides a freak 1-2 loss to Cyan in the group stages of Katowice, all of those losses came against championship caliber players. His recent outing at StarsWar #11 showed he’s still in fine form, where he went through Creator, SHIN, Spirit, GuMiho, and herO (if you include the online portion of the tournament) to claim the championship. In short, Maru is looking very much like a world championship runner-up level player. The only potential issue for Maru is his relative lack of success in tournaments outside of East Asia. But following his second place finish at Katowice, shouldn’t we say it’s more of a Serral issue than an overseas tournament issue?

Cure has been one of the most consistent players in the entire SC2 scene over the last 12 months, and his early EWC seed is well-deserved. Of the nine Liquipedia-premier events since April of 2023, Cure has placed top four or higher in seven of those events, including three runner-up finishes. The problem for Cure is that his past record shows there are two specific opponents he has very little chance of beating: Maru and Serral. Cure definitely has a chance to add another finals appearance to his tally, but he’ll need a fortunate bracket draw to do so.

Rounding out the trio of pre-qualified Koreans is Dark, who recently became a father to a baby girl. This will be the first time we get to see whether the fatherhood buff applies to top level StarCraft II, and it would sure come in handy for Dark in a stacked event like this. On paper, Dark is still an elite, championship tier player, ranked #6 on Aligulac while being the #2 Zerg behind Serral. However, his recent GSL performances were somewhat shaky, dropping out of the RO16 in Code S Season 1, and narrowly avoiding the same fate in Season 2. His last GSL group encapsulated some of his recent inconsistencies, as it took a bad 0-2 initial loss to Stats for him to lock in and advance with wins over Rogue and Stats in a rematch. With his form being unclear and A LOT of players being desperate for a top four finish, I can’t say he’s a favorite to reach the top four. Still, Dark is a player with incredible peaks, so he always has a chance to insert himself into the championship picture.

As for Astrea and Oliveira, it’s hard to realistically see them finishing in the top four and making the qualification scenarios complicated. Astrea is the best NA player, but without Neeb, I am not sure if that title holds the same weight anymore. Playing in the US might be a slight advantage, but there are too many hungry players at this event for him to shine. Similarly, I don’t see Oliveira doing well in this event, especially after he got upset in front of his home crowd 0-3 by SKillous in the latest StarsWar event.

Reynor, HeroMarine, Spirit

While Liquipedia has declined to color in Reynor’s name in green, he’s already a lock to make the EWC in every realistic scenario. The situation is pretty simple: Clem and Serral will qualify for EWC as seeded players, MaxPax will almost certainly forfeit (as he always does), which makes Reynor the first in line to qualify from Europe on points.

What further guarantees his spot is that no one in Europe can overtake him on points without finishing in the top four or higher of DH Dallas—in which case they’d earn a direct seed and take themselves out of the points race! To overtake Reynor, both HeroMarine (1873 points) and Spirit (1766 points) need the 600 points from fourth place, but as already mentioned, that would simply give them direct seeds to EWC and Reynor would remain in first place of the EU standings for qualification purposes.

The worst case scenario for Reynor (2136 points) would be that he finishes top 24 at Dallas and obtains zero extra points, while both HeroMarine and Spirit make the top 8 (+245 points from their current position) and end up at 2114 and 2011 points. THEN, Spirit and HeroMarine would have to dominate the remaining few weeks of ESL Open Cups in a specific pattern so that they both overtake Reynor at the same time. Thirteen consecutive server cups where Spirit beats HeroMarine in the finals would do the trick—and even this ludicrous outcome might not be possible if ESL locks the EPT point rankings in the next couple of weeks.

Reynor likely has all this calculated out, but don’t expect him to be taking it easy. He’s gone through an extended slump since winning Gamers8 last year—including a recent RO16 elimination in Code S—and you know he’ll be extremely motivated to show everyone what his real level is. Get your “washed” jokes in while there’s still time!

After Reynor, HeroMarine and Spirit are also mostly safe to qualify for EWC, regardless of their Dallas result. For Big Gabe, it’s because he’s very likely to be the second place EU points holder. Since he has a 103 points advantage over Spirit, even if he makes top 12 (250 points) and Spirit top 8 (350 points), the 100 points differential wouldn’t be enough for Spirit to jump ahead of Big Gabe. The only possibility for Spirit to overtake HeroMarine would be to place two positions above him: top 8 vs top 16, and top 12 vs top 24 would allow him to make up that 100 point gap. Looking at the brutal Dallas brackets, it’s doubtful that Spirit can perform two spots better than HeroMarine. Still, it’s not all that gloomy for Spirit at all, as he has insurance in the form of the Global Standings (more on that later).

>GuMiho, Solar, ByuN

The situation in Korea is more volatile than Europe due to the ongoing Code S Season 2 tournament, but you can see where the rankings will likely end up GuMiho (3210 points) is currently first in line to advance based on his position in the standings, and despite falling out of Code S in the RO16, he probably has enough of a point buffer to qualify for the EWC. Since Solar (2837 points) also dropped out of the Code S RO16, ByuN (2621) is too many points behind, it seems unlikely that GuMiho would fall further than #2 in the Korean point standings.

Still, just like Reynor, it would be good for GuMiho to remind everyone of just who he is ahead of the world championship. The reason he has so many points in the first place is because of his runner-up finish at EPT Summer 2023, where even Serral was briefly vexed by his frenetic movements and unorthodox strategies. The best version of GuMiho is a threat to even the top championship contenders, and it would make the proceedings much more interesting if he showed up.

The race between Solar and ByuN should be more interesting, as Solar has a 216 points advantage over ByuN, but ByuN is still alive in the GSL. However, at the end of the day, it almost certainly won’t matter which one of them places higher, because given how the Global Standings scenarios break down (right below), both of them are going to qualify for the EWC regardless.

Originally, there was supposed to be just one player qualified for the EWC through the Global Standings, calculated after all the other regional qualifications. However, as mentioned in earlier, it’s possible for players to earn double/triple qualification with high finishes in multiple events (as Serral did by winning both EPT Summer and IEM Katowice), in which case these spots roll down to the Global Standings.

There could be anywhere between two or six spots available depending on how many already qualified players double-qualify by finishing in the top four at Dallas. As it stands, you have to think at least ONE of Clem, Serral, Maru, Dark, and Cure will reach the top four, and it’s perfectly reasonable to think FOUR of them could make it as well (one thing to note is that that the final Global Standings may be adjusted slightly based on regional weighting, but the following projections should hold for the most part).

Regardless of how many seeds roll down, ByuN is close to a lock to qualify for EWC via the global standings, as the next two players in the ranking—herO (2260 points) and Classic (2152 points)—can’t overtake him without both placing in the top four. While herO and Classic are ostensibly competing for the #2 global standings spot, in reality they’re both sitting pretty as it seems to be a foregone conclusion that at least one global standings spot will roll down to them, and Spirit (1766) lags too far behind in points to catch up. As for herO, he’s a top championship contender in his own right, looking fully recovered from the 2023 slump that made him fall this far down in the rankings. The championship should be his goal at Dallas, and knowing that an EWC seed is almost surely locked up might give him the peace of mind needed to achieve it.

Going down the rankings, there’s too much of a points gap between the next few players for them to be in direct competition with each other. Rather, they’re waiting to see if they will benefit from the good fortune of a new global standings spot falling to them.

Spirit might seem to be unlucky as he’s on the fringes of the points cutoff in both Europe and Globally. However, that also means he has multiple forms of insurance—if any one of Serral, Clem, Maru, Dark, Cure, or Reynor finishes in the top four, he is extremely likely to qualify for the EWC. If two or more reach the top four, he is basically a lock.

The next player in line is SHIN (1521 points), whose 200+ point gap on Bunny (1315 points) means he’s a strong favorite to pick up the next available windfall seed. However, this is around the point where it’s not certain that there will be any more seeds that roll down.

For the sake of entertainment, the most intriguing scenario would be if the maximum number of seeds rolled down. Then, there could potentially be a fierce competition between players in the 1191-1315 points range of points—Creator, Lambo, SKillous, Scarlett, ShoWTimE, and Bunny—all scrapping for sixth and final spot.

As laid out above, the way ESL handles points and seeding mean that the EWC qualification scenarios just aren’t that dramatic. For better and for worse, things have played out so that all the best players in the world are close to being locks to reach the EWC, while the rest of players have a very low chance of disrupting the standings.

Still, there are a couple of players that are making me hold out for an exciting finish. For them, the mission is simple, and also in the realm of possibility: Make top four and qualify for the EWC.

The first is the legendary Rogue, who’s still the GOAT in the eyes of some fans (their intellectual honesty must be lauded). The timing of his recent return from military service could hardly be any worse, giving him no chance to earn any EPT points and barely any time to recover his skill level.

His latest Code S appearance resulted in a last place exit (1-4), but he played one extremely impressive macro game against Cure that left the glass-half-full thinkers excited for an imminent return to peak form. Never forget that Rogue is the big offline match player, with three world championships and four Code S titles to prove it. It is a very, very long shot to have Rogue make the top 4 so shortly after his return, but if there is one player that could make such magical things happen, it’s Rogue.

Stats has had much more of a head start on Rogue, but he’s still in the process of overcoming the rust from a long stint in the military. While he had a breakthrough in Code S Season 1 with a top 4 finish, he didn’t gather enough EPT points prior to that to be in real qualification contention.

Stats’ performances in the last couple of months have been a real mixed bag, sometimes looking like the old Shield of Aiur and sometimes looking far too slow to keep up with players who have been practicing uninterrupted for the last decade. The best version of Stats has a chance of making it all the way to the top four, but it’s dubious whether he can maintain that level of consistency at the moment.

While I’m not predicting either of these two to make the top four, I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on them. They’re the two that really need a deep run the most, which makes them two great candidates to test the old adage of “form is temporary, class is permanent”.

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• Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/626282-ept-summer-dallas-road-to-the-ewc