Week #101 gave us a landmark edition of the Korean cup, with TIME becoming just the second non-Korean player to ever take first place (the last time being Scarlett’s victory in week #11). In Europe, Reynor decided to ignore his own Twitter poll where the majority of his fans asked him to stream during the competition, but he made up for this betrayal by winning the cup while only dropping a single map. Finally, in a rather familiar result, Zest won his nineteenth Americas cup.

KR cup: Dark once again participated and tried to win his fourth straight cup in a row, but several upsets occurred which led to the surprise ending of TIME coming out as the sole survivor. As usual, there was solid Protoss representation with Astrea, Classic, Creator, herO, MacSed, NightMare, Prince, Zest and all Zoun participating. Terran wasn’t far behind, with ByuN, Cure, Gumiho, TIME and Percival in competition. Zerg came in with the thinnest roster, with only Dark, DongRaeGu, and RagnaroK coming from the GSL.

DongRaeGu claimed the finals spot from the bottom side of the bracket, taking out Percival (2-0), Zest (2-0), and Cure (3-0) along the way. Zest might have been the bottom-half favorite a few months ago, but alas, he has not won a Korean Cup for around three months. Creator had a nice start by beating ByuN 2-1, but ended up losing to Cure, who still seems to be an insurmountable wall for Protosses at the moment (he also beat MacSed 2-0 in the previous round). However, the Code S champion’s TvZ still seems quite shaky, and he gave up a 0-3 sweep to ZvT powerhouse DongRaeGu in the semifinals.

Meanwhile, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Dark would come out of the top half of the bracket, but even Dark couldn’t win four EPT weeklies in a row. Even though he had very impressive ZvT performances lately, StarCraft 2 is such a demanding game that a small dip in day-to-day form could make you lose against underdogs, especially in the BO3 format. This loss came at the hands of GuMiho, who now seems to be heating up after a few cold weeks immediately after his return from military service. After beating Dark 2-1 in the RO16, Gumiho had a free pass into the semifinals since RagnaroK forfeited their quarterfinals match. However, his good fortune did not last for long, as he ran into an even hotter TIME who had already defeated herO (2-1) and Zoun (2-1) on the day. TIME did not care about GuMiho’s amazing TvZ upset in the previous round, and simply dominated him in a clean 3-0 sweep. This set up an unexpected grand finals match between DRG and TIME for the week #101 title.

On the first map of Glittering Ashes, TIME went for mech and successfully dragged the bout out until the late game. With a maxed-out army of well-upgraded mech, TIME managed to take a decisive victory in a major engagement to take the game. DongRaeGu evened the series back up on Hardwire, dealing massive mid-game damage with Ling-Bane armies and eventually forcing TIME to go for desperation drops that sputtered out. DRG then took the lead on Blackburn, winning in an action packed macro game. He established a strong economy and managed to whittle down TIME’s SCV count until he couldn’t defend anymore. The Chinese Terran kept his calm, however, and sealed his victory by winning the next two maps. He pulled out a proxy 3-Barracks build on 2000 Atmospheres which dealt heavy damage early on, and then defended against DRG’s last-ditch Baneling bust to force the GG. Game five saw TIME harass DRG successfully in the early game before attacking with a big squad of Marines assisted by Medivacs and Mines. DRG was caught off guard, and struggled to deal with all the Terran threats at once. His belatedly morphed Banelings were blown up by the mines, forcing him to type the final GG and make TIME the second ever non-Korean ESL KR Cup champion.

Upset(s) of the day: The Korean cup had been rather predictable for a few weeks now, but we got a slew of upsets in week #101. The biggest one for me was GuMiho beating Dark 2-1, thus preventing him from winning 4 KR cups in a row. Dark had been on an insane ZvT streak and was ranked as the #2 ZvT player in the world on Aligulac.com (just barely below Serral),and had around 91 odds of beating GuMiho according to the stats website.

TIME’s entire run could be called an upset, as he beat herO and Zoun in close TvPs and then defeated GuMiho in a dominant 3-0 sweep. Finally, he narrowly beat ZvT specialist DongRaeGu in the finals.

Honorable mentions go to DRG for taking out Zest 2-0 and Creator for beating ByuN 2-1.

*****

EU Cup: The European edition was once again stacked with good players from top to bottom, with Reynor eventually coming out as the victor. Besides Reynor, Lambo and Elazer joined him as notable Zergs, while Terrans had the two kings of the cup in HeroMarine and Clem followed by SpeCial and uThermal. Week #100 champion MaxPax returned to defend his title and represent Protoss, joined by ShowTimE, Astrea, and Liquid’s Harstem & MaNa.

If cup #100 had been full of upsets, this week’s competition played out relatively predictably from the RO32 onward. Clem may have been looking for a chance to redeem himself in TvZ after his upset at the hands of Lambo last week, but he wouldn’t get a chance until the grand finals. Instead, he got to show some very solid TvT (a problem match-up for him in the past) by taking out uThermal (2-0), ByuN (2-1), and SpeCial (3-1) in consecutive matches. SpeCial had been showing off his much improved TvP up to that point, beating MaxPax and MaNa in the previous rounds.

HeroMarine was looking to book a finals match against Clem for the eighth time in the 2021/22 season (out of 37 total cups), but was thwarted by another one of his cup rivals in Reynor. Both players made a beeline to the semifinals on the bottom side of the bracket, with Big Gabe beating Brat_OK, Gerald, and Astrea, while Reynor defeated Spirit and ShoWTimE among others. Neither player had dropped a map up to that point, but only Reynor was able to keep his undefeated streak going by taking a 3-0 victory against the German Terran (a repeat of last week’s semifinal).

Reynor couldn’t preserve his perfect record in the finals, but still came up with an impressive 3-1 victory against Clem. Reynor won the first map of Curious Minds by building up a strong economy, and then using it to gradually break down his opponent’s economy on the other end of the map. Clem tried his best to stay in the game and fight back, but didn’t have the tech to deal with Reynor’s transition to Lurkers. Clem took the second map of Hardwire in a 22-minute-long macro game, this time defending cost-effectively against his opponent’s Lurker-based composition. Eventually, Clem was left with a superior army that marched forward to win with a counter blow. Game three on Blackburn was another long macro game, and this time, Reynor was able to use his strong economy (aided by a gold expansion) to outmuscle Clem with a big army of Lurkers up front and additional Lurkers sneaking around to harass. Finally, Reynor took the fourth map of Glittering Ashes without a single real fight: He went for a backdoor attack with a small squad of speedlings right when Clem sent six hellions across the map. Clem was in the midst of swapping his add-ons, and without any cycle of units to defend his economy, he GG’d out instantly. Reynor won the series 3-1 to clinch another EU title, making up for his defeat in the finals of EPT Cup #100.

Upset(s) of the day: Even though there were a lot more players in the European edition compared to KR, the bracket played out rather predictably this week. Therefore, the very mild upset of the day will be SpeCial beating MaxPax 2-1 in quarterfinals.

The two of them are almost tied in head-to-head with 22 wins for MaxPax and 21 for SpeCial, with their close Aligulac ratings in the TvP match-up making the Protoss only a slight favorite to beat SpeCial with 56:44 odds.

Maybe, if you were really down on Reynor due to his poor form lately, you could have considered him beating ShoWTimE, HeroMarine, and Clem while losing only one map to be kind of an upset.

*****

NA Cup: The NA bracket was especially Protoss-heavy this week. Cham and Rattata (formerly Vanya) were the only notable representatives for Zerg, while ByuN and SpeCial were left with the responsibility of defending Terran’s honor. On the other hand, Protoss had a stronger delegation than Terran and Zerg combined, with Astrea, Has, herO, MaxPax, ShoWTimE, Zest, and Zoun vying for the cup.

While Zest has been relatively disappointing in his KR cup performances lately, he is still a dominant force in NA cups, winning cup #99 two weeks ago. He only had to play PvP in the top side of the bracket to reach the finals, and he was almost untouchable in the match-up, beating TriGGer and Has (who beat Astrea 2-1) 2-0 and Gerald 3-1 in the semifinals. Besides Zest, other Protoss players struggled to get win-streaks going in PvP, with HellRaiser beating NightMare 2-1 and MaxPax 2-0 but losing against Gerald 1-2, while Gerald lost against Zest afterwards.

There was more of a non-Protoss presence on the bottom side of the bracket, with ShoWTimE beating Rattata 2-0, before facing herO who just beat Zoun 2-1. The German Protoss prevailed with a 2-1 victory to qualify for the semifinals. ByuN was the favorite to get there and oppose him, but SpeCial was in good form and beat him 2-1 (the two actually have quite an interesting head-to-head relationship, with SpeCial having never defeated ByuN until October of this year, after which he’s won four matches in a row). The Mexican Terran then proved that his finals run in last week’s cup was no fluke, as he defeated ShoWTimE in a close 3-2 series to earn a return to the finals stage.

In game one on Hardwire, SpeCial tried to mind-game Zest by going for a hidden Barracks with double-gas, but Zest was unperturbed as he played out his strategy calmy. He even got ahead by dealing damage with an early 2-Adept 1-Zealot attack, which prompted SpeCial to GG out once his Mine drop was deflected. On the second map, SpeCial also built his Barracks outside his main, but this time proxied near Zest to harass with Reapers while building his Factory and Starport at home. Although Zest scouted most of this, he still took a lot of economic damage from 3 Reapers and 4 Hellions, as well as a cloaked Banshee later on. He tried to all-in SpeCial with two Sentries, some Stalkers and a Warp Prism, but the Terran managed to defend with the help of SCV’s, forcing Zest to GG. On Blackburn, SpeCial tried a one base all-in with a Tank, Medivac, Liberator, 2 Cyclones, and Marines, but Zest managed to stall while cutting off reinforcements with Stalkers to force the GG out of SpeCial. The last game on Glittering Ashes was another attempt at 1 base all-in from SpeCial, with his buildings hidden close to his main. He attacked with a Medivac, Liberator, Tanks, Marines, and a few SCV’s. The game was scrappy and back and forth but Zest ultimately came out ahead, notably because he kept his expansion alive for a long time. He won the map and the series 3-1 for another NA cup gold medal.

Upset(s) of the day: There were no huge upsets, but there were several minor surprises in this cup. HellRaiser had an impressive run in cup #99, and he started this one very promisingly by beating MaxPax 2-0 in PvP, but was defeated in the next round by Gerald by a 2-1 score. Another small upset was Has beating Astrea 2-1—even though I am a bit uncertain of the American Protoss’s current form, he was still a solid top 3 player in DHM: NA (those who followed the good performances of Has for PREP eSPORTS in the WTL won’t be surprised). SpeCial beating both ByuN and ShoWTimE, 2-1 and 3-2 respectively, are good performances and small upsets, continuing the hot streak Juanito has been on these last few weeks.

by Poopi