ESL Open Week #186: MaxPax, SKillous, GuMiho Win

by Wax

Week #186 of the Open Cups took place under abnormal circumstances as sixteen top players were occupied with travel to Gamers8.

This led to a shocking result on the Korean server, as Danish Protoss MaxPax defeated RagnaroK 3-1 to claim the weekly championship. It marked only the fourth time a non-Korean player won the Korean server cup, with Oliveira having won in weeks #152 and #101, and Scarlett having won in week #11.

A historic three-server sweep seemed to be on the table for MaxPax after he won in Korea, but SKillous denied him the chance of achieving such a record. Going up against MaxPax in the European server finals, SKillous bested the PvP master by a 3-1 scoreline to win his fifth ever Open Cup.

The Americas server cup saw many players take advantage of the top contenders going missing, with players like BabyMarine, Lemon, Arrogfire, Mixu, and Silky all fighting their way into the top eight. However, the last man standing ended up being one of the few remaining powerhouses in GuMiho, who took down trigger 3-1 in the finals.

The non-ESL Korean Starleague was held on July 29th, and thus unaffected by travel to Gamers8. However, strong online players like ByuN, Cure, and herO have recently been skipping KSL, and Dark has benefited from being the strongest remaining regular. That proved to be the scenario in KSL #21 as well, with Dark losing zero maps to win for the third straight week.

ESL Open Korean Cup (partial bracket shown)