ESL Open #132: herO, Reynor, ByuN win

Week #132 saw a player from each race win a cup. herO beat ByuN again to win the Korean Cup, Reynor played mostly Zerg on his way to winning the European cup, (his first since cup #118 in April), and ByuN on Liquipedia” target=”_blank” href=”https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/ByuN“>ByuN won the North American cup in back-to-back weeks.

Korean Cup

Zerg participation was low in week #132 with Rex being the sole notable Zerg players. The other two factions had a better turnout, however, with ByuN, GuMiho, and Percival showing up for Terran while herO, Zoun, Jieshi, Firefly, and Classic represented Protoss.

The most surprising result in the earlier rounds may have been Firefly beating Percival 2-1 in the RO16, but the Terran seems to have fallen below his previous Code S-level. Overall, the bracket progressed in a largely predictable manner until the RO4. The one exception was a Code S-tier match between Zoun and GuMiho in the RO8, where the PSISTORM Terran won 2-1 to advance.

The semifinals saw herO take down GuMiho 2-1, while ByuN beat Classic 2-1 on the other side of the bracket. This set up ByuN versus herO—a very common match in ESL Opens and other online tournaments—in the finals (VOD – Steadfast, VOD – Beowulf). Their last ESL Open finals match had come in Week #129, where herO narrow won by a 3-2 score. However, this time around it was pretty one-sided, with herO winning in a 3-0 sweep to take his ninth ever Korean Cup victory.

Upset(s) of the day: GuMiho beating Zoun was the biggest upset for me, even though Aligulac says GuMiho is around a 45:55 underdog. Zoun seems stronger than Aligulac suggests, having topped his group in Code S while GuMiho ended up finishing last.

*****

European Cup

This European cup got a boost in competitiveness as Reynor decided to play Zerg for most of his run. That made Lambo and Reynor the main Zerg representatives, HeroMarine, Kelazhur, SpeCial, and TIME the most notable Terrans, while Protoss were led by players such as MaxPax, Astrea, Neeb, SKillous, and herO.

The lower rounds featured a number of PvP upsets, with SKillous going down 1-2 to Jieshi, Gerald losing 1-2 to goblin, and ShaDoWn falling 1-2 to StereoClub. Otherwise, the games went mostly as expected with the strongest players rising through the bracket.

Reynor started as Protoss on the top side of the bracket, but switched to Zerg after a close 2-1 victory over Fjant in the RO32. Things went much better for him after that poin, as he 2-0’d Strange, MaxPax, and HeroMarine to reach the grand finals.

The bottom half of the bracket was dominated by Protoss, with Neeb ultimately being the one to survive the gauntlet to reach the finals (SpeCial was the only non-Protoss to reach the quarterfinals on that side of the bracket, but he ended up losing to Neeb). herO was a notable participant both due to his stature and the fact that he was playing with a big latency disadvantage on the European server, but he still managed to go all the way to the semifinals before losing to Neeb.

In the grand finals, Neeb had a chance to bcomee the first NA player to win the EU cup since Week #5, back when he had defeated HeroMarine to win the title. However, Reynor was able to score a reverse-sweep and protect Europe’s pride, getting his 14th EU gold medal in the process (VODs: ZombieGrub, Rotterdam) .

Upset(s) of the day: the biggest upset of the day for me was StereoClub beating ShaDoWn 2-0, as I never heard of this Russian Protoss before. The Aligulac odds were astronomically low, with StereoClub having less than a 5% chance of winning. Other than that, Jieshi beating SKillous 2-1 was also a very nice result for the Chinese protoss.

*****

American Cup

The NA cup featured an interesting mix of competitors, with Reynor swapping ‘back’ to Protoss after having taken the European cup with Zerg. That unfortunately left Zerg without any premier-tier representatives, but the other two races had more to look forward to. Terran had ByuN, Cure, and Special at the fore, while Protoss featured MaxPax, Gerald, Nice, and arrogfire among others.

In an amusing twist, Reynor actually ended up being the sole non-Terran in the semifinals, taking down Golden and future along the way. Unfortunately for the Italian Zerg Protoss, he couldn’t overcome Cure, who took a 2-0 victory in the semifinals. The other semifinal saw ByuN go up against SpeCial, with ByuN having won 2-1 against the formidable MaxPax in the quarterfinals. It was a close call for ByuN once again in the semis, but he prevailed 2-1 against Special to reach the finals.

The TvT mirror final between Cure and ByuN was close to being pure domination by ByuN as he went up 2-0, but Cure would not go down that easily and still managed to get a map win. Still, ByuN was in good form and took the victory 3-1 to achieve a back-to-back win (VODs: Beomulf, PiG).

Upset(s) of the day: This NA cup ended up being very straight-forward, and it’s very hard to point out a result as a big upset. Even ByuN beating MaxPax was the expected result according to Aligulac, though regular viewers know MaxPax seems to get a special boost when he plays the NA cup. Similarly, Reynor beating Future with his Protoss can’t be considered an upset anymore, as Reynor has now racked up plenty of wins against strong players with his Protoss in tournament matches.

by Poopi