SC2 Pro Tournament Discussion

I wonder what his failed cannon rush was supposed to accomplish. It might have been the worst placement I've ever seen.

He did manage to come back and win, though.

mouzNaama vs oGsTOP, game 2 of the semifinals, omfg Thor micro. What a weird and awesome game.

I guess this was the game that brings the magic of SC2 back to me.

Time for game 3.

Spoiler:

EDIT: And Korea is out of the tournament. Mind. Blown. IGN.com

Aaaah! I keep missing all of the games! I get up at 6 in the morning just in time to catch the semi-finals. Stupid Euro time zones.

Just watched the last semi final match.

Spoiler:

OMG OGSTop killed one of his own tech labs with a sieged tank!, what a way to lose.

This final is just crazy!

OMFG CRAZY FINAL!

Spoiler:

DEFENSIVE NUKES! :D

Games 3 and 4 of that series were great.

Nice to see a Protoss use some frickin Templar for once.

I wouldn't call this a good game, but it's an entertaining game. Socke vs Mana Game 2 - Dreamhack Ro8

I liked the dude that managed to get to the quarter finals by 6 pooling. Not a bad strategy considering most high level players don't encounter it anymore.

And having ActionJesuz for handle must count for something

Couldn't watch the final games due to RL busy work.

KHAAAAAAAN!

Day9, upload that stuff, please.

drdoak wrote:

I wouldn't call this a good game, but it's an entertaining game. Socke vs Mana Game 2 - Dreamhack Ro8

That can be said of almost all of Socke's games. Ever.

I like the part where Socke used his own Cannon to destroy the only Pylon that powered it. It happens at 6:14 and is really easy to miss.

I've been watching the dream hack replays from day9's blip web site and I must say, I loved the LiquidTyler (p) vs DaboO (z) game.

LiquidTyler vs. Fenix was good too. There's a 24-kill Hellion in one of the games. A cloaked Banshee attacked the main base, and all the probes transferred to the natural - just as a pair of upgraded Hellions attacked the natural. The probes were all lined up and one of the Hellions had a straight shot up the line. About 30 probes went down between the two Hellions. day9 got a little excited.

GSL starts again tonight/tomorrow. FruitDealer and Ret are both playing (both against fOu opponents).

Surprised to see NSPGenius handled so easily by Rain. Looks like Protoss won't make it very far in this GSL. Also Golden's attempted zergling/queen rush in set 1 was hilarious both in its ineffectiveness and how confused it made Artosis.

Link to Huk vs. Tarson in Dreamhack. Apparently the game didn't matter - Huk was in, Tarson was out, so Huk went Mothership. I found the link through Reddit.

This seemed a pretty thoughtful use of the mothership. The game starts around 1:41 in (hours and minutes).

Is Gomtv the only place to see GSL matches? NM, I googled - looks like the Korean pro leagues keep the replays locked away, mostly. With the money they're paying, I guess I understand why.

Argh. My sleep schedule has gotten completely thrown off. I guess that means I'm watching the GSL live this morning. Looking forward to seeing Ret play again.

Edit: New Dawn tries to 10-hatch on Steppes of War against what turns out to be (of course) the two-barracks SCV rush. Not an auspicious start to the morning.

Edit 2: Fruit Dealer just barely hangs on. All three games ended up being relatively interesting, especially game 2, assuming you're not sick of TvZ by now. Ret's up next.

This "you can't eliminate maps" rule is stupid.

I'm thinking about caving in to subscribing to the GomTV thing. However, I think it would be better to split the expense with a fellow GWJ'er, especially with someone in a timezone/schedule different enough that both could take advantage of it without stepping in each others toes.

My timezone is GMT, and I usually watch that stuff between 2200 and 0100 GMT. I might (and it's a big might) catch a game or two on weekends and lunchbreaks (1300-1400 GMT), but I think some scheduling and sensible warning we can enjoy the games.

Anyone interested?

kyrieee wrote:

This "you can't eliminate maps" rule is stupid.

Yeah, and it just claimed yet another victim.

The rule would be fine if all the maps were balanced for all the matchups but they quite simply aren't. Not even close.

Ret loses 2-1. Lost game 2 on Steppes of War (yes, all three zergs drew that map versus terran today) which wasn't even close, and then lost a squeaker in game 3 to a marauder-hellion push and one viking that got so many overlord kills after the queens got taken out. A real heart-breaker.

Edit: Well, after that, JSL vs HongUn game 2 is a nice fun one to end the day on.

Carriers. Respect!

I am starting to get the feeling that it will be an all TvT finals in GSL3. Dreading that.

Ret played way too risky. I know that's his style but he was under the gun in every game and almost lost Game 1 as well. Games 2 and 3 weren't close.

The big problem is that map elimination is essentially a tool to decrease "luck" outcomes with small match sizes. With a best-of-7 or even a best-of-5, there's some opportunity to come back from an outcome of "this map type favors a certain kind of strategy that my race is not great at." Vetoing a map is more or less saying "I concede that you will beat me on map X". When both players get to eliminate one map in a best of 3, it effectively makes it a best of five with one "free win" for each player—which means that the maps that do actually get played on are the maps that both players believe they have a fighting chance on.

So basically, the trade off they've made for this season of the GSL open is to increase the variance in maps in exchange for decreasing the quality of the individual games. Not a great choice for the viewers or the players, I'm afraid. I can understand what they were thinking when they did it, though—and while I think it should have been an obviously bad choice, I am not against experimenting in order to see empirically what will happen instead of just assuming things.

It's their money and reputation on the line, after all.

And the end result being 2nd game Steppes of War and third game Delta Quadrant in a ZvT - how fair and balanced is that?

I know it's a stupid thing to say, because if you're good enough you'll win, but it feels like Ret is still the better player even though he lost, his creep spread in G1 was sick. Terran is the race to play if you want to beat people who are better than you. Still, those pushes were not impossible to hold and he made some mistakes like failing to get speed (he said on TL he pressed it but had just too few resources or something and didn't notice).

Newsflash: JulyZerg is really good at SC2
He played with such composure! Amazing to see

LiquidRet Vs TheBestfOu: Like anything competitive you go after what your opponent is weak at and you could see in game 2 and 3 that Ret's crisis management and micro just weren't up to par. In game 1 his macro skills were absolutely unreal so it wasn't surprising to see TheBest go for early pressure.

I think it would be hilarious to see Idra Vs Ret. There wouldn't be any action for 25 minutes but the entire map would be taken and each side would have 100+ drones.

Might be this was posted already, but here's a fantastic, nail-bitingly tense game from the dreamhack finals:

http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4444658/