Homeground contender Dmitriy "Dimaga" Filipchuk joined his compatriots Kas and WhiteRa at the quarter finals after conquering Group D of IEM Kiev. His and Feast's successes sent one of the group's favorites HerO packing as the Korean protoss finished third.
Group D opened with a magnificent display of PvZ between HerO and Dimaga. Right from the start we saw wild macro games including motherships, mass brood lords and infestors, spine crawlers surrounding archons, vortexes and epic battles. Despite a visible improvement in his vP match-up, Dimaga nonetheless suffered defeat at the hands of HerO.
Dimaga would spring back by defeating qxc 2-0 only to find that he had caught up with the Korean, who fell 1-2 to Belgian protoss Feast in a PvP upset. Dimaga's next triumph against Feast would be the deciding factor about the outcome of the group. The Ukrainian zerg caught the first place having the best wins-to-losses difference and the second place was to be awarded to either Feast or HerO. With the same amount of points, it all came back to their direct clash from earlier and having lost that, the Liquid protoss had to face elimination.
| IEM Kiev Group stage standings | |||||
| Group A | Group B | ||||
  Naniwa | 5 | 2 |   Kas | 6 | 1 |
| WhiteRa | 4 | 3 |   Zenio | 5 | 4 |
| Strelok | 4 | 3 |  NightEnd | 5 | 6 |
 Titan | 1 | 6 |  Grubby | 1 | 6 |
| Group C | Group D | ||||
| MMA | 6 | 2 | Dimaga | 5 | 2 |
| Pomi | 4 | 3 |  Feast | 4 | 3 |
 Targa | 3 | 4 | Hero | 5 | 4 |
 Hasuobs | 2 | 6 |  qxc | 1 | 6 |
The playoffs will begin with two Eastern European quarter final matches, the first being between Pomi and Dimaga and the second between an all-Ukrainian face-off between WhiteRa and Kas. Dimaga's PvZ certainly looks stronger than it used to be and Pomi will have to bring his A game in order to defeat Dimaga's late-game strats. Having in mind that even the renowned PvZ specialist HerO had it tough, though, things are not looking too good for the Russian.
Turning the gaze back to the next quarter final, once can see Kas continuing forth. Not that WhiteRa is performing poorly by any extent, it's just Kas has been the most dominating player in the previous days. The terran holds the best set score in the group stage (even surpassing tournament favorite MMA) so he enters the playoffs full of confidence.
The match that is probably the most expected in Naniwa versus Zenio in the lower part of the bracket. Both players earned their spots here after fighting through all kinds of technical difficulties and negative experiences during the group stage. After losing to Strelok in the opening game of the tournament, Naniwa got himself together to absolutely tear apart WhiteRa and Titan, showing that he is in fact in top form. On the other hand, Zenio's ZvP showed obvious flaws against NightEnd, losing to simple build orders that should not have killed him and we all know that the Swede will have much more than that in store.
Finally MMA is meeting the Group D sensation Feast in the fourth quarter final match. Feast already managed to eliminate one of the heavy favorites HerO but the SlayerS ace will be a whole other matter altogether. TvP is MMA's weakest match-up so there is a slight line of hope for the Belgian protoss but one should no forget that it's not Bo3 anymore. Surviving five rounds against MMA will be Feast's greatest achievement thus far.
| IEM Kiev Playoffs | ||
| Dimaga | VS | Pomi |
| WhiteRa | VS | Kas |
| Zenio | VS | Naniwa |
| MMA | VS | Feast |
The playoffs are scheduled for 16:30 CET today. Don't miss them out.
