SK Planet Proleague: Round 1 Completes

Taking just a quick look from far above it would not seem like huge changes came to pass after round 2 of the SPL. Woongjin are still holding the #1 spot, last season's finalist SKT and KT Rolster are still hovering in the bottom part of the ranking and Air Force Ace, recently confirmed to disband in two years time, are still last with less than zero hopes of making the playoffs.

A closer examination, however, reveals that there was more than meets the eye. With WCG and WCS qualifiers passing under the sign of nonames advancing at the expense of the bonjwas, Round 2 was an honest relief for one of the most beloved, respected and feared pro-gamers of all time: Team 8's Jaedong.

JD finished Round 1 with the disappointing record of 1-3 in StarCraft 2 matches - a statistics not exactly tailored towards The Tyrant's renommee. In just one round, however, JD got his s**t together and swam out of the negative score, hopping at a final 6-5 while, most importantly, winning three ace matches for his team against Air Force Ace, STX Soul and the leaders in the SPL ranking Woongjin Stars. Below, we will go through every game of Jaedong he played in round two, but first it's time for nutshelling the Proleague and its second round of matches.

Team highlights
Woongjin Stars retain leadership position in the overall ranking after Round 2 with 9-6 in series and +18 in points
Woongjin Stars retain leadership position in SC2 games with 15-6 in series
The second in the overall ranking, CJ Entus, are tied with Woongjin in series but are a whole 15 points behind
Team 8 finished first in Round 2 with 6-1 record
Team 8 climbed four spots in the overall ranking after Round 2

Player highlights
Team 8's Jaedong is the only player to be at +3 ace match record
SK Telecom T1's Rain finishes Round 2 with the highest personal score in SC2: 9-4
Samsung KHAN's Stork has the best score in SC2 out of the the TBLS: 5-2
CJ Entus' Effort is the player with most SC2 games in the Proleague after Round 2: 14
SK Telecom T1's Bisu continues to be the worst performing player in the Proleague with 0-5

WEEKS 2 & 3: A ZvP Start

Jaedong began his personal Round 2 run with two ZvPs on Antiga Shipyard, resulting in a win against BeSt and a loss against Round 1 MVP hero[join]. In both games, Jaedong resorted to a very aggressive, roach heavy style that kept his opponents on their side of the map, not allowing them to make use of the zerg-unfavored Antiga. This worked very well against BeSt who crumbled under the pressure and almost broke hero[join] as well but CJ Entus's protoss, in his final desperation attack, found a juicy prey right inside JD's main.


WEEK 4: The Soulkey Series

Both played in the same day and in the same match, the games were an opportunity for Jaedong to show that he had retained his godly ZvZ status from the Brood War days. Being outmacroed and outplayed every step of the way on Cloud Kingdom did not exactly polish JD's image but stopping a 10 pool with 15 hatch on Entombed certainly made the necessary amends. Jaedong, it seemed, was in better SC2 shape than ever, something strongly supported by the fact that Cloud Kingdom was his last loss for this round.


WEEKS 4 & 5: More Aces for the Fire

If the cheese deflection in the series against Soulkey spoke kindly enough for Jaedong's ever-improving skills, the games against Trap and Guemchi took it all one step further. Tyrant's playstyle was coherent with his monicker and the protoss players played the unfortunate role of JD's sinful subordinates who were punished in front of everybody, humiliation and mockery delivered with every hit. Guemchi was the first to be whipped for daring to go for a 7-gate revolt. He was swarmed and evaporated. Next was Trap, hanged for the audacity to go DTs. For audience's amusement, he suffered a prolonged mutalisk harass that had him stumbling inbetween his three bases, trying to defend them against the deadly flock with touching mulishness.

WEEK 6: Going Into the Positive

With 5-5 before his last match for the round, Jaedong knew that he had to make it count. Not only for himself but for Team 8 as well, who, due to their very rocky start in round 1, had to fight for every single set if they wanted to catch up to the leaders Woongjin and CJ.

The game opened with another deflected 10-pool rush but evolved way past the early game, reaching those rarely interesting all-roach confrontantions that are so often the trademark of ZvZ mid-game. An above-average series entertainment-wise, but the one that brought Jaedong to a positive score and helped Team 8 climb four spots in the overall ranking. It were good six weeks to be a bonjwa in transition for Jaedong.

The transition tracker collects the top 10 players who've played the most StarCraft 2 games and orders them by total score, wins and ace match scores. The second transition table collects data from every SC2 game played for each team and orders the rosters in the same way.



The tables below are for Brood War and StarCraft 2 matches together.