| ESL Intel Extreme Masters Europe | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Qualification Round 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  LoZ | 2-0 |  Ourk | ||||||||||||||||||||||
  EthaN | 3-1 |  Draco | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 SjoW | 3-2 |  Spook | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 ChewbroCColi | 3-1 |  BLooD.ASUS | ||||||||||||||||||||||
  Bly | 1-2 |  Solid | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 Sein | 3-0 |  Moutas | ||||||||||||||||||||||
With the National finals behind them, these players were set for their first or second chance at the European Championships.
Some players played very well with match clinching strategies that helped them to advance to the next stage. One notable mention was the Finnish player Sein who opened up his game on Lost Temple by placing cannons on his opponents cliff. Moutas would expand to his expansion only to find cannons shooting down at his expansion. To add to that Sein would also upgrade to blink Stalkers which allowed him to blink on and off the cliff to harass Moutas' Hatchery. Sein would go on to sweep Moutas.
The closest match in these games would be from Spook versus Sjow. This Terran versus Terran mirror match up lasted to the fifth and final game. Sjow would lose his first match, but come back to bring it back to 2-1 in his favour. At one point Spook tried to swap bases literally, when he lifted his own Command Center to land in Sjow's base on a match on Delta Quadrant. But before losing the match up Spook would tie it at 2-2 to force a fifth game. Sadly, what Spook started as 1-0, he could not finish and was eliminated by Sjow 3-2.
There may still be things left to be done as several players had played best of threes instead of best of fives. So far the official score is in favour of the winner of the best of three, but there has been no word of continuing the matches to a best of five as all players involved in those games seem to have agreed on the best of three. All replays can be found on the ESL website.
Links
ESL.eu - Replays
