IEM: Elfi breaks the Korean top 1 streak at IEM New York

After another exciting day of group stage matches, TOP and Elfi emerged as the victors in their pools. Group runner-ups TT1 and FruitDealer have also won a seed into the championship bracket and thus a shot at $6,500 first place prize.



With the completion of Group C, Koreans were now three-for-three as far as top group seeds were concerned. Although not as smooth as most people expected, TOP's run throughout the group put him on top after two 2-1 victories over TT1 and Mana. The foreign protosses put up an amazing fight against the Korean, but ultimately the oGs terran star prevailed, catching the first spot in the pool.

The tension escalated as the spirits of the group ordained TT1 and Mana to play the deciding match for the top 2 seed. TT1 dropped the first game after foolishly attacking into Mana's immortals but quickly picked himself up to tie the score on Caverns with playing really defensively and macro oriented. His passivity allowed him to reach a higher supply count as Mana's 1-base offensive blink could not find a crack in TT1's defence.

This lead to the game on Dual Sight, which grew into quite the treat in comparison to the first two sets. Mana opened with offensive 3-gate but unnecessarily lost more units than he should have, allowing TT1 to safely get on with his expand/colossus build. The game soon grew into a mid-game PvP war-of-the-worlds scenario, both players trading colossi and gateway units in absolute madness. However, Mana's economy was way worse than TT1's and once his last-chance DT tech failed to bring him any spoils, the Polish player gg-ed out, wishing TT1 a good luck.





After the first four matches, Group D ended with no clearly defined favourite with every player being with a score of 1-1. Elfi delivered a crippling 2-0 defeat to FruitDealer which would later avail him for his group placement but then, much surprisingly, fell to terran underdog Edge.

Ultimately, FruitDealer and Elfi both scored 2-0 victories over Edge and Axslav, respectively, but when the time for reckoning arrived, the numbers were just slightly into Elfi's favour. With a set score of 5-2, compared to FD's 4-2, the Finnish protoss continued his streak of amazing group performances after crushing him IEM Guangzhou pool two weeks ago.

The tournament then took a short break until the quarter-final matches were drawn. With the process now done, IEM New York will resume with the following Ro8 face-offs:

FruitDealer vs Killer
TOP vs Gatored
TT1 vs DongRaeGu
Elfi vs KiLLeR

Stay tuned to GosuGamers.net for more coverage on IEM Global Challenge New York!