Five KeSPA players, one Zerg, zero foreigners - this is how the quarterfinals look like after the completion of day two in Dallas.
Great games to start Round of 16
With Leenock vs InnoVation kicking off the round of 32 everyone looked forward to see some Leenock's unorthodox builds. Game one opened with InnoVation very early aggression Hellions and Reapers, and he was able to take an early victory in game one.Game two showed how much Terran players arr sticking with bio balls, with InnoVation doing a number of multi-prong drops. Despite being able to deal with InnoVation's multi-prong attacks Leenock could not survive the final battle with InnoVations bio forces. Game three ended a similar way with Leenock not being able to do any damage to InnoVation's economy, giving InnoVation the win 3:0 over Leenock.
Rain vs Jjakji was a series that everyone was excited for. Jjakji showed a stunning 88% win ratio against protoss, however Rain is arguably one of the best protoss players in the world. Game one began with Jjakji cheesing in the form of a 2rax. However, Rain held it off beautifully and took an early win in game one. Game two showed how well Rain is able to defend against drop play, deflecting all of Jjakji's pressure. This allowed him to build up an army and decimate Jjakji to take game number two and go up 2:0 in the series. Jjakji showed in game three that he was not going to just lay down for Rain. He demonstrated some amazing macro, able to take Rain to teh late game and decimate Rain's army with a heavy Marauder composition. In game four Jjakji too a large gamble in the final engagement, banking on Rain missing his forcefields, and he won the gamble and was able to take game four to send this tournament into its first game 5. Game five saw an extremely back and forth, but Rain was able to hold off all of Jjajki's pressure and push across the map with a templar/colossus ball.
Sen, Parting: More grief for foreigners
Someone could tell from how much the crowd was cheering at the start that the Flash vs Ret series was one that everyone was looking forward to. Despite how hyped up the the match was, it was a bit of a disappointment, with Flash sweeping Ret 3:0. All three games involved Flash doing advanced drop play and sniping all of ret's bases. In game three ret put up a decent fight and the game was in his favour for a bit, however once again Flash's drop play was able to snipe nearly all of ret's expansions and crushing ret's hydralisk army.
Sen vs Parting was a series that everyone looked forward to, since Sen was one of the few foreigners that were left in this tournament. Game one, Sen showcased how useful vipers can be in the ZvP matchup. With Sen pulling all of the colossus that Parting had, giving Sen game one. Game two Sen played a little greedy, and it seen by Parting who elected to put on a heavy amount of gateway pressure with zealots and stalkers, which won him game two and tied the series 1:1. Game three went into the late game and saw Parting get a large amount of colossus which he was then able to push across the map and take out Sen, making the series 2:1. The final game was back and forth for most of the game, in the end Parting performed a two base all in with colossus that crushed Sen's forces. Giving Parting the win over Sen 3:1.
Life, the last remaining Zerg
Foreigners were not the only sub-group of StarCrafters that were threatened with extinction, the Zerg race was also not doing as well. After the crushing defeats of SEn, Ret, Leenock and KiLLeR in the Ro16, all eyes were on the ultimate champion of 2012, StarTale's Life.
Thus, in one of the last games for the evening, the youngster went against Polt and the two started throwing punches at each other. Life got the early set advantage on Akilon Wastes but Polt sprung back aptly and this pattern persisted throughout the entire series. It took Life five whole series to survive the Ro16 and advance as the only Zerg in the quarter finals.
In the same half of the bracket, MC and Bomber came on to absolutely vaporize Mvp and Taeja, respectively. The Boss Toss in particular later told Gamespot that Mvp was the only player he was concerned about and his championship is now within reach.
Looking forward to the quarterfinals
PvT is now the name of the game, and a name that'll repeat itself a lot.
Starting from the bottom of the bracket up, we get some all-KeSPA faceoffs to fire up the playday. Rain didn't have the easiest time against Jjakji in the previous round and Bogus, a player who hasn't lost a single set so far, is looking to be his greatest challenge yet. In the other KeSPA quarterfinal, Flash meets PartinG and with both players at the very impressive 6-1 (not to mention their enormous renown withing the scene) this looks like to be the highlight of the Ro8.
In the upper part of the bracket, MC will look forward to top his Ro16 PvT victory with another one. His match against Mvp clearly showcased that MC is in a wonderful shape but one should not forget that Bomber made his name in WoL by beating protosses like they are nothing and TvP is by far his best match-up.
To conclude the round, Life goes against Last and from the looks of it, the young prodigy might have a difficult time. Last is already 6-0 in TvZs this tournament and Life will have to do more than his best if he wants to keep his MLG crown.
Day 2 VODs
MC
Mvp
Life
Photos courtesy of TeamLiquid
