MLG Summer Arena day 1: Post-draft reckoning

Post-Draft Reckoning

Overall, drawing the line after the first sixteen matches, the statistics is in favor of the drafters, two thirds of which easily won their matches. The tournament began with Grubby winning over Tefel in such a dominating fashion that it was almost bad mannered. The very first streamed game for the night saw the Dutchman sitting on five bases, preying on a 3-base, barely mining zerg in a diametrical opposite scenario to your everyday PvZ.

Sheth also tasted the bitter 0-2 defeat, though he was able to provide a greater challenge to Ryung than Tefel did to Grubby. In spite of his decent play throughout the series peaking at full map control and SCVs killed in the tens, Sheth threw it all away after thinking that his brood lords would be safe all by themselves in the middle of the map. Similarly one-sided were the defeat of Snute, Qxc, Daisy and Real, while Illusion, Rain, Dream, Golden and Goody put up a better fight before following the same path down to the losers bracket.

The first player to be stung by his opponent of choice was Liquid`HerO, who had picked Ai’s Cytoplasm – a zerg that recently made fresh impression in two consecutive Dreamhacks. After a forcefield wall backfired horribly for HerO, trapping his own army away from the zerg swarms, the protoss found himself 45 probes behind, which ultimately led to his defeat. Luckily for him, that mistake was never made again and HerO dodged the humiliation of a PvZ loss in round 1.

Undisputedly, the loudest joke was on Puma, who used his high #3 seed to pick Welmu, confident that his TvP is strong enough to bring doom upon a second-grade European. Two series later, Puma stood defeated at the feet of the Finnish, wondering how was it possible to lose after his opponent engaged poorly times and times again. With Dream and Sase in his Losers Bracket lane, Puma might have just earned the “Most horribly backfired draft pick of the tournament” award.

Of course, Puma was not the only one to lose a match to a draftee but he’s the only one that cannot use low seed as an excuse for his fall. Illusion, Real and Sheth – seeded under 13, 15 and 16 respectively – were left as small a player pool as they come and losing to Revival, Losira and Ryung is far from shameful.

The Losers Bracket: Who's Going Home?

As soon as the LB matches are on their way, people will start dropping out and packing their luggage to go home. Below, we get to bet on the first losers games and make profit on the misfortune of others.

Losers Bracket A
Rain	VS	Roof	Illusion	VS	qxc
Many people hoped for the German to do well after his more than unexpected run through one of TSL 4's qualifiers, but one has to admit the Roof is not on fire in this tournament. Playing Rain will be somewhat easier to playing Oz but I would still give the edge to the Korean.			Have you seen how Illusion has been playing lately? If so, you'd know we're talking about completely different levels of skill, and not in qxc's favor.
Gosubet