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  SouL.Trap | SouL.Dear | |||||||
| Trap | 2-1 | sOs | GSL | Dear | 0-2 | sOs | WCS S3 | |
| Trap | 0-2 | Rain | GSL | Dear | 1-0 | Swagger | GSL Up/Down | |
| Trap | 2-0 | sOs | GSL | Dear | 0-1 | sOs | SPL | |
| Trap | 1-0 | Squirtle | GSL Up/Down | Dear | 1-0 | Zest | SPL | |
| Trap | 0-2 | YongHwa | OSL Chall. | Dear | 0-2 | Flying | OSL Chall. | |
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If the PvP match-up wasn't ripe with volatility, this would've been an easy match to call. Although lacking any significant individual results of his, Trap has been performing fantastically this season and the Protoss mirror in particular. The SouL player managed to beat Squirtle on his way back to Premier league and after suvriving the Protoss-heavy Ro16 Group B has made his first ever step into premier StarCraft 2 playoffs.
What's even more impressive is that Trap has done all this playing his two worse match-ups, namely PvT and PvP. His Ro32 group of Keen, Reality and Symbol might not have been the most scariest of groups but he proudly stood atop of it nonetheless, happy to make a second Ro16 in a row, despite the community not paying him much attention (a reasonable reaction considering it was still the Ro32).
His reward on first sight looked a sour one. Ro16 Group B not only featured Rain - still one of the favorites to take the entire Code S home - but also had sOs with his 72% PvP win rate and one of Code S' veterans Keen who also had vP as his strongest match-up. With all three players more highly profiled than him, the SouL Protoss was against all odds.
As we now know, Trap's run through the Ro16 was a bright manifest on how much he has improved since OSL and the days of the Proleague. His two matches against sOs showcased Trap's colorful palette of build orders, varying from micro-intensive stalker rushes, to proxy stargates, to soft contains, to flawless handling of late-game deathballs.
It is that adaptability that Trap's team-mate Dear will have to fight off. A tall order by itself, the challenge before Dear is made tougher yet by the fact that his opponent lives and practices within the same team house. He will not only have to overcome his shaky PvP record - including two losses from sOs, a player who Trap beat convincingly twice - but go one step further and try out-mindgame his opponent. The latter is especially important if Dear is ever to prevail as Trap showed times and times again that he is no stranger to standard PvP scenarios and will preemtively counter responses with great efficiency.
Prediction: Trap 3-1 Dear
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 WJS.Soulkey | SKT.Rain | |||||||
| Soulkey | 2-0 | PartinG | GSL | Rain | 0-2 | TRUE | GSL | |
| Soulkey | 2-1 | Pigbaby | GSL | Rain | 2-1 | SonGDuri | GSL | |
| Soulkey | 2-1 | Parting | OSL | Rain | 0-2 | Jaedong | S2 finals | |
| Soulkey | 1-0 | Rain | SPL | Rain | 3-2 | Hyvaa | OSL* | |
| Soulkey | 1-0 | Trap | SPL | Rain | 0-1 | Soulkey | SPL | |
* This is Rain's aggregate score against Hyvaa in OSL Ro16, including the tie-breaker matches?
For those who follow StarCraft 2 at least to a minor extent, that could've been the Code S final right there. Out of all the players who made it to the playoffs, barely anyone matches the growing renown of Soulkey and Rain, the stars of the second quarter final for today. Being the faces of contemporary Zerg and Protoss respectively, seing one of them go out that early is an undesirable event but one that will at least ensure that everybody will click the LIVE button on GomTV.
On one side of the ring is Soulkey, the Woongjin ace who comes to keep his Code S crown and whose recent ZvP record speaks for itself: not a single series loss, just two maps dropped overall. Despite seeing somewhat of a decline in his competitive form since his peak in season one, the defending champion is nevertheless looking monstrous and there is a number of incentives beyond the $20,000 first place prize that keep his motivation sky high. A hypothetical second GSL title for Soulkey would make him the second person to win back-to-back Code S championships since NesTea in 2011 and the player to continue the succession of GSL Zerg champions which started with Life in October 2012.
The best thing about all this is that Soulkey is in the condition to make it a reality despite the heavy competition and the historically diminutive odds of scoring back-to-back golds. Looking back throughout the season, we see Soulkey not only expectedly dominant in the late-game but also incredibly resistant to early pressure as well as being capable of going into the early offensive himself. His only ZvP loss in the season came on the back of a successful cannon rush by Pigbaby but every other game he's played was a demonstration of just how omnipotent Soulkey truly is: nydus builds, maxed hydra concaves, mutalisk switches and game-changing viper techs make the Woongjin star as unpredictable as ever.
Against him stands Rain, once the most standard, solid and predictable of Protosses but now someone who's adopted the aggressive patterns from his brethren as his Ro32 games displayed. Implementing warp gate timings has certainly made Rain a more flexible opponent but a few questions still stand.
Will Rain go for early aggression and try and kill Soulkey before the latter gets to the late-game where he is most confident? Although games against Songduri and TRUE can be an indication of that, they are far down the food chain compared to Soulkey and are thus more easily conquered by such an aggressive play. Additionally, Soulkey's series against PartinG showed just how good in the defensive the Zerg can be and this is might be another thing that pushes Rain back to his old safe playstyle.
Will Rain immitate Pigbaby and try to cannon rush Soulkey? We could say that's unlikely even though this was Soulkey's only loss. Rain is not the most avid fan of cheeses and Soulkey is surely to have taken note and strenghtened his excellent scouting even futher.
Has Rain solved his vulnerability to roach/hydra timings? If previous games of Soulkey suggest one thing, it's that there will be at least one such attack coming from the Zerg and if Rain wants to live he'll have to do better than his Season 2 games.
Is Rain's late-game on the level of Soulkey's? His game against Songduri showed a vulnerability in his husk but that might have been a one-time thing. After all, if anyone knows how to plate late-game Protoss that's SKT's ace.
Prediction? Never a certain one but let's go for:
Soulkey 3-1 Rain
Soulkey celebrating with his first GSL trophy. And no, that's not a snot
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