Gold Pro-League season 3 begins in Shanghai

Largely unheard of in the west aside from its international events in Legacy of the Void, the Gold Pro-League has been a staple for Starcraft in China for many years, and is a main feature for many of the country’s best players. The international event back in March put the GPL on the biggest international stage to date with some of the game’s more household names making a showing. However, when not hosting some of Europe and America’s best players it gives its own a stage to battle on.

The GPL is back in action this week as season 3 of its domestic event kicked-off this afternoon; featuring a league-style bracket stacked to the brim with China’s strongest, it looks to be an exciting event with many great games ahead of us.

Between December 16 and December 22, tune in to this stream at 2pm KST to see many familiar names from the WCS circuit as well as a few less internationally known players fight for a prize pool on par with the likes of any Homestory Cup or Dreamhack.

The GPL is much like a season of traditional sports, with each player facing off against every opponent once and the victor being whoever finishes with the best record, from today until next Thursday, everyday will have a new set of 4 matches.

The complete roster for the GPL season 3 finals is:

RYE E-SPORTS Cyan
Invictus Gaming iAsonu
Invictus Gaming XY
Zenith of Origin TooDMing
Invictus Gaming MacSed
RYE E-SPORTS Coffee
Invictus Gaming XiGua
RYE E-SPORTS Jieshi

Day 1.

The opening series of the event was between Invictus gaming’s iAsonu, who featured in several WCS events as well as IEM GyeongGi this week, and Cyan, who has been so close to that international stage so many times, narrowingly missing on WCS circuit positions in both seasons of 2016. iAsonu really showed that difference in experience and took a 2-0 victory.

The next series saw another of IG’s globetrotters, this time it was MacSed, who has competed in WCS and SSL events. He took on Coffee from Rye esports. Macsed was able to win the series 2-1.

Yet another man with a fair number of airmiles collected, XiGua tried to seal IG’s dominance by taking a 2-0 against Rye’s Jieshi, only to have IG’s hopes of a clean sweep ruined in the final series of the day, when TooDming beat XY 2-1.