The DreamHack EIZO Open StarCraft II tournament is currently the biggest e-sports tournament that DreamHack has to offer and the sheer size of the first group stage shows this. A total of 32 groups have been announced, each containing four players for a total of 128 players. Aside from a lot of Swedish players (it is a Swedish open tournament mind you) most of the big players of the StarCraft II scene will be making an appearance. Players like Stephano, Huk, White-Ra, NaNiwa, PuMa, Elfi and Nerchio will be taking on each other and many other pro and semi-pro players from all over the world. The Netherlands is also represented by several players, pro and semi-pro.

Joseph ‘Ret‘ de Kroon is probably the best known Dutch player in the world besides maybe Manuel ‘Grubby‘ Schenkhuizen. He has been playing for the well known Team Liquid for some time now and plays the Zerg race. His play style is best described as a macro Zerg. In the early game he usually cuts a lot of corners in de defense department which, if he survives, will propel him into a very strong late game with an overwhelming amount of units, creep, tech and economies. Ret is well known for quickly building a high drone count and opting to create more drones when others would not do so, creating himself a double edged sword which causes him sometimes to overdrone and losing games because of this. This results in an instability of his tournaments winnings with his last big win in August of last year at the Battle.net Invitational. In the DreamHack EIZO Open series he went on to become a semi-finalist last April in Stockholm thus already having a good standing for the finals at DreamHack Winter this year. We expect Ret to win his group stage and eventually end up in the RO16 where he has good chances on becoming at least a semi-finalist again.

Kevin ‘Harstem‘ de Koning is a fairly unknown Dutch semi-pro in the world scene. In the Dutch scene he is however a force to be reckoned with. Just last week he nearly won the Dutch national finals for an invite to the world cup in Korea later this year. Harstem is a Protoss player for the team Mouse Control and with 17 years old still fairly young. A player with potential whom in the future could easily become a pro player if he gets enough practice. His group stage puts him against the American qxc, the Norwegian Zendo and the Swedish ZanXala. The last two players are also fairly unknown, but qxc is probably going to be a tough match up for Harstem. However, with the right attitude and a good play session, Harstem should be able to get out of the first group stage and go to the RO64. What happens there completely depends on the players he has to go against. Whatever happens, Harstem will get a lot of tournament experience out of this DreamHack Summer and it will only help him in the future!

Two other Dutch players in the groupstage are the unknown Mojagy and one of our own Packers Weiman. Mojagy has to go against the likes of Stephano and Weiman’s group doesn’t look that much better with SjoW and DeathAngel in there. We wish them however good luck and who knows, in the game of StarCraft II an upset is always possible!