uThermal Profile Joined January 2011 Netherlands 161 Posts #1 Introduction



Hello, I'm uThermal, a Dutch Terran player playing for AT Gaming. In the Benelux, usually only the stars of the country get all the attention, for example Grubby and Ret. But there's alot of hidden talent in the Netherlands and also in Belgium. I think these players deserve to be known and this is why I have decided to make a power rank to show the people which players might be the next stars of the Benelux.



Because I think it would be too biased to base it on my own opinion, I have asked many benelux players, team managers and fans to vote for who they think are the top10 players in this region, and based this ranking completely on these votes. Because people have also voted me to a spot in the Power rank, the piece about me will be written by someone else, in this case LLL Melle.



With the votes collected I calculated a score that indicates how highly the voters think of the player. A score of 1 means every voter has chosen the player to be the best player in the Benelux. A score of 2 means the player was generally chosen to be the 2nd best player in the Benelux, and so forth.



This power rank will not be a monthly thing, offline tournaments in the Benelux don't happen on a regular basis, they mostly happen either in the beginning of the year or towards the end of the year. So I will only write a power ranking after a season of tournaments has ended.





Let's Start the power rank



First off the people who barely didn't make it :



LLL LeoN : LeoN is one of the current three best dutch terran players, also going under the name BlinQQ. As one of the only Dutch Terran players in Grandmaster, he had big expectations which haven't been realized yet, probably because he is not exactly known for his practice regime, some people doubt he even has starcraft 2 installed on his home computer. His good results include beating Harstem and uThermal in PROG4MER online cups aswell as placing 7th/8th in the Frag-O-Matic 15.1 competition.



KS aGaham : aGaham is one of the stronger performing Zergs in the Benelux scene. He is known for always just placing out of the top3 at offline Benelux events, placing between 4th and 6th every single time, while taking out big names in every tournament. The players he beat include Poyo, Makouni, uThermal and Optimus, aswell as coming close to beat other big names like Harstem and DaBoO every tournament.



Special Mentions



mCon Poyo : The past years Poyo has been one of the dominant players in the benelux scene. His greatest successes include winning the Frag-o-matic 14.1 competition and The Party 11 competition. Even though he had been less active for a while, it is rumored he has decided to completely quit playing starcraft, and I want to thank him for his contributions and wish him good luck in what he decides to do next!



The actual power rank.



10. AT Bouli. ( Rating : 9.88 )

Bouli is the only Belgian in this ranking. After Orly and Feast decided to take a break, Bouli stormed up to prove he was the new best Belgian. He got 5th place in the Frag-o-matic 15.1 competition only losing to JoNa and uThermal. Next to this, he made a big step in the international scene defeating many known players such as AzubuVINES and Tarrantius in the WCS EU qualifiers, and coming very close to beating mouz.hOpe to advance to the semi-finals of his qualifier bracket. Also beating grandmasters players consistenly in the SC2CL, Bouli is looking to become the new Protoss hero that Belgium deserves.









9. mCon Optimus ( Rating : 9.44 )

Known as one of the best dutch terrans today, at first he wasn't recognized as one of the better players, until he surprised everyone at The Party 11. Starting with beating RainMan in the groupstage, he continued his streak beating Sushi, Darkomicron and aGaham, before finally falling to Melle. His impressive results continued later in the year, as he got 3rd in the PROG4MER Season Finals, beating JoNa and winning 200 euro doing so. A week after this, he took third place in the first edition of the Bonami Game Tournaments, beating RainMan and Darkomicron, only falling to uThermal and Sjaak. Optimus is seen as one of the best up and coming players from the Netherlands.









8. KS RainMan ( Rating : 8.40 )

RainMan is one of the best online players from the Netherlands. Always ranked high in the grandmaster ladder aswell as performing very well in online tournaments, winning 3 PROG4MER cups in a row. Not to forget placing first and second in several international online cups beating players like Harstem. Even though he hasn't been able to perform on the same level offline, only getting 4th place in the Bonami Game Tournament, after losing to Sjaak and Optimus and ending in 9th-12th place in The Party 11, these results can easily be explained by lack of experience. Once he gets used to offline tournaments, one can expect him to start collecting big wins.









7. LLL JoNa ( Rating : 7.08 )

JoNa is one of the three best zergs in the Netherlands. Originally coming from a shooter-background, in 2011 he decided to focus himself on starcraft 2. After JoNa joined LowLandLions he quickly started to improve and the results showed it, entering the Frag-o-Matic 15.0 as a semi-unknown, he exited the tournament as third, only losing to uThermal and Harstem in close 2-1 series. The next stop, The Party 11 ended on a lower note for him, as he ended in 7th/8th place losing to DaBoO and uThermal. In both tournaments, JoNa's biggest problem seemed to be his mentality. This problem seemed to be removed when he won the steelseries challenge offline finals, beating both Melle and Leon without losing a map, winning 600 euro. The next edition of frag-o-matic, he exited the tournament in second place, an improvement from last time, only losing to Melle twice and beating uThermal. When he participated in the PROG4MER Season Finals event, he seemed to have trouble dealing with the bo1 format and exited in 4th place, losing to uThermal and Optimus. Overall JoNa seems to have the talent to become one of the stars of the Benelux and is definitely someone to watch out for.









6. KS Sjaak ( Rating : 6.88 )

This is one of the players people consider as a true talent. After joining KnightS Gaming, he grew from being a mid-master player to a top100 grandmaster player in no-time. Sjaak is a frequent participant in online cups and is often quite successful in them, as he managed to qualify for the SC2Improve Summer League 2013 Main event, almost qualifying for the second groupstage, only losing to Korean Zerg Lucky and losing in a close series to JonnyREcco. Sjaak is also one of the more successful competitors in the PROG4MER online cups, once even winning 2 in a row. Recently also getting good results offline, getting 2nd place in the Bonami Game Tournament, only losing in a close 2-3 series to uThermal in the finals, while beating Darkomicron, RainMan and Optimus, Sjaak is looking to become one of the best Protosses in the Benelux.









5. LLL Melle ( Rating : 5.28 )

Melle started off as a Protoss player on KnightS Gaming. Just like JoNa, his results rapidly improved after joining LowLandLions. Coming into The Party 11 as a Dark horse, it became his breakout tournament, storming through the brackets beating RainMan, Sushi, uThermal, Optimus and DaBoO, the only one who could stop him was Poyo, who he lost to in the finals, earning him a very respectable 2nd place. Even though he had a hiccup in his career losing 3-0 to JoNa in the SteelSeries challenge offline finals, he soon started to dominate the Benelux scene. Entering the Frag-o-matic 15.1 competition as the strongest Protoss player, he made short work of the competition getting revenge on JoNa in the finals, inflicting him a severe 3-0 defeat. Weeks after this event he won the PROG4MER Season Finals again winning the finals cleanly beating uThermal with a 2-0 scoreline. This month's results have earned Melle a nice combined prize of 2250 euro. If Melle starts to produce these results online, he has a good shot at the Protoss throne of the Benelux.









4. AT uThermal ( Rating : 3.56 )

uThermal started out playing Protoss and has been a strong player for a while now. His first big achievement was qualifying for the ESWC 2011 main tournament together with Grubby, he barely didn't make it out of his group. He switched to Terran in May 2012, getting Top 3 in WCS Netherlands 2 weeks later, beating players like RainMan and Poyo and falling to Grubby and Ret. He then qualified for PROG4MER League season 1 and grabbed second place after losing 3-1 to Poyo, earning himself €500. Exactly 3 months after this tournament Frag-o-Matic 15.0 happened, which uThermal won convincingly, beating DaBoO, JoNa and Harstem (twice). Then uThermal fell in a bit of a slump because he had to focus on school. This is probably the reason why he got 5th place at The Party 11 losing to Agaham and Melle. When his exams were finished uThermal decided to take a gap year to invest a lot of time in the his starcraft 2 career. After a disappointing result at Frag-o-matic 15.1 (4th place). He showed that he is still a very strong player, qualifying for WCS Europe Challenger league, making it far into the Fragbite Masters tournament and grabbing himself €600 after getting the second place again in the PROG4MER League Season Finals, beating JoNa but losing to Melle .









3. Liquid Ret ( Rating : 3.20 )

Ret is and has been the primary zerg of the Netherlands for a long time, starting his starcraft 2 career with a tournament victory in the first Assembly tournament, beating MorroW in the finals. As the most earning player from the Benelux, Ret has plenty of results to show off. Even though fans have been worrying about Ret's form as he had been suffering early exits in tournaments like Dreamhack Bucharest and The Fragbite Masters tournament, he gave a signal to his fans that they have nothing to worry about, getting 3rd place at IEF and allkilling Complexity in the Acer TeamStory Cup.









2. Fnatic Harstem ( Rating : 2.12 )

Even though Grubby has been known as the best Protoss in the Netherlands for a long time, Harstem has also been performing really well lately. Becoming the first official Dutch champion beating Ret 4-2, he has shown good results internationally aswell, reaching the ro16 of almost every Dreamhack he attented, next to winning the ESET UK Masters 2013 Season 2 tournament, defeating BlinG. After joining Fnatic, he became one of the if not the best player for Fnatic in clanwars, regularly beating korean players like check and Sting. If Harstem keeps this up, he might be on top of the Benelux Protoss players quite soon.









1. Grubby ( Rating : 1.60 )

Starting relatively late with starcraft, he started slowly but has climbed up to become the best Dutch player. Having great results overall such as coming only 1 game short from winning IEM Singapore and advancing to the WCS Europe Season 2 Finals. His problem seems to be his consistency, dropping from almost reaching the WCS Europe Finals to almost dropping out of Challenger league completely. Results like this could cost him the Dutch throne eventually. Since he is the only dutch player qualified for WCS together with uThermal, his throne seems to be safe for now.







Thanks for reading everyone! Thanks to LLL Melle for helping me write this. Please leave some feedback! Hello, I'm uThermal, a Dutch Terran player playing for AT Gaming. In the Benelux, usually only the stars of the country get all the attention, for example Grubby and Ret. But there's alot of hidden talent in the Netherlands and also in Belgium. I think these players deserve to be known and this is why I have decided to make a power rank to show the people which players might be the next stars of the Benelux.Because I think it would be too biased to base it on my own opinion, I have asked many benelux players, team managers and fans to vote for who they think are the top10 players in this region, and based this ranking completely on these votes. Because people have also voted me to a spot in the Power rank, the piece about me will be written by someone else, in this case LLL Melle.With the votes collected I calculated a score that indicates how highly the voters think of the player. A score of 1 means every voter has chosen the player to be the best player in the Benelux. A score of 2 means the player was generally chosen to be the 2nd best player in the Benelux, and so forth.This power rank will not be a monthly thing, offline tournaments in the Benelux don't happen on a regular basis, they mostly happen either in the beginning of the year or towards the end of the year. So I will only write a power ranking after a season of tournaments has ended.First off the people who barely didn't make it :: LeoN is one of the current three best dutch terran players, also going under the name BlinQQ. As one of the only Dutch Terran players in Grandmaster, he had big expectations which haven't been realized yet, probably because he is not exactly known for his practice regime, some people doubt he even has starcraft 2 installed on his home computer. His good results include beating Harstem and uThermal in PROG4MER online cups aswell as placing 7th/8th in the Frag-O-Matic 15.1 competition.: aGaham is one of the stronger performing Zergs in the Benelux scene. He is known for always just placing out of the top3 at offline Benelux events, placing between 4th and 6th every single time, while taking out big names in every tournament. The players he beat include Poyo, Makouni, uThermal and Optimus, aswell as coming close to beat other big names like Harstem and DaBoO every tournament.mCon Poyo : The past years Poyo has been one of the dominant players in the benelux scene. His greatest successes include winning the Frag-o-matic 14.1 competition and The Party 11 competition. Even though he had been less active for a while, it is rumored he has decided to completely quit playing starcraft, and I want to thank him for his contributions and wish him good luck in what he decides to do next!Bouli is the only Belgian in this ranking. After Orly and Feast decided to take a break, Bouli stormed up to prove he was the new best Belgian. He got 5th place in the Frag-o-matic 15.1 competition only losing to JoNa and uThermal. Next to this, he made a big step in the international scene defeating many known players such as AzubuVINES and Tarrantius in the WCS EU qualifiers, and coming very close to beating mouz.hOpe to advance to the semi-finals of his qualifier bracket. Also beating grandmasters players consistenly in the SC2CL, Bouli is looking to become the new Protoss hero that Belgium deserves.Known as one of the best dutch terrans today, at first he wasn't recognized as one of the better players, until he surprised everyone at The Party 11. Starting with beating RainMan in the groupstage, he continued his streak beating Sushi, Darkomicron and aGaham, before finally falling to Melle. His impressive results continued later in the year, as he got 3rd in the PROG4MER Season Finals, beating JoNa and winning 200 euro doing so. A week after this, he took third place in the first edition of the Bonami Game Tournaments, beating RainMan and Darkomicron, only falling to uThermal and Sjaak. Optimus is seen as one of the best up and coming players from the Netherlands.RainMan is one of the best online players from the Netherlands. Always ranked high in the grandmaster ladder aswell as performing very well in online tournaments, winning 3 PROG4MER cups in a row. Not to forget placing first and second in several international online cups beating players like Harstem. Even though he hasn't been able to perform on the same level offline, only getting 4th place in the Bonami Game Tournament, after losing to Sjaak and Optimus and ending in 9th-12th place in The Party 11, these results can easily be explained by lack of experience. Once he gets used to offline tournaments, one can expect him to start collecting big wins.JoNa is one of the three best zergs in the Netherlands. Originally coming from a shooter-background, in 2011 he decided to focus himself on starcraft 2. After JoNa joined LowLandLions he quickly started to improve and the results showed it, entering the Frag-o-Matic 15.0 as a semi-unknown, he exited the tournament as third, only losing to uThermal and Harstem in close 2-1 series. The next stop, The Party 11 ended on a lower note for him, as he ended in 7th/8th place losing to DaBoO and uThermal. In both tournaments, JoNa's biggest problem seemed to be his mentality. This problem seemed to be removed when he won the steelseries challenge offline finals, beating both Melle and Leon without losing a map, winning 600 euro. The next edition of frag-o-matic, he exited the tournament in second place, an improvement from last time, only losing to Melle twice and beating uThermal. When he participated in the PROG4MER Season Finals event, he seemed to have trouble dealing with the bo1 format and exited in 4th place, losing to uThermal and Optimus. Overall JoNa seems to have the talent to become one of the stars of the Benelux and is definitely someone to watch out for.This is one of the players people consider as a true talent. After joining KnightS Gaming, he grew from being a mid-master player to a top100 grandmaster player in no-time. Sjaak is a frequent participant in online cups and is often quite successful in them, as he managed to qualify for the SC2Improve Summer League 2013 Main event, almost qualifying for the second groupstage, only losing to Korean Zerg Lucky and losing in a close series to JonnyREcco. Sjaak is also one of the more successful competitors in the PROG4MER online cups, once even winning 2 in a row. Recently also getting good results offline, getting 2nd place in the Bonami Game Tournament, only losing in a close 2-3 series to uThermal in the finals, while beating Darkomicron, RainMan and Optimus, Sjaak is looking to become one of the best Protosses in the Benelux.Melle started off as a Protoss player on KnightS Gaming. Just like JoNa, his results rapidly improved after joining LowLandLions. Coming into The Party 11 as a Dark horse, it became his breakout tournament, storming through the brackets beating RainMan, Sushi, uThermal, Optimus and DaBoO, the only one who could stop him was Poyo, who he lost to in the finals, earning him a very respectable 2nd place. Even though he had a hiccup in his career losing 3-0 to JoNa in the SteelSeries challenge offline finals, he soon started to dominate the Benelux scene. Entering the Frag-o-matic 15.1 competition as the strongest Protoss player, he made short work of the competition getting revenge on JoNa in the finals, inflicting him a severe 3-0 defeat. Weeks after this event he won the PROG4MER Season Finals again winning the finals cleanly beating uThermal with a 2-0 scoreline. This month's results have earned Melle a nice combined prize of 2250 euro. If Melle starts to produce these results online, he has a good shot at the Protoss throne of the Benelux.uThermal started out playing Protoss and has been a strong player for a while now. His first big achievement was qualifying for the ESWC 2011 main tournament together with Grubby, he barely didn't make it out of his group. He switched to Terran in May 2012, getting Top 3 in WCS Netherlands 2 weeks later, beating players like RainMan and Poyo and falling to Grubby and Ret. He then qualified for PROG4MER League season 1 and grabbed second place after losing 3-1 to Poyo, earning himself €500. Exactly 3 months after this tournament Frag-o-Matic 15.0 happened, which uThermal won convincingly, beating DaBoO, JoNa and Harstem (twice). Then uThermal fell in a bit of a slump because he had to focus on school. This is probably the reason why he got 5th place at The Party 11 losing to Agaham and Melle. When his exams were finished uThermal decided to take a gap year to invest a lot of time in the his starcraft 2 career. After a disappointing result at Frag-o-matic 15.1 (4th place). He showed that he is still a very strong player, qualifying for WCS Europe Challenger league, making it far into the Fragbite Masters tournament and grabbing himself €600 after getting the second place again in the PROG4MER League Season Finals, beating JoNa but losing to Melle .Ret is and has been the primary zerg of the Netherlands for a long time, starting his starcraft 2 career with a tournament victory in the first Assembly tournament, beating MorroW in the finals. As the most earning player from the Benelux, Ret has plenty of results to show off. Even though fans have been worrying about Ret's form as he had been suffering early exits in tournaments like Dreamhack Bucharest and The Fragbite Masters tournament, he gave a signal to his fans that they have nothing to worry about, getting 3rd place at IEF and allkilling Complexity in the Acer TeamStory Cup.Even though Grubby has been known as the best Protoss in the Netherlands for a long time, Harstem has also been performing really well lately. Becoming the first official Dutch champion beating Ret 4-2, he has shown good results internationally aswell, reaching the ro16 of almost every Dreamhack he attented, next to winning the ESET UK Masters 2013 Season 2 tournament, defeating BlinG. After joining Fnatic, he became one of the if not the best player for Fnatic in clanwars, regularly beating korean players like check and Sting. If Harstem keeps this up, he might be on top of the Benelux Protoss players quite soon.Starting relatively late with starcraft, he started slowly but has climbed up to become the best Dutch player. Having great results overall such as coming only 1 game short from winning IEM Singapore and advancing to the WCS Europe Season 2 Finals. His problem seems to be his consistency, dropping from almost reaching the WCS Europe Finals to almost dropping out of Challenger league completely. Results like this could cost him the Dutch throne eventually. Since he is the only dutch player qualified for WCS together with uThermal, his throne seems to be safe for now.Thanks for reading everyone! Thanks to LLL Melle for helping me write this. Please leave some feedback! Team Liquid