Why you shouldn’t miss the upper bracket

Patience vs MMA is a classic David vs Goliath match and those often make for great stories

When he was placed in a group with three quite good foreigners and a DreamHack champion, Patience became the ultimate underdog of the tournament. Out of the four players that qualified through the online preliminaries (Welmu would later forfeit), he looked the weakest, far from the class of Polt and ForGG.

After day one, Patience is among the four best performing players at DreamHack Winter and nobody knows how that happened. Logic dictated that he should’ve lost to pretty much everyone but there he was, beating HyuN decisively 2-0 and making a 2-1 comeback against the Swedish King. His 0-2 loss to TLO was the only thing that stopped him from achieving a perfect series run and for a player of his caliber – merely an Azubu B-Teamer – this is astounding.

Today, Patience plays MMA and while this might not be the flashiest of opening matches, it’s still one to look for. People like to say that MMA is back but the Acer Terran wasn’t in the best of shapes yesterday, only advancing by the power of better map score. He’s still a Goliath compared to the underdog status of Patience but a bullseye sling shot can easily take him down.



You know it’s a stacked bracket when you get last year’s final in the first round

“Summer of Taeja” versus “Winter of HerO”. Fire versus ice. Liquid versus Liquid.

The second WR1 match of the day bring together the two blue-shirted team-mates in a revenge series from last DH:W finals. In November last year, it was HerO that mercilessly slaughtered Taeja 4-0 in front of the Jönköping crowd, dealing him his first (and only) grand final loss in his career. It was a chilling, brutal conclusion to Taeja’s summer streak, one that the Terran has certainly not forgotten.

One year later, history seems to be repeating itself. HerO has seen a slower summer for himself while Taeja has been on a rampage, taking two HomeStory and two DreamHack titles between June and now. The Terran ace will want to extend his streak into the winter season for sure and will be in his best shape possible. With so much history behind these players’ backs, this is the best TvP you’ll likely see today.



Photo: Carl Oscar Aaro / DreamHack



The 14:00 CET match is Jaedong versus Innovation. Why wouldn’t you watch?

On one side we have the BroodWar Tyrant who has been pursuing a gold medal for a whole year now and has been denied every single time. What’s more, he’s bound to hold a special grudge against Terran players as it was Polt and Bomber that robbed him of his WCS Season 2 championships. Jaedong will not let Innovation go unpunished.

Speaking of Innovation, the Acer superstar has been underperforming and not just in the sense that he hasn’t been winning every single tournament. Not that it matters that much for this particular match-up, however: Innovation is still at 77% TvZ win-rate, can command the scariest of 4M parades and remains a mechanical monster. Innovation will not make for an easy prey for Jaedong.



Speaking of grand final rematches, how about Life against Naniwa, that sounds kind of awesome

Oh, the déjà vu. Yet again, Naniwa is the best performing foreigner in a tournament and his prize for that is to play one of the scariest StarCraft 2 players of all time. It’s almost cruel, but at least it’s a chance for the Swede to get back at Life for the 4-2 loss at IEM New York.

Those who tuned in to said tournament will not need further convincing about tuning in today at 15:00 CET. The grand final series between the Swede and the Korean was responsible for IEM NYC’s 96,000 concurrent viewers peak and deservedly so. It was a manifestation of Naniwa’s perseverance and will, his desire to win against the odds and against the behemoths of the Korean world. After being down two games, the Swede almost turned it around much to everyone’s joyful disbelief.

Go back and relive the games on Bel’Shir Vestige and Whirlwind. You will not need another word from me after that.



Photo: ESL

Bonus: Why you shouldn’t miss the lower bracket either