Category: e-sports

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This weekend MLG’s Winter Championship is taking place in Dallas, Texas, with $75,000 on the line. MLG have favoured a new format for this tournament, changing back to the more standard single elimination bracket. Like in most cup football competitions, the players can’t afford to make any mistakes as a single loss will see them eliminated from the tournament. We do however know the routes that each player will take to the final as the full bracket is released before the tournament has started. As Heart of The Swarm was only released on Monday, we decided to take the first day of the event to take account of any metagame changes and to prepare ourselves for an intense weekend of betting as the tournament progresses.

The stand out bet in the first half of Day 2 is for Ret to advance into the Semi-Finals. Pinnacle’s price of 9.09 is far too generous, and whilst Flash is a legendary player, this is putting Ret’s chances of defeating Flash at the same level as Minigun’s of beating Life. Whilst Flash is a firm favourite, Ret is more than the 12.5% chance that Pinnacle’s prices imply. A more likely and solid bet is Ret to win either 1 or 2 maps. If you think that Ret can run Flash close, a price of 4.02 is available for the +1.5 handicap, whereas 1.787 is very likely for Ret to take one map. We’d suggest backing each of the three outcomes, with a higher weighting of your stake towards the +2.5 – we’d be very surprised if he can’t take a map after Flash dropped a game to Bly, a much weaker player, in round 1.

After IEM, we mentionned that Seed’s HoTS debut would be awaited with baited breath after his LG-IM teammates’ fantastic performance last weekend. However, SK Telecom’s Rain made light work of Seed and we’ll put that down to an exceptionally strong performance by Rain, as could be expected based on his performance since transitioning to StarCraft II, rather than Seed performing worse than expected. Rain’s price of 1.645 to beat Jjakji seems fair, but we’d rather take the -1.5 at 2.5 as we’d expect him to assert himself if is to come out on top against a player who was able to take a clean sweep of MarineKing in round 1.

Leenock is a player who saves his best performances for MLG and the 2.28 available against Innovation seems more than fair. He demonstrated an exceptional knowledge of ZvP against BabyKnight, and we’d expect that he’s studied how to play against Terran in a similar fashion and to show that here.

Meanwhile, we fully expect Parting to advance against Sen to complete the lower half of the bracket, but with no -2.5 handicap available, we’ll leave alone the 1.174 on offer.

As the first major Heart of the Swarm event is well underway, caution is advised as we get to grips with the metagame changes going in to the full release of the latest version of StarCraft II. With the second season of GSL 2013 offering regular betting opportunities and the 2013 MLG Winter Championship taking place next weekend, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to fulfill your StarCraft betting needs over the coming weeks. We’ve been taking in the IEM Season VII World Championship and seeing how the balance changes have been affecting the playing field and seeing if those players at the top in Wings of Liberty are still playing at the same level.

Overall, IEM has thrown up few surprises until now. The Koreans are still dominating and we haven’t seen any indicators that this will be changing any time soon. Aside from fan-favourite MC who demonstrated a weakness against Zerg, which we expect to be quickly rectified, the top tier have taken a clean sweep through the tournament. With no further Wings of Liberty tournaments, the LG-IM representatives of YongHwa, YoDa, First and Mvp have dominated the competition and we will be looking forwards to their teammate Seed’s debut against SK Telecom’s star Rain next Friday. No doubt countless hours have been put in by the Incredible Miracle house’s residents and we expect this to show throughout their roster.

The main foreigner hope, Stephano, does not seem to have gained the same understanding so far, admitting on Twitter that he is “totally lost against Terran” and that it is “Impossible to attack with tanks and mines. Impossible to leave your base with Medivacs.” More worrying is his lack of knowledge about new units such as widow mines and the Viper’s cloud ability. Combined with his admission that his timings are weak and assertion that whilst he understands how to counter certain plays, that he’s simply unable to hold them off. With no free time to prepare before MLG due to his appearance at the HoTS launch event in France and a long travel time, we don’t expect any major changes prior to MLG and it would be no surprise to see him fall to Polt or Creator in the quarter finals in Dallas.

One foreigner who has shown significant improvement is Ret. Defeating MC and First is no mean feat and shows the potential of the Dutchman. As one of the technically superior European zergs, there’s the possibility that this promising performance could be exactly what he needs to propel himself back into the top of the scene after a quiet end to WoL. A big run next weekend at MLG is possible.

Unfortunately things for his racial companions have not been anywhere near as fruitful. Zerg’s dominance during 2012 has been well documented and it could now be time that the “patch zergs’” fun is over. We’ll be opposing those overhyped mid-tier players until indications prove otherwise.