eSports Update: GSL 3 Finals, EG Master’s Cup Recap

By Patrick Miller

PCWorld | Dec 20, 2010 11:11 AM PT

This weekend was a busy one for Starcraft II fans, between the conclusion of the Global Starcraft League Open Season 3 and the final 16 of the Team Evil Geniuses Master's Cup. Read on for our recap.

Global Starcraft League: oGsMC stops TSL_Rain

Anyone who had watched the previous drama-filled GSL finals would be rather disappointed by this season's finals series between Min-Chul "oGsMC" Jang (Protoss) and Seo-Yong "TSL_Rain" Park (Terran). From the very beginning, pretty much everyone was convinced (including me) that oGsMC had it in the bag--the only question was how many games TSL_Rain could take from him before succumbing to defeat.

MC started with a bang, pulling off two straight wins on Delta Quadrant and Lost Temple. Neither win was crushing, however; Rain's aggressive Siege Tank pushes put MC under pressure in both games, and Rain's fortified Bunker/Tank contain on Lost Temple looked like it had the chance to slowly suffocate MC. MC managed to obliterate the contain with a key Immortal-heavy army while harassing Rain's undefended expansions with Warp Prisms and High Templar drops to take the win. MC's early Void Ray opening was key to winning both games, as it delayed Rain's one-base timing attacks sufficiently to pull ahead and take his natural expansion.

Rain did manage to turn the tides in their third game on Xel'Naga Caverns, with an elegant fake-out that convinced MC he was going to be seeing an early Marine/Marauder attack. Instead, Rain showed up with cloaked Banshees before MC had any detection up, laying waste to his Sentry-heavy army and savaging his mineral line. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. MC took the next game on Steppes of War with early Zealot pressure thanks to a proxy Pylon and Gateway in Rain's base, and overran Rain's base with Gateway units to win it all on Jungle Basin. Kudos, Rain--hope the $20,000 you got for second place makes up for not being able to silence the haters.

EG Master's Cup: ROOT.qxc wins in one day

Team Evil Geniuses has some of the best Starcraft II players in the US, so they must have been disappointed when they couldn't even make it to the semi-finals of their own tournament. Instead, Kevin "ROOT.qxc" Riley (Terran) was the man of the day--literally. Even though the EG Master's Cup went all weekend, qxc was only able to make it on Sunday, so he started in his octo-finals match early Sunday morning and ran through all his opponents with one after another without losing a single game. Finally, he met Simon "NOVAstalife" Park (Terran) in the finals, and proceeded to crush stalife 3-1 with non-stop aggression to take the $1,000 prize. Check DJWheat's UStream archives for videos from the tournament.

Of course, winning the EG Master's Cup doesn't just get you $1,000--you also get a shot at Greg "IdrA" Fields (Zerg) in a show-match with an MSI GT660 gaming laptop at stake. Unfortunately for qxc, IdrA showed everyone why he was the final boss of the Master's Cup, shutting down each of qxc's attack vectors with Zerglings and Mutalisks in the first and third games and overrunning his bases with Roaches in the second.

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Patrick Miller is a Staff Editor for PCWorld. Add him on Twitter or Facebook, or message him on Battle.Net (pattheflip.729) for a game.

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