WCS America Round of 8 Predictions

WCS America's Round of 8 is set and it's time to make predictions.  Everything is best-of-five and here's how Aligulac and I see the all-Korean lineup:

 Alicia
 Bomber

Aligulac gives Bomber a slight edge (51%), who is 1-3 in PvT in the same circumstances (offline BO5), but that's against top Protoss and I don't consider Alicia to be in that category (none of the matches are more recent than November); Alicia only has one equivalent match, losing 3-2 to Taeja back in August.  The simple fact is, there's just not much information about the two in this scenario in HOTS, but Bomber has only lost to top Protoss offline (Sora back in July is the only exception), while Alicia hasn't beaten a Korean Terran offline since June (0-3 since).  Everything about this says Bomber to me.

 Taeja
 HyuN

Aligulac gives Taeja a slight edge (52%), which I think is belied by the Terran's 16-3 historical edge over HyuN (including beating him in both previous series in HOTS).  Other than a bizarre mastery over jjakji, HyuN has no significant wins over Korean Terrans offline--Taeja will take this.

 Polt
 Revival

Aligulac gives Polt a huge edge (83%), although Revival beat Polt in their only offline HOTS series back in July at IEM.  That loss isn't enough to make me question the odds and I'll stand with Aligulac here.

 Oz
 Arthur

Aligulac has Arthur as the favourite (64%), which is puzzling as he has no track record against significant Korean Protoss opposition whereas Oz has wins over HerO and Dear in HOTS.  I think the odds are stacked by Arthur's PvP numbers as boosted by foreigners, so I'll go with the "upset" of Oz here.

Aligulac predicts Bomber, Taeja, Polt, and Arthur going forward and I agree save that I have Oz instead of Arthur.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)