WCS Europe: Looking back at the Round of 16 and Predictions for the Round of 8

The round of 16 has wrapped up (I didn't like having each day of games back-to-back-to-back, although I suspect the schedule was dictated by ESL having to handle WCS America as well), so it's time to look back at predictions and make some for the round of 8.  Aligulac continues to be at its most accurate predicting the European scene, finishing 7-1 (missing only VortiX--incorrectly picking Mvp instead; including the round of 32 Aligulac is an absurd 19-5 in Europe); I was slightly worse (6-2), making the same error, but also picking Dayshi over Snute.  The results leave us with 4 Protoss, 2 Terrans, and 2 Zergs (consisting of 5 Koreans and 3 foreigners).  Unfortunately, the round of 8 consists of two mirror match-ups (PvP) and two TvZ's (I would have preferred a more diverse set of matches).  Here are the pairings:

 

 StarDust

 MC

 

Aligulac has StarDust as the heavy favourite (70%) and MC does not have a good track record in offline BO5 (2-5) in HOTS and he's lost his last four in a row...but those have been to herO, San, PartinG, and Dear--top players.  StarDust is 3-2 in the same circumstance having lost to San and the now retired duckdeok.  StarDust has a much better track record in PvP (even against Koreans) so I agree with Aligulac here.

 

 VortiX

 jjakji

 

Aligulac gives VortiX a slight edge (52%) and there are good reasons to agree with those odds--jjakji has had his share of struggles against foreign Zergs (he's lost his only two BO5 against them in HOTS), including losing to VortiX (online) this past week in Vasacast.  While the series could easily go the other way, I'll go with the odds.

 

 Snute

 MMA

 

Aligulac see's MMA taking the series (65%) and he's only lost one BO5 to a foreigner in HOTS (VortiX); Snute, conversely, only has one win offline in a BO5 against a Korean Terran (Sting, who isn't in the same league); Snute did echo VortiX's style in his win over jjakji and MMA plays similar to jjakji, so there's room for an upset here, but I'll go with MMA.

 

 San

 Welmu

 

Aligulac has San as the overwhelming favourite (71%) and he eats foreign Protoss for breakfast (his only loss in similar circumstances is against NaNiwa), so while Welmu beat Alicia in a BO5 recently (January), I see no reason not to go with the odds here.

 

Both Aligulac and I see StarDust, VortiX, MMA, and San moving forward.  There's room for upsets, but this would make for a good mix going forward.

 

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)