WCS Challenger European Predictions: Group B

The first day of EU Challenger is in the books and while there were no true upsets, predictions were a mixed bag for me (I went 3-2, Aligulac was 4-1 and TL was 5-0).  Looking forward with Aligulac, here's the next group from Challenger (TL's predictions are also noted):

ForGG vs Dayshi - the French player just hasn't been the same since he took a break from SC2 almost a year ago, so while it's great that he finally qualified for Challenger this year it's difficult to imagine him posing a challenge to the Korean; Aligulac puts the odds at 93% (!) and ForGG owns a 20-0 record against his opponent; the last meaningful win Dayshi had over a Korean Terran was beating Bomber at HomeStory Cup over a year ago--neither I nor TL see him replicating the feat here

Bunny vs Starbuck - the Dane is favoured (68%; it was 72%), with a 5-1 record against his opponent; the Slovenian has not played much ZvT this year, and while his record is very good (9-1), none of the wins are over players of Bunny's caliber; the Terran did lose to Serral not long ago, but otherwise only loses to top Zergs and that's not where his opponent is right now; TL and the odds agree with the favourite

TLO vs Bly - the odds have this as a virtual coin flip (50% for the German), with TLO holding the historical edge against the Ukrainian; Bly won their last BO3 2-1, but the energetic Zerg plays in everything--the German will have more replays than he knows what to do with to prepare and I (along with TL) would like to think in a BO5 TLO can plan well and win out

Lilbow vs SortOf - the Frenchman is an overwhelming favourite (84%); there's nothing in the Swede's ZvP track record to indicate an upset and I don't think the French player's random loss to Namshar is a warning sign; TL and I take the odds

elfi vs uThermal - the Dutch player is favoured (55%), and he's one of the few Terrans who prefers TvP over TvZ as a match-up; the Finnish player is going to cheese every game, but when he's losing 2-0 to Frozz it's difficult to see an upset here (even with the Terran losing randomly to Cooltea recently); TL and I stick with the odds

This is one of the few cases where both myself and everyone else seems to agree on who is making it through (ForGG, Bunny, TLO, Lilbow, and uThermal).  There's certainly plenty of space for one or two of these predictions to fail, but certainly the evidence at hand supports these results.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)