It's less than ten hours to one of North America's largest offline gaming tournaments. MLG is taking its fourth stop in Raleigh, North Carolina, baiting the best players in the world with promises of $14,000 prize purse and a shot at the Korean GSL. As usual, the players in the groups have the highest chances, so let's take a look at them.
MLG Raleigh Groups
Pool APool BPool CPool D
Naniwa Idra Slush Kiwikaki
Huk Sjow Select Ret
Incontrol Haypro TLO Sheth
Rain Machine DongRaeGu Moonan
Coca Bomber Trickster Nada
This is how the pool play looks as of now. A sixth player will be seeded into each group from the open tournament, which by the way has also hosted fearsome competitors.
Group A has welcomed two Koreans - Rain and Coca - as well as two of the best foreign protosses in the world - HuK and Naniwa. Rain pulled off an amazing performance in Anaheim, qualifying from the open bracket, going undefeated in his group (beating even then reigning champion MMA) and finishing top 8. Rain is now placed in a much tougher group so taking first will not be that easy. His new team Fnatic is not exactly known for its top protosses so Rain's biggest challenge will be HuK and Nani.
The latter foreigners are always the favourites to qualify from any pool play. Although HuK had a terrible performance at IEM Cologne, he quickly got back on track and is currently top 8 in GSL August. Naniwa comes as a runner-up from the EU Battle.net Invitational and still holds #1 in the MLG ranking.
Coca is a player I am ready to doubt not because he is bad or anything, but just because I am not confident if he is good enough for our foreigners. However, if Anaheim showed us something it's that if there is a Korean invite in the group, he WILL advance further.
Can Rain deliver the same ownage like he did in Anaheim or the company of foreign protosses will stop him? Photo by: Thisisgame.com
Bomber, Idra and Sjow are the easy favourites in Group B, Bomber has more than 70% success rate in both TvZ and TvT (which are, thus far, the only match-ups he will have to play in the group) and, honestly, to my opinion neither Machine nor Haypro can put a stick in this one's wheel.
Sjow had a semi-successful run in Anaheim and lost to both Idra and the Korean in the group (the latter being Boxer) so if history is to repeat itself Sjow will have a hard, hard time getting the higher bracket seeds. His biggest challenges will be Bomber (who, as mentioned above, holds a sick 71.4% TvT win rate) and, of course, Idra, who continues to show a certain shakiness in his play. However, Greg had never failed to get at least top 2 in the groups at every single MLG this year, so he must be pumped up with confidence.
Group C is, probably, just as easy to predict. DRG and Trickster are entering as the undeniable pool-stompers. Although the DongRaeGu hype at the last MLG was not completely justified by the end, there is little doubt that the MVP monster will rock the group unchallenged.
Trickster is also a powerful player but I always get a surge of uncertainty when I watch him play. Put next to SeleCT (who would be my next best choice for at least top 2), I would still give my vote to the protoss, but SeleCT is coming as the North American Bnet champion, a title more than enough to induce high moral in the Dignitas player.
Sadly for the fans, I don't see TLO and Slush doing any good this tournament. The innovative terran that the crowd (and I) loves so much hasn't been performing to his best lately (of course, only due to his surgery) but Dario has been recovering well so there is still a snitch of hope for him to do well in Raleigh.
There is no MVP this time in Raleigh, DongRaeGu's chances at the gold are looking slightly better.
Group D is a strange one. It's full of amazing players with a lot to prove. MLG is not usually Sheth's best tournament, but he remains one of the best Zerg in North America. His performance at the NA Bnet Invitational was as solid as you get and he walked out with the silver medal but he has still to get a good placement at a large tournament.
Ret is basically the European equivalent of Sheth. The Swarming Dutchman has had his periods of very high ups and really low downs. Right now, considering he is the European Bnet Champion (taking the gold without much difficulty) one might say he is in a good shape but then again Ret remains a player whose performance is unpredictable at best.
And then there is Nada, the eSport legend of old, whose results have been... unsatisfying. His run at Assembly Summer was disastrous and his GSL games have been just a little bit better. As negative as I might sound, this is all probably due to the unmatched hype that Nada's name itself creates out of nowhere. People always expect great things of the Genius Terran but thus far to no avail.
After a bad Assembly performance, NaDa's reputation is once again on the line Photo by: Fomos.kr
The Open Bracket is also a place of great interest. Not only is it stacked with high quality players, but the competition for the top 4 get bloodier after every event. Five top Koreans will enter the open tournament - Puma, Hero, Choya, Noblesse and TheBest - all with strong cravings for those seeds into the pool play.
And if this is not enough for you (actually, how can that be possible?) there are also names such as Tyler, DeMuslim, Catz, Jinro, Grubby, KawaiiRice, Cruncher, Fenix... The final rounds of the open tournament are going to be a blast!
I guess you don't need much more persuasion to tune in tonight for MLG Raleigh. The start is set at 23:00 CET, the place is majorleaguegaming.com. Go stack up on popcorns!
