CJ Entus edged out a close 4-3 victory over OGN Sparkyz last week. That was the first games of the playoffs. Now CJ goes up against MBCGame HERO, a very strong team that finished above them in the regular season.





Unfortunately for those of us who live in Europe it starts at 06:00 CET on Saturday morning. The winner of this match will go on to play Lecaf Oz in the round 2 final and then the winner there will face Samsung Khan to settle who's the Shinhan Bank ProLeague champion of 2007.

Shinhan ProLeague 2007 Round 2
Semifinal: MBC HERO vs CJ Entus
Sea vs DarkElf Monty Hall SE
Pusan vs Kwanro Baekmagoji
Light
Saint vs sAviOr
Nbs Hwangsanbul
Bisu vs IriS Katrina
HyuN vs Much Blue Storm
910
TheZerg vs Memory
Jy Seongangil
Ace Match vs Ace Match Python

Sea vs DarkElf is of course a mirror matchup, so the map doesn't really matter. Sea has one hell of a TvT. He's won nine out of ten of his last TvTs and most of them against some of the best at it. He's also been the best Terran in the ProLeague this season. DarkElf has also been one of the really good Terrans in the ProLeague this season, however his TvT sometimes leaves something to be desired. It is a little bit inconsistent. He certainly has the potential to beat Sea, but he has to play his very best while Sea does not.

It's a bit difficult to say much about Pusan's PvZ form. He's faced three Zergs in the last three months and lost to HoGiL, while winning the other two games versus Mumyung and ZerO. The map is perhaps leaning a bit towards Zerg as well. Kwanro is in a similar position, he hasn't played a Protoss since he lost 3-0 to Bisu in the last MSL back in October. This will be very close, but given Pusan's experience at the bigger stages of Korean progaming, HERO won the 2006 edition of the ProLeague after all. He'll take this one.

sAviOr is not playing 1v1 which is a bit surprising, but he has not been doing so well lately and he has been playing a bit of 2v2 throughout this season. He played random with Kwanro against ACE and with Jy against eSTRO in December. This time he's gonna chose Zerg though, which is an advantage of course. He has also played once with Nbs, who has only played that game this season. The question about CJ when it comes to ProLeague has been their ability to handle other teams once the playoffs start and it's best of seven instead of five. Saint is one of the regular 2v2 players for HERO, although he's had a few different partners this season, mostly Bisu. He wins a lot though. Saint and Light were a regular 2v2 team back in 2006, but this time they haven't played together much. Light has been more of a 1v1 player, but this team should be able to beat sAviOr and Nbs, but it's difficult to predict 2v2s.

Bisu, who lost the MSL final to Mind, OSL semifinal to Stork and got knocked out of this MSL by YellOw[ArnC] and Jaedong has been rumoured to be in a slump. Considering those are all quality opponents and that he beat sAviOr, UpMagiC, XellOs and OverSky in the same period, it shouldn't be called that though. He's still very strong and PvT he's very strong still. IriS has not been doing so well lately either. He's won five of his last ten games, but we have to go back to October to find a TvP loss for him. He is not going to be able to beat Bisu, especially on Katrina which favors Protoss in this matchup. According to the other predictions HERO has this 4-0, but lets carry on.

HyuN is hot with his four game long win streak in the ProLeague, but I'm still questioning if the name on the list shouldn't have been RuBy rather. Anyways, HyuN has the better stats lately and has surely deserved a spot. He's up against a difficult opponent, but the map favors him. Much beat YellOw[ArnC] 2-1 in the OSC last month and the same with Rumble. He lost to Luxury about a week back, but he seems to have found his PvZ form. Much should be able to overcome the map and dominate this.

910 and TheZerg make up one of HERO's regular 2v2 teams and they do it fairly well. Neither of them are real top players individually, but as a team they are decent. Jy and Memory on the other hand is the 2v2 team for CJ as well as having played a lot of 2v2s with other partners throughout the season. They should be able to pull off a win here.

The ace match. CJ has three likely candidates for this match, DarkElf, sAviOr and Much. The last two are probably the most likely as CJ might fear that Sea gets sent out to take out DarkElf again (if he actually does that in the first match). sAviOr hasn't really been in form lately, but as we saw last week he secured an advancement for CJ in the ace match then. The problem is of course Bisu being on the other team. Much recently beat Sea in the OSC finals and has been in pretty good form lately. However it would be a very tough match against Bisu. The map is in favor Terran in both matchups and therefore Sea might be the choice here for HERO. ZvP is favored for Zerg though. I expect to see sAviOr here and it's a coin toss if he'll face Sea or Bisu. No matter the choice, HERO should have a good chance here. 4-0 or 4-3 for HERO in total, depending on CJ making it to match five.

Go to the GosuBet and decide for yourself who you think will win.

Links
Teamliquid - Source for lineup
Teamliquid - TLPD
FighterForum - Picture source