For yet another Starcraft event, the Non-Koreans have been defeated by the professional gamers from South Korea. What is so interesting about this you might think, South Koreans always beat Non-Koreans. Sure, the Starcraft population of South Korea is the strongest in the world. However, we did see today that even some of the best players in the world can be defeated by a player who hasn’t actively played the game in over a month you might ask.

Today, in he first match of the quarter finals, the Canadian Testie faced off against the professional gamer Reach. Many said this game would be a blowout, while others put their faith in Testie hoping that he would pull out an upset against the Korean.

The first game was perhaps the biggest surprise of the quarter finals. Both players would be playing as protoss on the map Longinus. Testie decided to mass dragoons while Reach chose to go to a mix between dragoons and reavers. Due to Reach being unable to really get a hold on the match, he was defeated by Testie’s ability to out-macro his opponent. Surprisingly, it would be the non-Korean that would take the first game, putting Reach in a tough position going into the next match.

The second match was a rather unlucky one for the non-Korean. Before the match, Testie claimed that he anticipated his opponent to proxy gate (if you’re unfamiliar with Starcraft that is when the protoss builds his pylon and gateways near his opponent’s base instead of his own). Unfortunately for him, he scouted at the top of the map and was unable to see the proxy gates at the bottom of the map.

The third match was certainly one of the most exciting of the series. Both players fought neck and neck in a protoss vs protoss war. Expansion after expansion, fight after fight, the match stayed very close turning into an all-out macro war. Testie attempted to be the aggressor and push Reach back into his base. In return, Reach chose to hurt his opponent’s economy with constant storm drops. Even though, these storm drops really were not hurting Testie, it did not matter. Slowly, Reach was gaining an advantage by simply having a slightly stronger economy. After one large battle, Testie’s forces were weakened severly and with one large counter-attack from Reach, Testie was forced to type GG.

To try to find out what he might have done wrong during this match, Nick stated “my timing was off”. He was also surprised that the match lasted as long as it did claiming that Reach did not seem to be playing very well.

Although, Testie is well-known as a random player by nature, he claimed that he would choose protoss against Nal_rA in his next round match. His decision was mainly due to the fact that he really hasn’t been able to practice against protoss with the other races during his time of recent inactivity.

Alex “Skew” Brola, the other non-Korean at this event seemed rather uncaring about how his matches would turn out. When asked about his first two loses against YellOw, Alex rather bluntly states, “I got owned”. I got the chance to also ask whether or not he had a strategy in mind against his next round opponent XellOs. Alex made it clear that he did not have a particular strategy that he planned on using. His decisions on how he would play would be made five seconds before the match began. Unfortunately, his rather impromptu mindset did not pay off for him.

After this event, Alex will go onto compete at the WCG Pacific Regionals next week. However, after the World Cyber Games he announces that he had no plans of continuing a career in original Starcraft, but will return to the community once Starcraft II is released.