Diving into StarCraft's DreamHack Masters Summer 2021
As one of the biggest StarCraft events, DreamHack Masters Summer 2021 will be one of the most exciting esports tournaments in a long while.
Diving into StarCraft's DreamHack Masters Summer 2021
As one of the biggest StarCraft events, DreamHack Masters Summer 2021 will be one of the most exciting esports tournaments in a long while. It will have the best players in the world and will decide who the best SC star is at the moment.
DH Masters is the first event of the 2021-22 ESL Pro Tour. It will be organized by both DreamHack in cooperation with ESL. Since this is one of the biggest tournaments in StarCraft’s season, it is obvious that some casual viewers will look forward to trying and watching the games that will be played. The best players from South Korea, Europe and many more places will be present in the online tournament.
Most people might’ve thought that this was a LAN event but it seems that SC does not want to risk it which means that this event will only be played online. You might know about the format of games like CSGO due to your interest in free CSGO skins but SC is special. Let’s dive into what will be the format of the event.
DH Masters format
Firstly, there will be a 16-player group stage which will have four groups with four players each. This will be played in a dual tournament format which means that there will be winner’s matches and loser’s matches to determine the ones who make it to the main stage. The only players who will make the main stage will be the outright winners and the winner of the last loser’s match.
This is different from your usual group stage format where there usually is a match that doesn’t play a big factor in the results. This is how event organizers have made sure that every game played is important and the result holds weight compared to other formats in esports. Most events use a round-robin format but that is seen as inefficient in the SC space.
One of the biggest advantages that the format has is brevity. It will only feature five games compared to the six games that you see in the round-robin format. It also helps that it doesn’t go beyond the five-game threshold which means there are no extended series. On the other side, the round-robin format is notorious for its tendency to go overboard with tiebreakers.
After the group stage, the playoffs is much simpler with an eight-player single elimination bracket. All of the series are best-of-five which means that there will be some long series in this playoff stage. The unique series will be the finals which is a best-of-seven clash between the last two players in the event.
The format is viewer and player-friendly which makes it a fun event to watch. Hopefully, there are no more issues with this compared to other esports like Dota 2 and CSGO who are well known for their issues with formats over the past decade.
Who will be the players to watch in this event?
Among the 16 players in the field, there are so many stars who can be considered as the top stars of the event. As expected, players from South Korea make up a large chunk of the field. They have six players from the same nation with only Germany coming close with two of their own.
Coming into the event, the Koreans will surely be the favourites as they always keep themselves in contention. With the likes of Cho ‘Dream’ Joong Hyuk and Cho ‘Trap’ ‘Sung-ho playing in this event, you can expect that they will be top contenders. However, over the past year, momentum has shifted because Europeans have started to show their dominance in the SC scene.
Riccardo ‘Reynor’ Romiti was the winner of IEM Katowice 2021 which will play a big factor here. Players from SK will have a tough time playing against Reynor who is at an all-time high confidence-wise in 2021. Alongside Reynor, there are three more European players with Clément ‘Clem’ Desplanches, Gabriel ‘HeRoMaRinE’ Segat and Julian ‘Lambo’ Brosig.
The other players in the field come from North America or some parts of Asia. The most notable player will have to be Sasha ‘Scarlett’ Hostyn who has experience in dealing with SK during her time there. She will be a dark horse in this event considering that she always steps up in big events just like this.
Who will win the event?
If you’ve been watching the recent SC events, it will be hard to go up against Reynor. The teenager has become one of the best players in the world. Of course, that did not come as an accident since Reynor had to work hard when he was younger to the point that he can beat anyone when he’s in form.
Dream will also be a good shoutout as he has played magnificent SC over the past few months. If he can secure this win, you can expect that Koreans will be strong in SK. They will dominate this event but some hopefuls want to stop the norm of SK winning trophies.
All of the European stars have the chance to break SK’s spirit. While Reynor is the favourite, both Clem and HeRoMaRinE can surprise people. The unknown commodity for the field is Lambo who has the chance to shock the world if he can win his games.
It will be interesting to look forward to this event since there are so many opportunities for every player. All of the participants in this event will have to play competitive games because if they don’t, they will be removed from their spot.
There will be some dark horses during the event since the likes of Cho ‘Mar’ Seong Ju, Lee ’Rogue’ Byeong Yeol will participate. Adjustments would have to be made but make sure that you are watching the event. Don’t just look at the free CSGO skins that you see online, try and watch the SC Masters since the best players are playing among others.
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Words: Pocholo Magsino
