IEM Groupstage resumé and short instruction

Hey everyone, 

this is KeeperDe from Germany and I hope I can enlighten your life with some blog entrys about League of Legends and Starcraft 2.

Im a 20 y.o. student who is moving to Gibraltar in october to earn some cash.... actually just for an internship but oh well...
Now you probably asking yourself, what this is all about and I tell you:
-League of Legens
-Starcraft 2

No more, no less, while I think those two topics are pretty full of content for everyone, so I guess I wont lack any content at all (promise) *awkward smiley*

Ah yea you want to know about my hobbies too I suppose. So here it is:
In my free time I love to play Computer games ("oh come on thats not a surprise youre blogging about League of Legends and Starcraft") You sir, got a point.
But furthermore I play the piano and clarinet and am jogging.
Yup thats all I guess...

So here is the first "news" which you all probably are really excited about  ("go hoooooome" - "no thanks")

The G-G-G-GAMESCOM just started for open public today and the Intel Extreme Masters take place in hall 9.

We do have LOTS of top tier players competing for a massive price money in both League of Legends and Starcraft 2. But let's start with Starcraft 2, the mother of all RTS.

Starcraft 2:

The first matches for IEM Global Challenge Cologne started of wednesday with the open brackets ( each group had 2 open slots to be filled with players of 4 different open brackets). No real upsets happened after all - every slot but one (THANK YOU GRUBBY) was filled with koreans in the end. 

Biggest surprise:  Targa a not well recognizet norwegian zerg, who was able to defeat two koreans (Ace 2-1 and Oz 2-0) in a row, before falling to Grubby 0-2.

Mentionable:

The two koreans with most GSL awards ever earned IM.MVP and IM.Nestea fought in different brackets and both made it to the play offs. 

The Groups on wednesday:

Group A: Nerchio, Sortof, ForGG, Puma, Demuslim, Inori

Favourites: ForGG,Inori, Nerchio

Results:

Nerchio went out of the group 1st after defeating Inori, Puma and ForGG. Funny thing about this is, that he won to the probably strongest opponents, while losing to the "worst". We did not see much out of Demuslim lately, yet he was able to defeat our #1 2-1 - Hats off !

ForGG 2nd. Nothing more to say. He lost to Nerchio and beat everyone else. Korean style...

Sortof 3rd. Well after his great performance on the latest swedish tournaments (ripping naniwa for more than one time actually) it was not the greatest surprise that Sortof would do well in this tournament aswell. Yet he still has to prove himself, that he can keep up with the best players of the world and I think he has not done this quite yet. Beating Inori and Nerchio - Okay - but still his real skill has to be proven in the play-offs - Good luck.

Group B: Violet, Nestea, Pig, Kas, MVP, Feast
Favourites: MVP, Neastea, Violet

Results:

First of all, this group was probably the most high staked one in the whole tournament. MVP and Nestea didn't win the GSL for 7 times for no reason and Violet made some SERIOUS improvements lately. However there were still Kas, the beast from the east and Feast the up and coming belgium protoss. And well after all Pig probably felt a bit lonely there, which gave him a score of 1-10 only taking one map out of Feast, which to be honest, was no surprise at all.

1st to finish the group was MVP. I guess I dont have to introduce him, as he is the most renowned and awarded Korean player to date. He has won the GSL for 4 (!!!) times and his results prove him to be still one of the very best. In the end the only match he lost, was to Violet 2-1. Well playes sir!

2nd Violet: the korean zerg who just won IEM brazil and MLG has yet proven himself again by finishing the group 2nd, losing only to Nestea and having the same mapscore as the 3rd in his group after all. Only difference he won one game more than his contrahent did. 

3rd Kas the online monster who just twittered that he was happy about this insane group, right before the games startet, has performed the greatest upset of the day, by winning vs. Pig, Feast and Nestea to take home a well earned 3rd place. Good luck in the playoffs and show us, that you can take down major lan tournaments. I know you can ... ! 

Other two groups, yet to be played. If you are visiting gamescom, make sure to check those out in hall 9 ! 

League of Legends:

Not that much to say, as I did for Starcraft 2, yet not as many games had been played. 

The regional finalists for IEM cologne this year are:

Moscow 5 , Team Elohell, Curse Gaming, Team fnatic, SK Gaming, Team Acer, Team Alternate and Custom Logic Gaming.

For this tournament the favourite teams are definitely Moscow 5 , SK Gaming and Counter Logic Gaming, while only one of either SK or CLG can make it into the finals (they will be facing each other in the semi final, if they are able to both win their previous match)

For now M5 played against Elohell and won 2-0. Really not a surprise after seeing the latest results of the russian quintett, who were just placed 2nd in Dreamhack and 1st in ECC Poland, after defeating CLG in the finals. 

The second game, which was played, was Curse vs. Fanatic, were fnatic was able to take down curse with a convincing 2-0. Well played guys.

Most surprisingly fnatic was able to play one of the newer champs Jayce and won with it. Curses reaction: instantly ban him in the 2nd game ! - Why not ...

So far, thats everything for now. I hope you liked this stuff. I will probably go and add some pictures in the next posts aswell, so dont worry about too much black and white - it will be fixed (promise²). 

And now it's time to sleep. Good night guys ! 

Cheers,

KeeperDe