Inside the world of professional StarCraft players

[Anakha56]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011 ... yers.ars/2

"For the swarm!" Inside the world of professional StarCraft players
By Jeremy Reimer | Published about an hour ago

The games begin

MLG events run over three days and employ a complicated matchmaking system. There is "Pool Play" where the top sixteen seeded players are assigned to four groups and compete in round-robin fashion, and then there is the "Open Bracket" where hundreds of lesser-known competitors and non-seeded players battle to gain one of four extra spots in Pool Play. The top two players in each pool go to the quarterfinal matches, then the winners advance to the semis and the final.

The tournament is "double-elimination," meaning that if you lose one best-of-three match at any point in the Open Bracket or the quarters or semis, you are not yet out of the competition. Instead you drop to the unfortunately-named "Loser's Bracket" where you can battle all the way back to the finals again, although losing in this bracket means elimination from the tournament. Since every competitor is allowed to lose one match, the undefeated player from Pool Play who makes it to the finals against the winner of the Loser's bracket is allowed to lose the first best-of-three match and still have another chance to win the tournament. Finally, there is an "Extended series rule" where if two players have met before and meet again at any point in the tournament, their initial best-of-three score is kept on the table and the series becomes a best-of-seven.

I have been following the MLG games with great interest I will admit. Wish I could play Protoss half as good as MC.