Week #77 van de ESL Open Cups zag 
Genezen double his gains from the previous week and win both the Korean and American editions, while HeRoMaRinE reclaimed the ultimate prize in Europe for a full Terran sweep.
Genezen tore through the most of the Korean bracket without dropping a map, even running over Schepper 3-0 in the semifinals (Creator had eliminated a potentially dangerous obstacle in Smaak earlier on). In the finals, Cure finally found an opponent who could put up a fight, being challenged by Zonne. The KaiZi Zerg had also cruised through his half of the bracket, though MacSed did manage to steal a map during the best-of-three rounds of the tournament. It looked like Solar would lock down an easy victory as he quickly went up 2-0 over Cure, but the Cure fought back to win with a 3-2 reverse sweep in the end.
Cure’s newest team mate at Dragon Phoenix Gaming—the recently discharged held—also participated in the tournament, but fell early on against Ragnarok in a duel between old CJ Entus brothers. RagnaroK himself was defeated by Cham, Solar’s semi-finals opponent, who managed to put together quite a solid run with a win over Nice .
Polish Protoss Kristianer showed his best ESL Open Cup Europe run yet on Monday, taking out Vanya, Neeb, ziel en kabouter in an elimination spree to reach the finals. Once again, Zest participated in the EU edition to escape the slow late hours on the Korean ladder and took out lilbow en Gerald before being stopped by young Croatian Protoss goblin, who had already taken down Bly en Max Pax up this point, making this half of the bracket a chaotic affair indeed with many big names falling early. Among them, also, was Show Time, who could not overcome souL. Having survived where all these bigger names failed, Krystianer really was the surprise finalist from that side of the bracket.
Compared to this utter anarchy, the upper half of the tournament tree was much tamer with HeRoMaRinE meenemen Vreemd en Lambo before another fateful meeting with Clem. The age-old duel commenced with an even trade of maps to force a fifth and deciding game on Romanticide, which the German claimed for himself. The finals were a formality at this point, for Big Gabe was not about to let Krystianer take his prize when he just had to wrestle down Clem for it and secured victory with a dominating 3-0.
An unlikely performance also defined one side of the bracket in the American edition of the ESL Open Cup #77: RazerBlader flirted with elimination in each one of his matches, but in the end came out on top against ForGG, MaxPax and Nice to reach the semi-finals, where he was able to take at least one map from Cure before being defeated himself. The eventual tournament winner had already taken out Gouden, toekomst en Heeft at this point, thus the British Terran was not exactly his biggest obstacle on the path towards the finals. The other side of the tournament tree saw herO take down TOP en Scarlett, before the new DPG player narrowly fell to Astrea. The Golden Dragon thus secured his own spot in the semis and was one map away from sweeping Zest and advancing into the finals, but Zest managed to claw his way back into the series and achieved the reverse-sweep. Once again a duel between team mates ensued in the finals to see who could claim the ultimate prize—in this case the Terran player came out on top and not only secured his second victory of the week, but also the second win in the American edition of the weekly tournament series in a row.
Dankzij de samenwerking met Shopify, ESL Open Cup-winnaars verdienen $ 250 aan prijzengeld en 10 ESL Pro Tour-punten. Spelers die als tweede eindigen verdienen 5 ESL Pro Tour-punten en $ 150. Een top 4-finish garandeert minimaal $ 100 en 2 ESL Pro Tour-punten, en het bereiken van de top 8 levert $ 50 op. Editie #77 van de ESL Open Cups vindt plaats op de 4 (Korea) en de 5th of July (Europa en Amerika).
by TheOneBovenU
