Last week

Round of 128 in Ownage season 3 is now behind us. Often the first rounds of tournaments like these are plagued with walk overs. Unfortunately there was no exception this time. moltas got a walk over from murdoc, so one of the best Ro128 games never happened. The rest of the walk overs seem to have gone the way of pre game favorites, except for tay vs. drd where the American advanced.

Despite the unfortunate walk overs there were still some great games played last week. We saw goblin and Zepp play almost an identical game to their encounter in the previous Ownage: goblin was once again stronger on dm2. kingpin is looking strong and had no problems vs. niw. No matter what he says, I don't think kinpin can be seen only as a two map dueler anymore.

We also saw some upsets this week. soma, pooll and lbn were all defeated in their first match. The winners were rlx, nielZz and Thunder. Certainly some names to look out for, although their next round opponents will be even harder.

The favorites that did advance didn't all have easy time either. Exxus stole a map from Rikoll. The newest Swedish shaft monster supernova played some close games vs. marklar (fifi). dropking lost the dm6 decider vs. lakso by only one frag.

This week

There are 64 players left in the winner's bracket and the quality of games is going up as fast as the number of players is going down.

rikoll vs. maks

Fresh off his QHLan victory rikoll might be the favorite here, but he better not underestimate his opponent. maks might not be very well known outside the polish community, but he's one of the strongest players in the div 1 clan revolution. He has been very active lately and at least according to stats doing quite well in practice games. I wouldn't be shocked if rikoll found himself in the lower bracket way earlier than he anticipated.

spoinka vs. tom

Both are experienced. Both are solid all around players. Both are masters of the Dark Zone. The match of these two quite similar players could end up being a real thriller.

locust vs. Thunder

Sure it seems like locust should have an easy time here, but I'm interested to see what the guy that won vs. lbn can bring to the table. Traditionally polish players are strong on ztndm3 and dm2, and those are not the strongest maps for locust. It might end up being totally one sided, but either way we are going to see some awesome play by locust.

Other games

If that's not enough for you, be sure to look out for these games: krab vs. Medar, maga vs. dimman, brv vs. miroslav and VVD vs. Trygve.