With that, the 2011 MLG season has come to a close. This time the tournament was bigger, grander, and accordingly, had even more to talk about than normal.NaNiwa opened the first day with a win over NesTea in the MLG Global Invitational, and went on to cause some minor controversy later in the tournament with some interesting manner decisions. The lovable Liquid Zerg HayprO showed his true killer side, with a win over NesTea and a solid 1-2 performance against MVP in back-to-back matches.Of course, the real story of the tournament is Leenock. Young Leenock, after nearly missing his flight to Providence, crushed through the open bracket and fought many close battles to emerge the ultimate champion. Even after getting knocked to the loser's bracket by DongRaeGu, he played confidently and passionately, with aggression and tenacity rarely seen on stage. After busting through MMA, Idra, Huk, and MVP, he faced the man who sent him there and came back from a two game extended series deficit to make it through to the finals.ESPORTS veteran and MLG translator, Hwanni spent the early part of the weekend saying he thought Leenock was going all the way. He was in the zone from the very start, playing to the top of his ability with a concentration and fearless attitude that is only born from absolute belief in one's own abilities.In the finals he faced NaNiwa, who had taken down NesTea not once butin the last 48 hours. Fearless as ever, his aggressive responses to NaNi's fast expanding saw him through the first best-of-three and on to the extended series to make him the first player to win from the loser's bracket since HuK's win in MLG Raleigh 2010.Here is how the top ten shook out. If you didn't have time to watch as many as you would like you can always check this thread for some unique and noteworthy games.

THINGS TO PONDER

By confusedcrib

Are Mvp and Nestea Still the Best Players in the World?





Should Team Evil Geniuses Have Established a North American Team House?

TL responses to reactions:

We've reviewed the section of the article internally and while we believe that writers are entitled to expressing their opinions in TL articles, we should have exercised more care in allowing this to be posted. TL as a news site carries a heavier responsibility when it comes to talking about rival teams, and we should have recognized that before posting this article.



We believe that this topic (EG's teamhouse) is a worthwhile one to discuss, but we agree that one paragraph posted in an event recap is not the right place for it. It should have been posted in an editorial format that was clear and not where it was. The argument also should have been developed much further than a single paragraph.



In the future we hope to be more thorough with our editing process. We will be taking your feedback into account and we hope to avoid situations like this.

Who is GoSu.Gatored?



This is the guy that took out Ganzi

Photo Credit to omgyumyum.com's "omg Latern"



Hero or Huk?

The Big Upsets

Rise of the "No Names"

For me, Providence raised many more questions about the turbulence of E-sports than it answered. While a great tournament, Providence was pretty freaking weird. A middle of the road GSL performer took the whole tournament, a Swedish guy with no big tournament results in 6 months took second place, and Spanishiwa, dde, and State placed in the top thirty two...even though there were thirteen Koreans in the open bracket. I just don't know what to think anymore, the world of Starcraft is crumbling around me. While I ponder the collapse of the world, here are some things to ponder about the tournament.Up to this point, it's been pretty unanimous that Nestea and Mvp are the best two players in the entire world. Not only are they the best players in the world but they do not lose games. Ever. But the two gods showed their vulnerability at Providence.I knew that the big - "g" Gods may actually be lower case ones when on Friday night Naniwa took them both out in the global invitational.I thought as I sat atop the judging throne with Artosis, the greatest judgment-er of them all. As the tournament went on though, things got weird, as Nestea ended up taking twelfth place and Mvp fourth. Nestea first lost to Haypro and lost to Naniwa,. But it's important to remember that in his run through the open bracket, Nestea did not lose a single game. As for Mvp, he similarly did not lose a single game going through the open bracket, but lost to MC, dropped a game to Haypro, and then got knocked out by Leenock.After results like that, I don't know what I should be thinking anymore. I'm with Artosis on this oneI'll be honest guys, I'm really afraid of getting flamed for this, but it's something that's concerned me for long enough that I'm just going to say it. EG did badly, and I can't help but feel that the team house is not paying for itself. Of course when you go to EG's coverage of the event, they point to having "solid results overall," but in reality, it's only ever their golden three that do well. Thanks to Idra, Huk, and Puma, EG always manages good PR, but the results of their other players are starting to get down right disturbing: iNcontroL lost to State and Strifecro, StrifeCro lost to syckness and RuFF13, Lzgamer lost to Catz and exMaSter. Only Machine and Axslav's results are remotely explainable, with losses to Nestea, dde, Gatored, and Violet. Even with those two players though, losses to Gatored and dde when you live in a team house are hard to justify.To be honest, if they want to justify having a team house, they need to work out a better system. While Puma and Idra seem to be practicing correctly, I can't shake the feeling that they would do well regardless of where they were living. EG needs to figure out what those two are doing right, and have everyone try to emulate it to avoid poor results. Having a team house in North America established a wonderful precedent, now they just need the results to match.Other responses: Liquid`Nazgul Perform well once, and it could be a fluke, do it twice, and you deserve recognition. At IEM New York, Gatored was able to take out Strelok, DongRaeGu, and oGsTop. At MLG Providence, Gatored took out Axslav and Ganzi, only losing to ViOlet and Leenock, two of the best players at the tournament. The guy is seriously becoming a PvT sniper, with his major tournament wins against Terran including Qxc, Strelok, Top, and now Ganzi. This guy is quickly gaining my attention for his results, and it would be a smart move to pay him more attention in the future.Do I root for Huk or do I root for Hero? If both are streaming, who do I watch? If they decide to have a competition for who is more adorable, whose side do I take? Hero is improving at a jaw dropping rate, taking out Puma, Sjow, Ret, Puzzle, Jinro, Keen, and Sheth on his way through the tournament. And of course Huk is just the cutest little guy around. Even though he only managed to take out HerO for this tournament, he never really got the chance to prove himself, only losing to the first and second place winners.If there is one thing I know, it's that there may now be a Hero Huk rivalry in affect. HerO finally managed to best Puma at MLG, and now it's time for him to focus on Huk. The rivalry is about more than just wins or losses, or even that it's TeamLiquid's former protoss star against our present one, it's about play style and results.Hero and Huk both play Protoss similarly: willing to go all in, leaning towards gateway styles, and having some amazing control. They're both great players. Just be aware, you may soon be forced to pick a sideThere were a lot of big wins that no one saw coming, and went uncasted on the main streams. A lot of these upsets were in the open bracket, showing that in this time of Starcraft, it may be true that no one is safe. Gatored 2 – 0 HerO 2 – 1 Major 2 – 1 GanZi 2 – 0 Oz 2 – 1 MC 2 – 1 PuMa 2 – 0 PuMa 2 – 1 Leenock 2 – 1 NaNiwa 2 – 1 NesTea 1 – 2Going into the tournament, I don't think that many people would have predicted some of these close results. In a lot of ways, Providence made the “unbeatable” players look pretty beatable.If you hunt your way through the open bracket results, there are a lot of really weird things to see; results that imply the skill gap between top ladder players and lower tier professional players may be closing. The question of what it really means to be a pro gamer is getting less obvious, as more and more "no name" players snipe out top dogs to get their names out there. State 2 – 1 HeavOnEarth 2 – 1 Gatored 2 – 0 sycknesS 2 – 0 Forbs 2 – 1 Forbs 2 – 1 Ostojiy 2 – 0 dde 2 – 0 Binski 2 – 0 RuFF13 2 – 1Is the skill gap closing? Or was this just a bad tournament for the bigger name players that are listed above?