WCS Season Three: Looking Back

I'm a bit late getting this out, but better late than never.  The third and final season in 2015 is in the books and Krakow delivered the most exciting event of the year.  The crowd was fantastic, there were upsets, and for the first time in WCS history there was a foreign winner of their own event.  Not surprisingly, the viewership was WCS' highest over the past two years:

There were a number of great stories at the event--whether it was MaNa having a tour de force in his home country; Lilbow beating three Koreans on his win to victory; Jaedong's BlizzCon dreams crashing as yet another Korean (ForGG) knocked him out; Zanster nearly making it into the final, and on and on.  Virtually everything ESL could have hoped for they got, including some fantastic games (just a couple of examples: the third game between Hydra and Lilbow as well as Lilbow's base trade with MaNa in the final).

How about predictions?  Rather than just look at season three, here's how the whole year panned out for myself, Team Liquid (TL), and Aligulac:

R32*
Aligulac 35-13 (9-7, 12-4, 14-2)
Me 28-20 (8-8, 9-7, 11-5)
TL 28-20 (7-9, 11-5, 10-6)
R16
Me 20-4 (7-1, 7-1, 6-2)
Aligulac 17-7 (6-2, 6-2, 5-3)
TL 16-8 (5-3, 6-2, 5-3)
R8**
Me 9-3 (2-2, 4-0, 3-1)
Aligulac 8-4 (3-1, 4-0, 2-2)
R4/Final
Me 7-2 (2-1, 3-0, 2-1)
Aligulac 5-4 (1-2, 2-1, 2-1)
Total
Aligulac 93-42 (68%)
Me 91-44 (67%)
TL 44-28 (61%)

*I didn't fully predict or check Aligulac in season one of Challenger and I only have TL's predictions for season three (14-7); when I did check Aligulac was 28-14 (15-6, 13-8) and I was 27-15 (13-8, 14-7)
**TL didn't post predictions beyond the R16

I lost out to Aligulac by the slightest of margins in overall predictions, although it's some solace that from the R16 onward I was more accurate (36-9 vs 30-15).

With LOTV around the corner it seems a bit redundant to go into map results, but the usual balance in Premier is worth a look:
PvZ 11-9
ZvT 6-7
TvP 4-8

Clearly the baguette-style proved triumphant in the swan song of HOTS (if my foggy memory is correct, every third season in HOTS has seen an upswing for Protoss).  As for Koreans vs non-Koreans, they were 13-6 in season three, by far their worst showing yet--quite surprising given that they were 9-1 in the R32 and all of them moved on to the R16.

All that remains for WCS in HOTS is BlizzCon with its vast sea of GSL Koreans who will be expected to make short work of Hydra, Polt, and Lilbow (although one never knows--perhaps the three will be aided by GSL using a very antiquated map pool--but I doubt it).  It should be the best WCS final yet, at least in terms of overall talent.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)