DH SC2 Masters 2022 Atlanta preview and favorites

StarCraft 2 features very few tournaments these days and most of them offer less than $25.000 in prizes. This makes DH SC2 Masters 2022 Atlanta one of the most important StarCraft 2 competitions of this year. Its prize pool is $100.000 and its number of participants is 80!

Out of these 80 players, 35 play Protoss, 26 Terran, and 19 Zerg. However, despite the imbalance when it comes to the races, the Zerg players have a high chance to overpower the rest. Both Riccardo “Reynor” Romiti and Joona “Serral” Sotala are in top shape right now, occupying two of the top three positions in the European rankings.

The number one position is occupied by Clement “Clem” Desplanches, who plays Terran. The 20-year-old has gathered 3646 points so far this season and will be Reynor and Serral’s main opponent.

DH SC2 Masters 2022 Atlanta details

The tournament will only last for three days. It starts on November 18 and ends on November 20. The location, as the name suggests, is Atlanta. This means that if you live in Europe, most of the matches will take place in the evening and at night.

The format of the tournament is quite sophisticated. For the first group stage, 64 players will be divided into 16 groups of four. Every match is best-of-three. The top two players from each group advance to the second group stage.

This stage will divide the 32 survivors into eight groups of four and once again, the top two players from each group advance to the next stage. Every match is best-of-three.

The 16 greatest players in the tournament start competing only in the third round of matches. For this round, they will be joined by the 16 survivors of the first two stages and the format will once again consist of groups of four.

The top two players from each group advance to the playoffs. The winner among them goes directly to the Round of 16. The runner-up goes to the Round of 24. The third and fourth-place players get one more chance to qualify for the playoffs, in the knockout brackets. Eight of them will survive this stage.

In the playoffs, every match is a best-of-five series. The Finals are best-of-seven. The winner of the tournament gets a spot at IEM Katowice 2023, as well as $15.000.

Compared to other esports, this amount is quite small. But that’s because StarCraft 2 has a relatively small audience these days, despite being one of the best RTS games of all time.

Header: DreamHack, ESL