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EGPuma continued his solid DH run, defeating reigning Valencia champion DongRaeGu 2-1 to reach the semi-final. The only other terran left in the tournament Naama did not enjoy such an outcome, however, and got eliminated by NightEnd. The semi-final line-up was complete by HerO and NightEnd who erased Seiplo and Naama respectively.

DH Winter PlayOffs

Round of 8

Puma

2-1

DRG

NightEnd

2-1

Naama

HerO

2-0

Seiplo

Ret

2-0

Nerchio

Semi Finals

Puma

NightEnd

HerO

Ret

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DongRaeGu ended his DreamHack Winter adventure after falling to EG Puma although not without giving him a tough fight. Puma took game one but DongRaeGu sprung back to sweep the the second with a high-class roach/muta/baneling play that pummeled down Puma's thor/tank/hellion composition. Unfortunately for the zerg, however, Puma was only wounded as the terran pounced back on his opponent with a very technical rush, going for proxy rax into a scary bunker rush. Puma outmicroed DongRaeGu hard to kill extreme amounts of lings and finishing DRG off with a cloak banshee.

Day9's stream saw the end of Naama's run as NightEnd said "NO!" to the terran's shenanigans. Game one on Shakuras was peculiarly marked by uncharacteristic mistakes by both players. First, Naama moved out without stim and siege tank but as NightEnd pushed him back, he was eager to rush straight into tank fire, running away with a very red army. Naama returned the "gesture" by double-stimming forward and killing very little protoss units. It was not long before Naama decided he does not have the intention to go into late-game and as his double pronged marine/tank attack failed he pulled SCVs off mining and tried to finish off the protoss. Surprisingly to both audience and casters, Naama actually found extremely beneficial positions where he could make his all-in army count and made the score 1-0.

NightEnd got back into the game after winning set two on Antiga. The game went passive through the major part of it until Naama pulled SCVs once again to aid the 200 vs 200 clash. The initial shots went strongly into terran's favor but NightEnd's healthy economy and archon/chargelot composition kept him alive for long enough to reach storms and make the subsequent army trades way more efficient.

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Game three was just straight-on peculiar, as NightEnd opened 3-gate/robo and rushed straight against Naama's 1/1/1. After killing a couple of depot's however, NightEnd had to face the terran army directly and superiority of Naama's ground units pushed the protoss back. For a third time in this series Naama summoned most of his SCVs for a final push but NightEnd already knew how to handle such a situation. With exemplary patience, NightEnd won the cold war and pushed in with his immortals right when Naama made the mistake of unsiegeing and pulling back.

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Seiplo also had to put a fullstop at the last sentence of his DreamHack cinderella story. The Swede, who made a stunning run through the group stage, had to face the nightmare of many players - Liquid's HerO. But in a shocking manner, Seiplo mustered enough strength to put HerO against the ropes in game 1, going for perfectly executed DT expand into blink and was ahead in almost every aspect but doing the crucial mistake of not getting a robo up. HerO smelled this weakness and put a dark shrine of his own and soon Seiplo was being fed his own medicine.

To secure his semi-final spot, HerO opened with a proxy pylon straight into Seplo's base and the Swede, who was at that time going for a dark shrine, reacted a bit too slowly and soon had to experience the zealot psi blades upon his mineral line. All he could do was send a dark templar down HerO's base in hope of turning all this into a base race scenario but HerO was prepared and greeted the DT with endless forcefields at the ramp.

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HerO's victory has brought him to another team-kill match. After having beaten TLO in the Ro64 and eliminated Sheth in the Ro16, the Liquid protoss will go against Ret for the grand final spot. Ret himself continues his glorious streak as he defeated Nerchio 2-0 in the quarter final. With an overall 14-2 set score, Ret is one of the heavy favourites to bring home the DH Winter gold.