The new season of the Shinhan Bank ProLeague has started a couple of days ago. It is a team league that is known for showing off new players. It's common to see an unknown player do well in ProLeague and once the new season of the OnGameNet StarLeague or MBCGame StarLeague rolls around, they usually carry over their consistency to indivdual leagues.

Samsung Khan was the winner of last season where they crushed OnGameNet SPARKYZ in a convincing fashion with a 4-1 score. Speaking of OGN SPARKYZ, they recently lost Luxury to KTF MagicNs. Luxury was a strong player to their team who does well in almost every  league and because of his departure, OGN SPARKYZ looks weak at the moment. Then again this is StarCraft we're talking about and it has many surprises.

Format:

This season has no 2v2 games, which means that there will only be four 1v1 matches and an ace match if needed. This new feature makes some teams nervous because they mainly win from their matches by 2v2 games. Also some players are very strong when it comes to 2v2 matches instead of 1v1 games.

Another interesting change is that the same race cannot be played on the same map twice. Pretend that you are the coach of a professional team and you place a Protoss player on Python. In the next Python match against a different team, you cannot put another Protoss player, but only a Zerg or Terran.

The third round of this season will use the King of the Hill format, which was used in the STX Masters. It is a best of 7 format where the winning player keeps playing until he loses.

Playoffs Info:

This season there will be 6 teams who will qualify for the playoffs whereas last season, it was the top 4 teams.

• 6th placed team plays the 3rd place team.
• 4th placed team plays the 5th placed team.
• The 2 teams that win will play each other. Whoever wins that match will play against the 2nd placed team.
• The winner of that match will go head to head with the 1st placed team for the grand finals.

New Rules:

• Ceremonies cannot be offensive, related to politics, or religion
• There will be 5 periods for this season and KeSPA has the right to change or add a map after each period if they believe that the map has bugs or is unbalanced.
• 2 teams that has the same score after the last period will choose a player to play in an ace match.
• Before the match starts, KeSPA will inspect a player's mouse, mousepad, keyboard and even their clothing.
  

The teams (not ranked in order)

Where, when, and how can I watch the matches?

Here at myMYM.com we will make sure to alert any potential StarCraft fan what day and time there will be a match. Not just ProLeague, but leagues such as OSL, MSL, GOMTV, etc.

To watch the matches live, please download Daum Pot Player (Install guide),
or use YaoYuan.com with TV Ants.

Or

Download and install TeamLiquid.net's Stream Sidebar.

Source:

New rules + Playoffs information - TeamLiquid.net