With four former Four Kings players participating in the European qualifier for BlizzCon last year, few would have wagered that the last-seed Dmitriy 'Happy' Kostin, who was shy of notable silverware by then, triumphed in Spain undefeated throughout the competition.

The tournament became the springboard for the then 17-year-old for further success as he finished third at BlizzCon 2008, third at World Cyber Games 2008, which is also the best achievement in history for Russian, and a fourth place at ESWC Masters of Cheonan last month.

Yesterday’s underdog is today's champion, and Happy is poised to flex his muscle again at BlizzCon 2009 Europe Regional finals in Germany this weekend, “I was practising for a long time since my comeback from China, more than in past months.” He penned in his newest blog before travelling to Cologne.

“Since this is my last LAN tournament for the next two months as far as I am aware of, I am going to show all my capacity I can. Honestly any other place than first for me is going to be one big failure, so even if I qualify for BlizzCon, but not first, I won’t be happy with my performance.”

Orc duo Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen and Pedro 'LucifroN' Moreno Durán, who both sit in top five of our ELO ranking, may be the dominant force in the tournament, but apparently Happy does not come to Germany unprepared for this likely scenario, “Mostly I practised for orc, not only because of racial imbalance, but also because strongest players here apart from me - Grubby and LucifroN, are both Orcs.”

However Happy insisted that none of the contenders should be taken slightly as they advanced from the particularly competitive invitational ladder, he could not anticipate anything other than a path full of Orc opponents through to the overall final, but the Evil Geniuses player is optimistic about staying the course till the end.

“It doesn’t really even matter, as I wrote above I feel confident about the tournament, I'm prepared for anything so I'm going to show all my capacity, after all I need to win some tournaments, cash is always needed.”