As anyone who frequents TL.net knows, there is a "Liquibet" section at the top where one can vote on every major upcoming match for imaginary points. Those who win at the end of a season get a nifty forum banner
I picked up SC2 at the suggestion of a friend back in July, became obsessed with it, and became a regular attender of TL.net. Since I was an avid fan of the GSL, I decided I would go ahead and vote in the Liquibet, as it was something I kind of did in my head anyway. As I learned this system, I discovered that there were two separate liquibets, one for SC:BW, and one for SC2. For many months I simply ignored the SC:BW one since I didn't watch it.
Eventually, the yellow number got so big (As I recall it was somewhere above 20, but I truly can't remember) I decided I would just vote on stuff and see how I did with it. So I placed a bunch of votes, usually picking players based off of names that seemed similar to SC2 names (Hyuk and HuK for example) or names that I'd heard mentioned in State of the Game (Jaedong, Flash, etc). Even better than that, I picked teams based solely upon which team I deemed to have a better looking logo.
As I did this, I began to notice patterns in which teams/players won, and so I chose them more often to win. This has been most successful this season, with the end result being this:
I'm ranked 146 currently, with a 65% voting percentage, and all I do is guess, and I've never-ever watched a game of SC:BW. I've been as high as 115th place during this season, all luck based
Wow, that's pretty impressive (I think). I tried liquidbetting before, but I usually forget to bet so then it never works out for me.
You're missing out though, you should totally check out BW matches. At the very least, check them out once in a while. In fact, watch MBC vs. OZ on right now on GTR's stream! It's Hyun vs. Magikarp!
My best results in liquibets have always been when I guessed. When I tried to think about the matchups and the maps and the teams and whatever else could influence the outcome, I always ended up doing worse.
I too have never watched a single game of BW, however while I'm not as high up the rankings as yourself, I'm also doing pretty well with random guess work.
Brood War is a great spectator sport. As a player, the level of gameplay is too high to enjoy unless you are ultra competitive, or simply don't give a shit about your performance... But that same epic level of gameplay makes for great spectating. I hardly watch it anymore myself, but if you've never seen it, do yourself a favor, bro! If you have any appreciation for skill, in any endeavor, then you should watch pro BW, at least a few games.
On April 27 2011 15:04 garbanzo wrote: Wow, that's pretty impressive (I think). I tried liquidbetting before, but I usually forget to bet so then it never works out for me.
You're missing out though, you should totally check out BW matches. At the very least, check them out once in a while. In fact, watch MBC vs. OZ on right now on GTR's stream! It's Hyun vs. Magikarp!
Man I hope he didn't watch Drunkard vs Magikarp...... the ending was so sad.
@Everyone suggesting I watch BW I'd love to, but I can barely catch up on SC2 stuff, I may watch it some day, but after seeing how awesome this site is, I'm sad I didn't discover BW back when it was top dog
On April 27 2011 15:33 GuiltyJerk wrote: @Everyone suggesting I watch BW I'd love to, but I can barely catch up on SC2 stuff, I may watch it some day, but after seeing how awesome this site is, I'm sad I didn't discover BW back when it was top dog
Dude, the video above is less than 15 mins. You can skip some of the beginning chatter and the end (after the "gg"), so it can be about 8 mins long. It's really awesome.
If I could have a pet dragoon, I want it to be one of Tempest's dragoons.
On April 27 2011 15:33 GuiltyJerk wrote: @Everyone suggesting I watch BW I'd love to, but I can barely catch up on SC2 stuff, I may watch it some day, but after seeing how awesome this site is, I'm sad I didn't discover BW back when it was top dog
Dude, the video above is less than 15 mins. You can skip some of the beginning chatter and the end (after the "gg"), so it can be about 8 mins long. It's really awesome.
If I could have a pet dragoon, I want it to be one of Tempest's dragoons.
liquibetting doesn't exactly require you to watch every single bw game. You have to knows the players themselves, their playstyle, how they're currently doing, what type of map it is, and how to bet on the percentages. But you can do this just by reading up on each player on liquipedia. So if the current bet between 2 people is like 60:40, and after some analyzing you think it's probably closer to 50:50, the smarter thing to do would be to bet on the 40% guy. Liquibet has a lot in common with gosubetting from gosugamers.net. You have to work the probabilities and if you have a good general understanding you can go far, but a lot of it is really luck based. Plus if at any point you miss a vote, your essentially fucked. You have to be very attentive to your votes, that's probably the hardest thing about liquibetting.
The highest I've gone at one point was like top 50-something (like top 57 or something like that) if I recall correctly, and that was with a couple of missed votes.
My best liquibet season was when I was new to tl and just voted based on name recognition. (Hey, this KT team is pretty high on the rankings, maybe I should vote for them.) When I stopped doing that because I started recognizing players, I started failing.
I was gonna write a blog exactly about this. I followed every single GSL season since season 2 and follow most SC2 tournaments, but I never watch any BW tournaments. I peaked at ~25 rank in my BW LB whilst something around 5000 for SC2. Currently rank 71 on BW and 4468 on SC2. Seriously, how i LB BW is basically "Oh, I've heard of someone called Flash. I think I'll vote for him.""Oh, this guy has a sweet name, voting for him" etc.etc.
I follow BW closely, I suck at LQB for some reason(major upsets lately though, like ACE, MBC and MSL/MST). That and fanboy votes come to mind(I autvote Hwaseung Oz mostly.......that never goes well). My LQB ain't doing well.
However my SC2 LQB is doing much better, here is how I vote:
Is he Nada or Slayers_Boxer or July?Auto fanboy vote Is he korean?go for korean(with few exceptions such as Jinro and White-ra) Is he asian?Go for asian(Lol this is starting to sound pretty racist) What matchup is it?If its PvZ P autovote(most chance of winning). Then there are some names I recocgnize like MMA, squirtle and stuff.
Your username should sum up how you feel about this situation -_-;;
I suggest you stop watching SC2 for a couple days and indulge in some BW, you really don't know what you're missing and you'll get to see how huge BW really is and see the roots of Starcraft.
I rather be at the lowest rank than miss some of these BW games. To be proud of a betting non-awarding system and miss the matches it is trying to promote is the real loss in all of this.
Even more extreme. I follow SC2 a lot more than I do BW. It's honestly getting a little ridiculous.
The key is to never vote for OZ, since they suck
Reposting. I'm somewhere near 200 now after betting KT over SKT Honestly I don't even watch SC2 that much anymore but I follow it a lot more closely than I did BW.
Thought I saw a thread about this.. just filled in my liquibet. Apparently in top 100 (97th but tied 85th) and I've watched exactly 1 BW game this season.. and I can't even remember who played.. it was one of the games before the Group D matchs last week. Watched to see if Flash vs JD was on, watched one of the earlier games, then watched GSL instead.
EPT
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