My suspicions about foreign Protoss vs Korean Pros - Page 3

On March 01 2012 18:31 Dingobloo wrote:
Just did the data for this year's big competitions (IEM Kiev, IEM San Paulo, Homestory IV, MLG Arena) and it's actually reasonably close:

26 wins for Terrans against Koreans
30 wins for Protoss against Koreans
29 wins for Zergs agasint Koreans

If we discard Stephano, Huk and Naniwa.... (which seems completely arbitrary but that's apparently what you want) it is:

26 wins for Terrans against Koreans
24 wins for Protoss against Koreans
25 wins for Zergs against Koreans

That's in terms of games not best of 3's, you can check the data over here:

Google Docs Spreadsheet

For the sake of this seleCt is considered a foreigner, but didn't win against any koreans. ReaL, Pheonix and viOLet on the other hand were considered koreans despite living outside of korea. What a crazy life we lead...

If we remove the ambiguous koreans though (violet, Real and Pheonix) but also don't conisder them foreigners for some reason... then it changes to

22 wins for Terrans
26 for Protoss
22 for Zergs

Then removing the "outliers" (Huk, Stephano, Naniwa)

You're left with

22 for Terrans
19 for Protoss
18 for Zergs

Basically what I'm saying is you can stretch this data, all kinds of ways, ultimately it's actually pretty close, doubly so when you consider how many of the protosses are players who train 100% of their time in korea. I didn't remove Sase, but he only adds 2 points for protoss.

On March 02 2012 08:08 Recognizable wrote:
It seems to me protoss just has the most viable and strongest all ins so it's easier for them to take games off of stronger opponents.

On March 02 2012 16:33 Lysanias wrote:


Thank you good sir, this should be added in the OP with this man's name.

Also it's incredible how close it is, i would have expected foreign terrans to be a bit lower, but it looks well balanced no matter how you stretch it, i'd go with the first one though.

On March 02 2012 18:06 TG Manny wrote:
As a note of reference, could it be that the Protoss players in EU could be used to more Korean style aggressive play because of their ladder and local tournament environments? Obviously Terrans and Zergs would also benefit, but both Z and T see the matchup akin to a ticking timebomb. Z can't let a protoss get to 3 base of gas or he gets too much gas, T can't let toss successfully fund both AoE tech paths. (bases be damned, no collo den and no templar archive? That's a dead toss @ 12 minutes). Therefore, Z and T work at forcing a Protoss to stall in economy via timings, harassment, and allin play.

In reverse, T and Z players in the EU servers are less aggressive on the average compared to Koreans who specifically add in harassment whenever they possibly can (trading as effectively as possible at different points in the game). Both T and Z simply want 3 bases and reach toward max with upgrades rolling fast. Obviously players want to deny their opponent's 3rd, but they'll put much less strain and effort on their opponent on average.

Thus when transitioning to Korea and korean opponents in international tournaments, Protoss is already fighting the "metagame" style of the other races that force a protoss to slow down. In comparison, a TvT MU between a korean and foreigner could be a strange reaper into mech opening for the korean with a hellion drop/runby behind reapers and the foreigner might just forgo extra defense and counter aggrssion to grab a greedier 3rd or tech up/upgrade faster. One mis-step by foreigner and he loses the game in some cases, other times one bad decision and his macro advantage is gone, etc...