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The September Power Rankings are out and they contain 2 American region players and 0 Europeans. This is after the August Power Rankings contained 2 Americans and 0 Europeans. This is a rather lopsided result especially when several of these players have only recently had success while several foreign players who have been dominating for awhile were left out. I wanted to create an objective system for testing this, so I decided to do a quick analysis of 7 recent international tournaments to see how these regions did head-to-head. So is the 8th best Korean really better than the 3rd best American/European?
Methodology
I looked strictly at players in the round-of-8 who competed in matches against a player from another region. I chose the round-of-8 to make the data compilation simpler and because I wasn't really interested in how the lower level players fared against the top level players. The worst player included was Jim, an American region player from China who is ranked 58 by the WCS standings currently.
Tournaments
I used 3 Asian tournaments (1 in Korea), 2 European tournaments and 2 North American tournaments from this year. They are:
Kespa Cup
Dreamhack Open Stockholm
Red Bull Battle Grounds: Washington
Dreamhack Open Moscow
IEM Season IX Toronto
Dreamhack Open Valencia
IEM Season IX Shenzhen
Results
Koreans vs. non-Koreans
Matches 40-31 56% win percentage
Best of 3 7-7
Best of 5 7-1
Best of 7 0-2
Europeans vs. non-Europeans
Matches 12-27 31% win percentage
Best of 3 2-4
Best of 5 0-6
Americans vs. non-Americans
Matches 32-26 55% win percentage
Best of 3 5-3
Best of 5 3-3
Best of 7 2-0
Conclusions
I was expecting the Koreans to dominate; just by a smaller amount than the power rankings imply. It's surprising then to see the Americans essentially neck and neck with them. There may be some selection bias going on here. Polt, Taeja, and Bomber are very good players and they compete in a lot of international tournaments. They each make 3 appearances at these tournaments (although Bomber and Polt failed to make the round-of-8 at one tournament each). But Solar, soO, Zest, and Flash all have multiple appearances in recent international tournaments too. So to sum up, no, the top Koreans are not deserving of 4 times as many slots as the Americans and Europeans combined. And at least among the top players, the regions aren't as far apart as many would think.
 
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Bomber and Taeja are the only players who have taken a Bo5+ from a WCS Korea player and they're both on the PR.
Who's the third best player outside of WCS KR? Polt? I can't really see an argument for putting Polt above Flash, Rain, and herO.
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On October 03 2014 13:38 Cheren wrote:
Bomber and Taeja are the only players who have taken a Bo5+ from a WCS Korea player and they're both on the PR.
Who's the third best player outside of WCS KR? Polt? I can't really see an argument for putting Polt above Flash, Rain, and herO.
Yep,
Don't get this at all.
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your Country52797 Posts
This is inaccurate due to both a lack of sufficient data, and, as said, the fact that a small group of players are responsible for the bigger wins.
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On October 03 2014 13:38 Cheren wrote:
Bomber and Taeja are the only players who have taken a Bo5+ from a WCS Korea player and they're both on the PR.
Who's the third best player outside of WCS KR? Polt? I can't really see an argument for putting Polt above Flash, Rain, and herO.
You're using a sample size of 5. 5!
.....
FIVE!!!!!!!!
It's easy to find counter-examples just by expanding the sample:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDkQtwIwCQ&url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiJOExgUAeg&ei=NcMuVNCiKI-hyATivoKgAg&usg=AFQjCNFNhZAoct5V_bD3Pb78QlrUkTZu8g&sig2=zrgUvVMbqaTcciOUTaxmgw&bvm=bv.76802529,d.aWw
On October 03 2014 22:47 The_Templar wrote:
This is inaccurate due to both a lack of sufficient data, and, as said, the fact that a small group of players are responsible for the bigger wins.
Within the sample, Taeja has had 14 games, Polt 9, and Bomber 12. They're a collective 22-13. But Solar has had 16 games, Flash has had 9 games, and Cure has had 10. They're a collective 21-14. No, that doesn't include Zest, but it also doesn't include HyuN, both of whom have had middling results internationally despite being the kings of their respective regions. Then there are players like herO and Jaedong who have done poorly within their region but very well internationally. The whole point was to look at a small group of players. How do the top 5 from each region stack up internationally?
EDIT - Correction, fixed Bomber's number of games.
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I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, I looked at the same sample size you looked at in the OP. I assumed there was only one instance of a non-Korean beating a Korean in a Bo5 since you wrote:
Koreans vs. non-Koreans
Best of 5 7-1
I have to admit, I overlooked San beating ByuL as ByuL was in WCS America quite recently. I don't see how one Bo5 alters the overall conclusion though, that only Bomber has had the results in the past few months that shows he can be ranked above top 8 WCS KR players. Is San beating ByuL as impressive as Bomber beating Rain and Cure? I would say no.
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Taeja and Bomber are 1-2 in Bo5 against Koreans and 2-0 in Bo7 against Koreans. That leaves five matches. The problem with only using Bo5 is that Dreamhack and Red Bull don't have Bo5 matches except in the final. This pretty much only leaves IEM. If we go back to Season VIII then there's a bunch of matches of Polt beating the Koreans. You're selectively choosing the area where Koreans look the best, and then arbitrarily removing their worst results from that sample.
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EPT
