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In my previous blog, I attempted to do a rough career trajectory of Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang by outlining their total career earnings from tournaments and individual awards. I was not satisfied with how it awarded their ProLeague performances, since the financial rewards for gathering a lot of individual awards such as regular season MVP was not that significant in the grand scope of things, while winning seemingly meaningless tournaments such as Blizzard World Wide Invitational or IEF had quite sizable prize pools.
Of course, ProLeague performances were rewarded by other means (such as incentives, vacations, and salaries) from the teams themselves, but the specific details of how much these teams rewarded their players were never disclosed, and every team had noticeable discrepancies in their policies (ranging from extreme neglect to prioritization over almost all schedules).
Another problem was that every season of ProLeague had varying numbers of rounds, team participation, and format. Some operated under a best-of-seven format, some operated under a best-of-five format, some had two-versus-two games, some had All-Kill rounds placed in between, some were half a year long, some ran for the full course of a year, some had ACE-matches to decide the victor, while one season decided to abandon the ACE-matches during the regular season. With this much variation, it was impossible for me to devise a point system that would accurately quantify how players performed over the years.
So this is what I did, so I could visualize how Taek-Beng-LeeSsang (Bisu, Stork, Jaedong, and Flash) performed over the years in the ProLeague:
1) Chart the total number of wins (regular season and the play-off rounds) the player in question had for each of the ProLeague seasons, except for the hybrid-version of the ProLeague in 2012.
2) Chart the total number of wins whoever the best performing player excluding the player in question happened to have for each of the ProLeague seasons, except for the hybrid-version of the ProLeague in 2012.
3) Chart the total number of wins whoever the best performing player (obviously excluding the player in question) that played the same race as the player in question happened to have for each of the ProLeague seasons, except for the hybrid-version of the ProLeague in 2012.
4) Chart the total number of wins whoever the 10th best performing player happened to have for each of the ProLeague seasons, except for the hybrid-version of the ProLeague in 2012.
By following the graph, you could figure out for yourselves how Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang did compared to the best players of the era, the best players of their race, and the run-of-the-mill ace player of a team throughout their entire careers.
Stork
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/f0UCyWb.png)
Comment: Unlike the other three, Stork never had a single season where he was the best performing ProLeague player in the scene if you include the play-off stages. However, if you compare his performance against the best performing protoss player apart from himself, Stork does rather well for himself, having a total of a year or so as the best performing protoss player, and not being out-shined by any protoss player by a large margin except by Bisu for two years or so. He also rarely failed his team by performing worse than the 10th best player in the ProLeague, excluding his slump in 2006, and in Shinhan 2009/2010 ProLeague, when all protoss players except for Kal struggled to keep the pace with other ace players.
Bisu
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XnVvdFl.png)
Comment: Bisu is a non-factor in the ProLeague as a top player for the first several years of his career, but has two years worth of brilliant performances, including one year of being the absolute best performing player in the ProLeague. If you plot his career versus the other great protoss players of his time (represented by the blue line in the graph), you can see that he has trouble keeping pace, unlike Stork who was always one of the top protoss players in the ProLeague, however, Bisu is responsible for two seasons (both year long seasons) where the difference between Bisu and the second best performing protoss player is more massive than any gulf of difference between the top performing protoss player and the second best performing protoss player in history.
Jaedong
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8Hkq6PL.png)
Comment: The epitome of consistency, especially within the context of his race. Excluding his debut season, Jaedong never had a season where he wasn't the best performing zerg player in the ProLeague in terms of number of victories. He also was a top ten player for every single ProLeague season in his career, except for Shinhan 2008 ProLeague, where he had the worst ProLeague performance of his career. He was the absolute best performing player in the ProLeague for a combined period of roughly one and half years.
Flash
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CqNYVYW.png)
Comment: Was the absolute best performing player in the ProLeague for a record period of two years, something even ProLeague monsters such as NaDa, or Jaedong couldn't achieve. Flash started relatively slow in his debut year, but once he picked up the pace, he never looked back. Excluding his debut year of 2007, Flash was always the best performing terran player since 2008, and even at his absolute worst, finished as the third best player in the ProLeague.
Now here are some rankings:
A) Total number of years as the best performing ProLeague player
1. Flash: 2 years
2. Jaedong: 1.5 years
3. Bisu: 1 year
4. Stork: 0 years
B) Total number of years as a top five performing player in the ProLeague
1. Jaedong: 4.5 years
2. Flash: 4 years
3. Stork: 2.5 years
3. Bisu: 2.5 years
C) Total number of years as a top ten performing player in the ProLeague
1. Stork: 5.5 years
1. Jaedong: 5.5 years
3. Flash: 4 years
4. Bisu: 2 years
D) Total number of years as the best performing ProLeague player of their race
1. Jaedong: 5.5 years
2. Flash: 4 years
3. Bisu: 2 years
4. Stork: 1 year
E) How better they were than the other players during their absolute peak
1. Jaedong in 2006 R1: 138% of the number of wins of the next best performing player.
2. Flash in 2011/2012: 127% of the number of wins of the next best performing player.
3. Flash in 2008 R1: 121% of the number of wins of the next best performing player.
4. Flash in 2009/2010: 117% of the number of wins of the next best performing player.
F) How better they were than the other players of their race during their absolute peak
1. Jaedong in 2007 R1: 200% of the number of wins of the next best performing zerg player.
2. Bisu in 2008/2009: 157% of the number of wins of the next best performing protoss player.
3. Jaedong in 2008/2009: 150% of the number of wins of the next best performing zerg player.
4. Flash in 2010/2011: 143% of the number of wins of the next best performing terran player.
Afterthought: I used to be of the opinion that Bisu performed slightly better than Stork in individual leagues, while Stork performed slightly better than Bisu in the ProLeague. My previous assumptions were based on the logic that Stork outperformed Bisu for the vast majority of their careers in the ProLeague, while they took turns outperforming each other in the individual leagues, with Bisu being more clutch in the finals.
However, after some consideration, I think it is more reasonable to say that Bisu was the better of the two in the ProLeague as well, even if you take into account Stork's consistency, because Bisu's absolute peak performance far outstrips Stork's peak performance as one of the top ProLeague players, and Stork's longevity and overall excellence is not substantial enough to over-shadow Bisu's short bursts of magnificence.
Here's another way of looking at it. If you judge these players by calendar year's worth of performance (just deciding the cut-off point by date, not the seasonal schedule), and take away the inflation issue by rating players by how much they won compared to the best performing player in terms of percentage, you get the graph below.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/oicr1VD.png)
It is almost scary how one of Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang has been the best performing ProLeague player of the year ever since 2006, except for in 2007, when Anytime edged out Stork by the slightest of margins. In my opinion, this is a slightly more flawed representation of the performances of these players, because unlike judging the performances by each season, judging performance by year does not take into account the differences in format between the seasons. However, this method, assuming each year of the ProLeague is worth the same (I personally don't think so), provides a better picture of how players performed over the years. This graph is why I used to think Stork was the superior ProLeague player than Bisu, but obviously I think it is incorrect to presume equal value for each year, because the ProLeague was the competition that changed the most throughout the years out of any professional Brood War competition. While it does suck for Stork that his peak year did not coincide with massive inflation of available ProLeague schedule, I also don't think it is fair to rate it in a similar light to Bisu's insane performances.
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Thank you for the tasty numbers. Flash chart has a mislabeling. Pretty interesting read though 
KTF and SKT both had superb lineups that could give Flash / Bisu a break when they needed one. Khan was pretty good, and Oz seemed a little worse. I think some of the team factors are really important.
You mentioned rewards that were mostly time off or monetary, but there's an unknowable element of team dynamic that motivates players, how well they get along with their teammates, how cohesive they are toward a shared goal. It's hard to say whether being on Oz was a hindrance to Jaedong compared to Bisu's SKT, or an incentive, because more weight was on his shoulders to perform every time. I'm sure there is some balance that was better struck on KTF than on SKT.
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On July 23 2017 23:18 Chef wrote:Thank you for the tasty numbers. Flash chart has a mislabeling. Pretty interesting read though KTF and SKT both had superb lineups that could give Flash / Bisu a break when they needed one. Khan was pretty good, and Oz seemed a little worse. I think some of the team factors are really important. You mentioned rewards that were mostly time off or monetary, but there's an unknowable element of team dynamic that motivates players, how well they get along with their teammates, how cohesive they are toward a shared goal. It's hard to say whether being on Oz was a hindrance to Jaedong compared to Bisu's SKT, or an incentive, because more weight was on his shoulders to perform every time. I'm sure there is some balance that was better struck on KTF than on SKT.
With Flash, it is difficult to say how much his team hindered, or aided his ProLeague performance, because he was on the same team all along. With Jaedong, it is true that the poor infrastructure of Team 8 hurt his performance in late 2011, and in 2012, but it can be argued that Jaedong was on a downward spiral anyways, since both his individual league and ProLeague results were already on a gradual decline compared to his peak years, even before Hwaseung Oz was dissolved.
With Bisu, however, it is almost without a doubt that the SK Telecom T1 system helped his ProLeague performance. Whether the team helped him in terms of individual league results, is another matter entirely.
Bisu's record while with MBC Game HERO (2005 ~ 2007): 17 - 16 (51.52%)
Sea's record while with MBC Game HERO (2005 ~ 2007): 50 - 20 (71.43%)
PuSan's record while with MBC Game HERO (2005 ~ 2007): 43 - 22 (66.15%)
+ Show Spoiler +In case you think it is unfair to include the first two years of Bisu's career due to his lack of experience as a player, Bisu has a 10-10 record in 2007, when he was regarded as either the best, or second best protoss in the world, PuSan, a player who had his best days behind him, was out performing him with a record of 19-9, and Sea was carrying the team in 2007 with a record of 30-10
During this period, Bisu wins two MSL championships, and finishes second in one. That is three-quarters of all the finals he reached in his entire career. So it's not as if he had zero development as an elite player during this period of time.
Bisu's record while with SK Telecom T1 (2008 ~ 2012): 175 - 70 (71.43%)
FanTaSy's record while with SK Telecom T1 (2008 ~ 2012): 142 - 88 (61.74%)
BeSt's record while with SK Telecom T1 (2008 ~ 2012): 107 - 78 (57.84%)
Bisu transforms from being not even the best protoss player for his team in the ProLeague, to the absolute true ace of his team. In an odd twist of fate, his individual league results take a turn for the worse during this period, because he only reaches one finals, and after his defeat against Iris in 2009, he doesn't reach the round of eight even once. So the improvement in results is not universal.
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Now as for a characteristics of each teams, this is almost entirely purely speculative on my part, but this is what I feel like happened with each teams with regard to their players.
SK Telecom T1: Incredibly generous with financial rewards, and professional environment with top notch practice partners and coaches. However, no player stands above the team in terms of importance, and due to the numerous players who share the top spot during practice (I've heard rumours of both Bisu and FanTaSy being the best during practice, with By.Sun joining the fray later on) and SK Telcom T1 not being entirely dependent on one single superstar player, there are no preferential treatments even for players like Bisu.
STX SouL: Good funding, and fairly good infrastructure. The team was said to have lacked good team chemistry.
WeMade Fox: Mediocre funding, and mediocre infrastructure. The relatively lax environment it was rumoured to have may have been detrimental to its players.
MBC Game HERO: Mediocre funding, and mediocre infrastructure. Awarded players for winning in the ProLeague, but constantly told them that winning the ProLeague was not their goal, because they didn't want to raise their salaries too much. The team had good chemistry between the players, but lacked a professional environment that allowed growth for the players.
CJ Entus: Good funding, and good infrastructure. Ever since the beginning, this team was said to be more strict than the others, and was responsible for the growth of numerous players throughout the years.
Samsung Khan: Mediocre funding, and relatively lax atmosphere. Did not have any incentives for winning the ProLeague, and was not as strict as some of the top level teams.
Hwaseung Oz: Mediocre funding, but was famous for having unforgiving practice schedule. Under these extreme circumstances, numerous players such as Anytime or ForGG would have a meteoric rise to success, but would often be victim to burn-out. Jaedong was probably the only player in the history of his team to truly relish the intense training schedule and would in return get all the attention and special treatment from his team.
However, while the team was willing to support Jaedong for almost anything except paying for his actual market value, the team lacked good practice partners. Hwaseung Oz was especially famous for having a weak protoss line-up, and there's a famous anecdote of his team thinking that Central Plains (one of the most protoss favoured maps in recent history) was a zerg favoured map because Jaedong would win all his games, until Jaedong had a practice session against JangBi on the map, during which he proceeded to get annihilated.
Woongjin Stars: Good funding, and fairly good infrastructure. Had a good partnership with KT Rolster, which resulted in Woonjin Stars realizing that they had a terrible terran line-up (which is why Light joined the team).
HITE Sparkyz: Mediocre funding, and terrible atmosphere. The team had no direction, and the team was infected by Justin, who was the most heinous out of all the match-fixing players. There would be leaked replays, constant lure of match-fixing, and almost zero discipline for the players which resulted in catastrophe in almost all regards.
Estro: Terrible funding, and widely regarded as the worst professional team to be in apart from Air Force ACE.
KT Rolster: Second best team in terms of financial support. Had close ties with Woongjin Stars which lead to KT Rolster realizing that they had a terrible zerg line-up (which lead to the transfer of Action). Flash was said to have been by far the best player on the team since his first day of practice session with the team, and was rumoured to get more of a preferential treatment from the coaches and the managers.
Air Force ACE: The team was not meant to succeed because you cannot be both an exemplary member of the air force, and be a top tier professional gamer at the same time.
So this is the team dynamic aspect of each of these teams in my personal opinion. I am almost certain that I have missed out on a lot of detail, or got some of the facts totally wrong altogether, but I think in extreme cases like Estro versus SK Telecom T1, there's almost nothing beneficial about being on Estro instead of a team like SK Telecom T1, except for the added incentive of wanting to get the hell out of Estro by becoming good enough. Generally speaking, having a deeper player pool is beneficial in almost all aspects if managed well (superior quality of practice, less of a reason to get complacent, and the luxury of having the option to concentrate on a certain match-ups/map due to the extra flexibility of the whole line-up), but it has to be said that there would be a greater possibility of a clash of egos (BoGus and Last were the best players on STX SouL during practice during the end of professional Brood War, but they never helped each other improve that much because they didn't like each other) if the hierarchy of players isn't as crystal clear as was the case with Hwaseung Oz or KT Rolster, where one player was basically treated like a god.
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Thanks for compiling all this information and I also enjoyed your analysis on what the team atmospheres were rumored to be like. I feel like I remember Bisu complaining at some point that SKT placed so much emphasis on Proleague that it was detrimental to his individual league practice (maybe they discouraged his teammates from helping him prepare for indv. leagues instead of proleague matches?)
It's always incredible how Jaedong thrived on the intense schedule of Oz, wish team 8 had had better infrastructure and setup, they had a sick lineup
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Great analysis. One thing I might change is since the graphs make it a little hard to draw much of a conclusion since the number of games varied so much over the years, normalizing all numbers of victories as percentages of the 10th best player or something similar would make exemplary and lackluster performances more obvious, or perhaps dividing by the mean number of victories of the top ten players etc.
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On July 24 2017 05:47 DarkNetHunter wrote:
Thanks for compiling all this information and I also enjoyed your analysis on what the team atmospheres were rumored to be like. I feel like I remember Bisu complaining at some point that SKT placed so much emphasis on Proleague that it was detrimental to his individual league practice (maybe they discouraged his teammates from helping him prepare for indv. leagues instead of proleague matches?)
It's always incredible how Jaedong thrived on the intense schedule of Oz, wish team 8 had had better infrastructure and setup, they had a sick lineup
Almost every player in existence has complained that they didn't have enough time to practice for individual leagues as they would like due to their ProLeague obligations. I've heard it from almost all aces of various teams such as Stork, ZerO, and FanTaSy. It was a bigger issue with Bisu because he was more popular than the other players, and there was huge uproar in the communities saying that SK Telecom T1 was giving preferential treatment to FanTaSy, when the truth, in my opinion, was closer to FanTaSy, by the virtue of being probably the hardest working player in the scene at the time, was practicing insane number of hours for both the individual leagues and the ProLeague.
I personally believe that it basically came down to whether teams made the effort of making the little gestures that might appease these players. Due to the irreplaceable nature of Jaedong, or Flash had for their teams, I do believe that it was easier to handle the clashes between egos, because the order of hierachy was accepted by almost all parties in their cases. Hery, the terran coach for KT Rolster, for example, was heavily criticized by the Korean community for being more of a personal coach for Flash, rather than helping out the development of other terran players, so I think we can say that KT Rolster did what they could to keep Flash happy. I also think Hwaseung Oz did what they could to keep Jaedong happy, although I can't think of any specific anecdotes at the moment.
I think GoRush put it the most aptly. He said that when he was the ace player of Greatest One (who later became CJ Entus) he had absolute authority over all the players as a senior player. He also said that the team did not discourage the players from trying to make their own fate if they made it far into the individual leagues. So when he realized the genius of IPXZerg (who would later change his alias to sAviOr), even before he made much of a name for himself, he would order him to play non-stop against Iris (another rookie player on the team at the time), and watched how their games would unfold. GoRush himself said that he gained a lot of help from these two players when he was able to take down NaDa for his first, and only MSL championship.
When he transfered to SK Telecom T1, he was still one of the best zerg players around, but said his growth as a player was hindered. He said that in SK Telecom T1, it was every man for himself, and it wouldn't be the lack of absolute practice load that he found unsatisfactory, it was the manner in which it was done. The hierachy wasn't as clear cut in SK Telecom T1, and he couldn't order around players like BoxeR, or iloveoov to practice in the meticulous manner he managed to carry out in his previous team. He also complained that the team had no preferential treatment for the verteran players, and that he found it difficult to order around his B-teamers like he used to on Greatest One (making B-teamers stay for practice during vacation time if he wanted surplus practice for an upcoming important match, for example).
So what I think was the case for players in SK Telecom T1 was that their individual practice wasn't actually that minimal, but SK Telecom T1 as a team didn't go out of their way to fully support their players. Meaning there was no tradition of taking that extra-step from the staff or the players to help their star player shine in individual leagues. However, GoRush did say that the infrastructure SK Telecom T1 had in other regards was unmatched.
Team 8 was a poorly structured team with almost minimal staff, and zero B-teamers. It was just a collection of players with no cohesion, playing under the constant fear that their team would dissolve if they didn't find a sponsor. Multiple players have gone on the record that it was a terrible environment to train under.
There is literally no team out there who prioritized individual league practice over ProLeague practice. However, players would find ways of maximizing their preparation for individual leagues by reducing their break-time, finding partners to practice against whether it was through personal connections, ordering around B-teamers, or special partnerships between teams (such as the one KT Rolster provided for Flash by arranging practice sessions with Woonjin Stars whenever Flash matched up against Jaedong in the finals), and getting more attention and care from the staff members.
I think in the case of Jaedong, he was rumoured to almost never take prolonged breaks, and practicing inhuman number of hours, and the strict scheduling of Hwaseung Oz was able to match his insatiable appetite. I don't think he had such a high quality of practice, but his team was able to provide the sufficient hours. When Team 8 wasn't able to provide the necessary environment, Jaedong's performances declined more rapidly.
With Flash, I think KT Rolster tried their best to keep Flash content with some preferential treatment from the staff members (other KT Rolster terran players voiced their dislike of the terran-coach Hery, while Flash said multiple times that Hery was good to him), and arranging good quality of practice partners such as Soulkey and ZerO from Woongjin Stars, when his own zerg teammates were not up to the task of preparing him against Jaedong.
With Bisu, players on MBC Game HERO said that his actual skill level was increased during his stay at SK Telecom T1, saying he was not that spectacular of a player while on MBC Game HERO. Bisu's rebirth as a superstar player in the ProLeague would make sense of that comment, but his decline in individual league performance suggests that he was not able adjust to the team philosophy of SK Telecom T1, where no player was bigger than the team, while players such as FanTaSy, who was said to have shared the top spot with Bisu during practice sessions, was able to reach multiple finals because of his inhuman practice hours despite SK Telecom T1's lack of preferential treatment towards players with good individual league results, replacing Jaedong as the hardest worker in the industry after Jaedong started to reduce his practice hours circa 2008 ~ 2009.
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On July 24 2017 06:49 Ancestral wrote:
Great analysis. One thing I might change is since the graphs make it a little hard to draw much of a conclusion since the number of games varied so much over the years, normalizing all numbers of victories as percentages of the 10th best player or something similar would make exemplary and lackluster performances more obvious, or perhaps dividing by the mean number of victories of the top ten players etc.
That was somewhat deliberate on my part. Judging the ProLeague results proves to be the most difficult task thus far, because the seasons were so varied in format.
It is not like the individual leagues where you can get away with counting the trophies, because since 2005 (the year Stork and Bisu made their debut appearances in the ProLeague), the only times the best performing player in terms of overall number of victories during the regular season and the play-off stages actually was rewarded with the ProLeague championship title was Anytime in 2007, and Flash in 2010.
It is also not like you can just add up all the ProLeague victories throughout the years because the actual number of games would fluctuate so much, that peaking at the seasons that had the most packed schedule would be more important than being a consistent performer over many years. If you add up all the victories from the absolute best players in the ProLeague from 2005 to 2007, it would amount to 69 victories (not counting the Grand Finals, only regular season games and play-off stages for individual rounds). Bisu won 66 games in a single season that lasted about one year. It seems rather unfair that you can be the best player for three consecutive years, but have it all turned to waste by one or two years of top tier performance in seasons where you can All Kill fodder teams like Air Force ACE multiple times.
At the same time, it is unfair to undermine the players who made the most out of those insane ProLeague schedule by pretending all those extra games didn't exist. That would like me saying Flash only won two individual leagues in 2010 (instead of the four he actually won), because BoxeR also went to three consecutive OGN StarLeauge in 2001, and MSL didn't exist back in 2001, so only Flash's performance in the OGN StarLeague should be considered to make things fair. It's true that Bisu had more opportunities to showcase his dominance in the ProLeague during his two years as a top two ProLeague player in the scene, but it is also true that there's no way of knowing how these players would have done if given the same opportunities during their peak years. Would BoxeR have won 70 ProLeague matches if there was a ProLeague with the exact same format as Shinhan 2010/2011 ProLeague in 2001? It's a total shot in the dark.
The final graph I made, where I just took the best performing players by calendar year, and compared Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang to the best performing players in the ProLeague of each year, should be more to your liking. However, I think it is somewhat flawed to ignore the huge changes the scene has had. The first four graphs are hard to draw any conclusions from because the nature of their performances are hard to rate fairly.
With that being said, here's the graph you desired. Year long seasons are counted twice because they lasted twice as long.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BvcqvOt.png)
This is the reason why I initially believed Stork to be the superior ProLeague player when compared with Bisu, however, I don't think it is entirely fair to weigh all the various seasons of the ProLeague equally by the duration of its schedule. I think the answer lies somewhere in between. It would be wrong to ignore all the past seasons of the ProLeague by not acknowledging great performances within its set boundaries, but it would also be wrong to pretend they were great performances in a different set of boundaries of other seasons with much more scheduling.
We will simply never know how Jaedong of late 2006 (when he had a record of 11-1) would perform given the chance to play more than twelve games. Would he maintain his 92% win rate? What if he had played twenty five games within that same half a year period like Flash did in early 2008? What's more impressive? A record of 11-1? Or a record of 17-8? If you only care about overall win rates, what do we do with all these plethora of players with perfect records for a single season (1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, 5-0, or even 7-0)?
What if Bisu had only played thirty three games like Jaedong did for the imaginary ProLeague of 2006/2007 (a year long ProLeague that adds together SKY 2006 ProLeague R2, and Shinhan 2007 ProLeague R1), should we assume that he would have won only 27 games just like Jaedong did during that same period, assuming he maintained his 82% win rate?
It's an endless debate with no answer. Every player had to play under different circumstances, however, it's also wrong to artificially equalize these circumstances by imagining things would have turn out one way or the other, when the answer is, we simply do not know.
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Very interesting read, thanks for writing it and for all the other information in this thread. It's easy for me to forget how different Broodwar was under the professional team structure, and this definitely made me nostalgic.
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?36905 Posts
It's spelled Taek-Bang not Taek-Beng ^^
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On July 24 2017 23:23 Seeker wrote:
It's spelled Taek-Bang not Taek-Beng ^^
See if you follow my logic here:
1) 택 is derived from 택용 (Bisu's name)
2) 뱅 is derived from 뱅구 (Stork's nickname)
3) 리쌍 is derived from the fact that Jaedong and Flash both have the same surnames
4) The best way to Anglicise 뱅구 would be Beng-Gu, because Bang-Gu is the Anglicisation of the Korean word, 방구
5) The best way to Anglicise 택뱅리쌍, therefore, would be Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang
Just because somebody Anglicised the phrase wrong from the start, doesn't mean I have to adhere to it. It makes me cringe every time some dude says 택방리쌍 when they're trying to pronounce Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang.
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On July 24 2017 15:29 nbaker wrote:
Very interesting read, thanks for writing it and for all the other information in this thread. It's easy for me to forget how different Broodwar was under the professional team structure, and this definitely made me nostalgic.
I think the beauty of BW was there were few major leagues. While I enjoy playing it and watching it more than SCII, I even enjoyed following it more.
"Basketball fans" watch the NBA. They don't have to worry about a million different leagues. Broodwar was structured like a real sport.
On July 24 2017 23:44 Letmelose wrote:See if you follow my logic here: 1) 택 is derived from 택용 (Bisu's name) 2) 뱅 is derived from 뱅구 (Stork's nickname) 3) 리쌍 is derived from the fact that Jaedong and Flash both have the same surnames 4) The best way to Anglicise 뱅구 would be Beng-Gu, because Bang-Gu is the Anglicisation of the Korean word, 방구 5) The best way to Anglicise 택뱅리쌍, therefore, would be Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang Just because somebody Anglicised the phrase wrong from the start, doesn't mean I have to adhere to it. It makes me cringe every time some dude says 택방리쌍 when they're trying to pronounce Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang.
First, thanks for the graph. There's obviously the risk of information overload, but I think it's always good to have a few different analyses to cover both variation and central tendency in data representation.
Second, I'd go with "Baeng," since that's the "accepted" Romanization LOL. "Bang" the English word would actually be correct, but people assume it's Romanized Korean and say 방. It's also interesting Koreans insist on "Lee" when "Ee" would be more correct (or even I, but that's confusing too). And I know the name is from Chinese "Lee" and 리 is even an alternate spelling, but it's not used really. I guess the only hope is to learn every language on Earth.
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On July 25 2017 00:56 Ancestral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2017 15:29 nbaker wrote:
Very interesting read, thanks for writing it and for all the other information in this thread. It's easy for me to forget how different Broodwar was under the professional team structure, and this definitely made me nostalgic. I think the beauty of BW was there were few major leagues. While I enjoy playing it and watching it more than SCII, I even enjoyed following it more. "Basketball fans" watch the NBA. They don't have to worry about a million different leagues. Broodwar was structured like a real sport. Show nested quote +On July 24 2017 23:44 Letmelose wrote:On July 24 2017 23:23 Seeker wrote:
It's spelled Taek-Bang not Taek-Beng ^^ See if you follow my logic here: 1) 택 is derived from 택용 (Bisu's name) 2) 뱅 is derived from 뱅구 (Stork's nickname) 3) 리쌍 is derived from the fact that Jaedong and Flash both have the same surnames 4) The best way to Anglicise 뱅구 would be Beng-Gu, because Bang-Gu is the Anglicisation of the Korean word, 방구 5) The best way to Anglicise 택뱅리쌍, therefore, would be Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang Just because somebody Anglicised the phrase wrong from the start, doesn't mean I have to adhere to it. It makes me cringe every time some dude says 택방리쌍 when they're trying to pronounce Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang. First, thanks for the graph. There's obviously the risk of information overload, but I think it's always good to have a few different analyses to cover both variation and central tendency in data representation. Second, I'd go with "Baeng," since that's the "accepted" Romanization LOL. "Bang" the English word would actually be correct, but people assume it's Romanized Korean and say 방. It's also interesting Koreans insist on "Lee" when "Ee" would be more correct (or even I, but that's confusing too). And I know the name is from Chinese "Lee" and 리 is even an alternate spelling, but it's not used really. I guess the only hope is to learn every language on Earth.
Notice Koreans say 택뱅리쌍, not 택뱅이쌍. LeeSsang is the also the name of a well known Korean hip hop duo, which is part of the reason why Koreans went with the nickname. So there's no need to go overboard with the distinction between Lee and Ee here.
Baeng would be the official Romanization of 뱅, but the whole point of Anglicisation is to make sure people (who are not familiar with the Korean language) don't butcher the original pronounciation of the word. I personally believe Beng would be more straightforward to show how 뱅 is pronounced, which is why I said it would be the best way to do it. Many people would ponder for a second, or overthink things the moment they see Baeng.
Taek-Bang-LeeSsang is literally asking people to butcher the pronounciation of the phrase 택뱅리쌍. Taek-Baeng-LeeSsang would be great if people were more familiar with the Romanization of Korean phrases, but I would guess that isn't the case. Taek-Beng-LeeSsang is the Anglicisation of the original phrase I went with because I believe this iteration would lead to the least confusion amongst people who don't know how to speak Korean. I would be content with Taek-Baeng-LeeSsang as well, assuming people don't find a way to butcher that as well. Anything really, just to stop hearing people say "Taek Bang(ed) LeeSsang", I have enough disturbing visuals in my head as it is.
Finally, there's really no way to compare ProLeague results across the years, but I hoped this graph would help tracing the ProLeague performances of Taek-Beng-LeeSsang a little easier.
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Japan11285 Posts
I can read hangul but I've never paid much attention when seeing Korean TBLS and as a result (probably due to the romanization I see so often) I've always thought Bang was 방 and not 뱅 (*-_-) Same thing with mokbang which I always thought and pronounced as 목 instead of 먹방 (btw thanks lemmata!) This is why I absolutely hate romanized hangul.
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On July 26 2017 20:39 c3rberUs wrote:
I can read hangul but I've never paid much attention when seeing Korean TBLS and as a result (probably due to the romanization I see so often) I've always thought Bang was 방 and not 뱅 (*-_-) Same thing with mokbang which I always thought and pronounced as 목 instead of 먹방 (btw thanks lemmata!) This is why I absolutely hate romanized hangul.
We're a little off-topic, but yeah. There's no real way to avoid the ambiguities except to speak English and Korean well...
Do we write everything phonetically so it's "muck-bong?" Or follow the rules always so it's "meokbang?" Mukbang is actually a mix between the two, and I don't think I've seen mokbang but there's another option.
Taek-beng isn't consistent either, since the vowel is the same in both. Either Tek-Beng, or Taek-Baeng, would be. And I agree Taek-Bang is especially bad.
There's also the simple fact that there are different sounds in the two languages. Hence why "game" becomes "게임." To Korean speakers, the "a" in "game" is really two vowels, but English speakers don't think of it that way. When I was first learning I wondered why they didn't just do it 갬.
Oh well, if not for these issues, there'd be no reason for language teachers, translators, and so on!
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I can't have this blog dedicated to the topic of exactly how people should pronounce 택뱅리쌍, and which Anglicised version should be used for it to create the least confusion.
If we divide a full season of professional Brood War into four parts, this is the expected components of a full season (lasting a full calendar year) of professional Brood War we came to be familiar with.
1) OGN StarLeague: Three per season
2) MSL: Three per season
3) ProLeague: Year long season with 4 rounds of best-of-five format with an ACE-match, and one round of Winners League
4) Off-Season: WCG Korea
Now, before Shinhan 2008/2009 ProLeague, there was no Winners League, and the overall scale of the ProLeague schedule was about half the scale (or even less) of what we came to be familiar with. In the 2010/2011 season, due to the match-fixing scandal and heavy law suits from Blizzard, the number of individual leagues took a severe hit.
So we actually only had two full years of full scheduling in terms of the ProLeague and the individual leagues, which also happened to have a full off-season schedule with WCG Korea taking place. This is the only period in history where the KeSPA regulated tournaments were in full swing (with the off-season being relatively busy too with WCG still going on at the time).
During this two years of absolutely insane schedule, where you played more than a hundred ProLeague games if you were capable enough, competed in twelve separate major individual leagues, and on top of that compete for the right to represent the nation in the off-season, we can try to see if there are any cross-overs between different platforms of competitions.
OGN StarLeague
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PBQ6qhd.png)
1. Flash
2. Jaedong
3. Stork
4. FanTaSy
5. EffOrt
MSL
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/oDWzoqc.png)
1. Flash
2. Jaedong
3. Calm
4. Bisu
5. JangBi
ProLeague
1. Flash: 115-37 (75.7%)
2. Jaedong: 115-47 (71.0%)
3. Leta: 92-50 (64.8%)
4. Bisu: 85-38 (69.1%)
5. Light: 85-49 (63.4%)
WCG Korea
1. Jaedong (3rd, 1st)
2. Bisu (1st, quarter-finals)
3. Flash (quarter-finals, 2nd)
4. Stork (2nd, round of 16)
5. Kal (Round of 16, 3rd)
There's only two players who produced excellent results in all four platforms of competition, namely, LeeSsang. Bisu would have joined their rank if he was more consistent in the OGN StarLeagues, but alas, he was never destined to do so. FanTaSy starts to make his mark in the OGN StarLeague, but his true peak coincided when the individual leagues were struggling to find a sponsor.
During his peak performance, FanTaSy was able to reach three finals, out of five major individual leagues (that took place across a time span of roughly two years, same as the period I looked into above), instead of the twelve that could have taken place if sponsors were easier to find. Although he only won one title, FanTaSy earned the most out of any professional gamer purely from the major individual leagues during this period.
In this era, people who did extremely well in one platform of competition tended to be at least somewhat a threat in other competitions simply due to the massive amount of sample size available in this two year time frame. For example, even the biggest outliers such as Leta, who is often perceived to be an utter failure in individual leagues, managed to reach the quarter-finals of both the OGN StarLeague, and the MSL. JangBi, who has the poorest ProLeague record out of the names above, still has a somewhat reasonable record of 60-44 (57.7%) during this period.
This specific era is the only time in history where the top players of each platform of competition had decent overlap. So while it is somewhat reasonable to think a top player in the individual league is at least a half decent ProLeague player for his team during this particular time frame, it is simply not true for the other eras. In the same vein, just because there was a top performing ProLeague player in another time frame, that does not mean he was a elite tier player elsewhere. There is a multitude of examples that showcase this theory, because in any other time frame, the sample size for the main platforms of competition simply isn't large enough. Some lack a good sample size of ProLeague schedule, while other eras lack a healthy number of individual leagues.
SKY ProLeague 2004 (R1, R2, R3, Grand Finals)
ClouD has best overall record with 12-2 (85.7%), and is blessed with many individual ProLeague awards for his services to his team. With the help of his superlative adventures as the "Giant Killer" of the ProLeague, Hanbit Stars wins the 2006 ProLeague Grand Finals.
However, ClouD fails to qualify for all of the OGN StarLeagues and MSLs that take place during this time frame.
SKY ProLeague 2006 (R1, R2, Grand Finals)
Jaedong has the best overall record with 17-6 (73.9%), and he qualifies for one individual league during this time, dropping out of the round of 16 almost immediately.
Shinhan ProLeague 2007 (R1, R2, Grand Finals)
Anytime leads his team to their first, and only ProLeague triumph in history, with an unmatched record of 34-14 (70.8%) and during this time frame, Anytime is a total non-factor in the individual leagues having a single round of 16 appearance during this period.
Shinhan ProLeague 2010/2011
Bisu overshadows everyone with his otherwordly record of 66-15 (81.5%), but fails to progress past the round of 16 in any of the individual leagues he qualifies for.
There are less cases of the best performing player in the individual leagues being a total flop in the ProLeague, but it still exists.
SKY ProLeague 2005 (R1, R2, Grand Finals)
sAviOr makes his presence known in the MSL with consecutive finals appearances, and as only player to have reached multiple finals in the individual leagues while this season of ProLeague was going on, his record in the ProLeague was a mediocre 6-7 (46.2%), a record worse than that of OversKy who had a record of 8-5 (61.5%).
SKY ProLeague 2007 (R1, R2, Grand Finals)
Bisu makes himself a household name with fantastic performances in the MSL, as well as respectable performances in the OGN StarLeague. However, still ProLeague result is 10-10 (50%), being out performed by people such as cHalRengE who had a record of 14-13 (51.9%).
There has never been another time in history where the top two players in the individual leagues also happened to be the top performing players in the ProLeague. This is partly due to the monstrous abilities of the LeeSsang duo, but also partly due to the massive scheduling that allowed them to showcase how much further ahead they were compared to everyone else during that time frame. Some eras had a miniscule ProLeague schedule where each players only played a dozen or so games, while some eras had a considerable lack of individual leagues compared to the massive ProLeague schedule.
In short, the era that we associate with modern day professional Brood War (plethora of individual leagues filling up the calendar year, with thousands of ProLeague games broadcasted on television) actually only lasted for about two years, during which the two of the most successful players of the time got insane statistics and achievements. Flash, for example, has won 43% of his total career victories during this two year window. The other eras of professional Brood War cannot be seen in a similar light, where the ratio of individual leagues and ProLeague matches have this configuration. They must be left alone to be judged separately.
In late 2004/early 2005, NaDa was competiting in five separate tournaments, he was in the finals of OGN StarLeague, in the finals of MSL, in the semi-finals of KT-KTF Premier League, in the finals of the ProLeague Grand Finals, as well as being in the finals of MBC Game Team League. Which do you think he prepared the hardest for?
A) OGN StarLeague 1st prize: ₩20,000,000
B) MSL 1st place: ₩25,000,000
C) KT-KTF Premier League 1st place: ₩36,400,000 (varies according to your overall record)
D) ProLeague Grand Finals: ₩30,000,000 for the winning team, ₩2,000,000 for the MVP of the Grand Finals.
E) MBC Game Team League: ₩20,000,000 (not sure) for the winning team
NaDa was finished ended winning IOPS OGN StarLeague, finished runner-up in YATGK MSL, 3rd in KT-KTF Premier League, and lead his team to a 2nd place finish in the MBC Movies Team League as the player with the most number of wins under its unique (at the time) All-Kill format. I don't NaDa was too torn up having only 9 wins compared to the 12 ClouD had over the course of the 2004 ProLeague season. He was helping his team by splitting time between one-versus-one and two-versus-two (which was how ProLeague operated until 2008), and was doing fine in both.
Okay. This should be enough to smother all that crap we were discussing previously.
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If I chart the ProLeague performances and the individual league performances of Taek-Beng-LeeSsang, it should look something like this, with the following guidelines applied for all players:
1) ProLeague seasons decide the cut-off points, for example, 2006 means all the year long ProLeague schedule dedicated to it (SKY 2006 ProLeague R1, SKY 2006 ProLeague R2, SKY 2006 ProLeague Grand Finals), even if SKY 2006 ProLeague Grand Finals actually took place in early 2007, it counts as 2006 on my graph.
2) All individual leagues that has its finals taking place before the opening day of the next schedule of the ProLeague will count as individual leagues belonging to that year. For example, GomTV MSL S1 counts as an individual league that took place in the 2006 season, even though the finals took place in early 2007, because it took place before the opening day of Shinhan 2007 ProLeague R1.
3) I will not apply my own personal criteria of grading the individual league performances, but rather depend on the prize money gathered from those individual leagues. Prize money gathered from international tournaments, and invitational tournaments will not be included. Individual league performance will be represented as the percentage of the total prize money won from "major" individual leagues (namely, OGN StarLeague and the MSL) by the best performing player that season.
4) ProLeague performance will be represented as the percentage of the total number of games (regular season and the play-off season) won by the best performing player in that particular ProLeague season.
5) Half-year long schedules will be counted as such, while year long seasons will be counted twice for its longer duration.
6) The hybrid season will not be counted. Tving OGN StarLeague will be counted as an individual league from 2011/2012 (otherwise the final era of pure Brood War will have zero individual leagues), despite having its finals played out in the hybrid era, the hybrid era's lack of Brood War games makes it next to worthless for inspection.
Stork
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/agbmPBJ.png)
Comment: Stork was only a force in both the individual leagues and the ProLeague for one season in 2007, where he was within 75% of the best performing players on both platforms of competition. He had good ProLeague performances in the other seasons too, but was never able to complement that with an exceptional individual league performance apart from his absolute peak in 2007.
Bisu
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3LTxypJ.png)
Comment: Bisu's career can be divided into three eras. The first era is his most well remembered years of dominating the MSL. The second era is Bisu's best balanced performance in 2008/2009, when Bisu was doing well in both the individual leagues and the ProLeague. The last years of Bisu's professional career has him doing well mainly in the ProLeague.
Jaedong
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gGSImay.png)
Comment: Jaedong's career trajectory is quite easy to follow, he came to prominence with his monstrous ProLeague results, then he followed that up with good individual league results also. Jaedong started to decline as Flash started to overthrow him from his perch, but he managed to stay relevant as an absolute top tier player in a ProLeague setting for a little longer.
Flash
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3s3N6Yz.png)
Comment: Excluding his debut season, Flash was a total wrecking ball in the ProLeague, even more so than Jaedong, and Flash was able to complement that with approximately two years of top tier individual league performances.
It is literally insane how Taek-Beng-LeeSsang simply dominated more than six years of professional Brood War. Starting from the 2006 season, the only players who stole away the limelight from these players was sAviOr's individual league performance in 2006, Anytime's ProLeague performance in 2007, ForGG for that brief half-a-year period in 2008 in the individual leagues, and finally FanTaSy and JangBi in the individual leagues after 2011. Not only that, at least one member of Taek-Beng-LeeSsang represented Korea in WCG ever since 2007.
Even the bonjwa lineage of BoxeR, NaDa, illoveoov, and sAviOr struggles to boast such a complete and utter domination of all competitions across all platforms of competition during their primes. In a similar time frame between 2001 and 2006, Nal_rA out performed the all the bonjwas in the individual leagues for a short period of time after the incarnation of the ProLeague (mid 2003 to early 2004 before the start of the 2004 season of the ProLeague), ClouD outperformed all the bonjwas in the 2004 season of the ProLeague, Midas outperformed all the bonjwas in the 2005 season of the ProLeague (NaDa had the same number of victories, but Midas had the better win rate), and Jaedong outperformed all the bonjwas in the 2006 season of the ProLeague (sAviOr had a better win rate, but Jaedong won more games). Further more, none of the bonjwas managed to represent Korea in WCG tournaments from 2003 to 2005.
There has never been a case of one player being the absolute best in both the individual leagues and the ProLeague for an extended period of time, except for Jaedong in 2008/2009, and Flash in 2009/2010. sAviOr came the closest to it in 2006, if he only won one more ProLeague match, he would have been the clear cut best player across all platforms.
Of course, the ProLeague era excludes some of the greatest performances in history, such as NaDa's winning the grand slam, winning all three major individual leagues that were broadcasted on television at the time. It also excludes BoxeR when he reached three consecutive OGN StarLeagues in a row, as well as winning WCG 2001 (the tournament that gave the most number of KeSPA ranking points, and awarded the most prize money) undefeated in both the qualifying stages and the main stage versus non-Koreans and Korean representatives. It would have been interesting to see how these legends would have done in a ProLeague setting while they were unstoppable.
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Japan11285 Posts
NaDa's grand slam was winning the OGN Starleague, the MBCGame StarCraft League and the GameTV Starleague in the same season correct?
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On July 29 2017 00:08 c3rberUs wrote:
NaDa's grand slam was winning the OGN Starleague, the MBCGame StarCraft League and the GameTV Starleague in the same season correct?
That would be correct. NaDa's rise to prominence came when multiple television stations such as Ongamenet, Gembc (later changed their name to MBC Game), GhemTV, and iTV were hosting their own tournaments. Most people agreed Ongamenet's StarLeague, Gembc's KPGA Tournaments, and GhemTV's StarLeague were the "three" major tournaments.
I think this phenomena happened because Gembc actually had superior ratings than Ongamenet during 2002 (as showcased by figures released in August 2002 by Total National Multimedia Statistics Korea), due to being available in both cable network television, and SkyLife television.
Of course, the tournaments hosted by Ongamenet were superior in terms of other metrics such as overall prize pool, production value, and prestige that came with its longer history. However, due to its short-lasted superior distribution in Korea, KPGA Tournaments was viewed by the masses in greater numbers for the time being, which gave it the momentum to rebrand itself as the MSL, and establish itself as one of the two major individual leagues.
Individual leagues were all the rage, and this was NaDa's performance in tournaments hosted by these four television stations in 2002.
Ongamenet: Wins one out of three OGN StarLeagues (had to forfeit competing in SKY 2002 OGN StarLeague due to conflicting schedules, but it was okay because NaDa proceeded to rape the newly crowned OGN StarLeague champion, Reach 3-0 to prove that it wasn't lack of skill that prevented him from winning two OGN StarLeagues during this period)
Gembc: Wins three out of four KPGA Tournaments.
GhemTV: Wins one of three GhemTV StarLeagues.
iTV: Wins two out of three iTV Ranking Tournaments.
So that's 13 televised individual leagues that took place as all these broadcasting stations competed to become the next big thing on cable network television. NaDa participated in 12 of them, and had to forfeit one (SKY 2002 OGN StarLeague) due to conflicting schedules. Out of those 12, NaDa won 7 of them. Three of these victories were accomplished in a similar time frame, which is why everybody said he completed the Grand Slam.
Of course, only four of those championships are recognized by the fans of today. However, can you name anyone in history who won seven televised individual leagues out of the twelve he competed in? Not even Flash can boast such a record even if you pretend GomTV Classics were televised leagues. I think NaDa would have done just fine if somebody were to host a giant ProLeague instead of these individual leagues.
NaDa couldn't repeat his incredible antics of 2002, and it was iloveoov that rocked the world with his insane record in the first ever ProLeague that took place just after NaDa had conquered everything there was to conquer at the time. He would see iloveoov match his success in what used to be his home-ground, the MBC Game hosted tournaments. Even if you take away his seven titles he won as one of the most frightening players to have ever graced the scene, NaDa still managed to reach another six OGN StarLeague and MSL finals, and was the player with the most number of victories in the regular season of the ProLeague in second round of 2005, and first round of 2006.
Take away the best year out of any player and you'll basically neuter them. What's BoxeR without his 2001 performance? What's Flash without his 2010 performance? NaDa had his best year in 2002, when the circumstances of the scene was that there was more active televised stations dedicated to professional Brood War than any other year, and hosted an unprecedented fourteen televised individual leagues each with its own offline qualifiers. NaDa rocked that particular landscape with unparalleled success, but we forget about half his accomplishments because only two television stations managed to stay afloat.
It is so tilting for me to see people say shit like NaDa didn't do well in the ProLeagues. Well, do they know NaDa was the all time leader of one-versus-one victories in the ProLeague until 2008? NaDa had 73 ProLeague victories (with Stork trailing slightly behind due to his excellent performances in 2007) in November 2008, six years into the creation of the ProLeague. Do you know Light, somebody who never reached the finals of any individual leagues in his entire career had 84 ProLeague victories in the calendar year of 2010?
How the fuck is NaDa supposed to compete with people like Flash, or Jaedong, the clear cut number one players of their era, when a top tier, but by no means the absolute best player of the era like Light can shit on nearly six years of worth of ProLeague victories as the best player ever at the time, with one year's worth of good form?
So this is why I think trying to judge players such as BoxeR, or NaDa on the merits of their performances in the three platforms of competition that was considered by far the most important in the more modern era of Brood War (OGN StarLeague, MSL, and the ProLeague) is completely retarded.
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On July 24 2017 23:44 Letmelose wrote:See if you follow my logic here: 1) 택 is derived from 택용 (Bisu's name) 2) 뱅 is derived from 뱅구 (Stork's nickname) 3) 리쌍 is derived from the fact that Jaedong and Flash both have the same surnames 4) The best way to Anglicise 뱅구 would be Beng-Gu, because Bang-Gu is the Anglicisation of the Korean word, 방구 5) The best way to Anglicise 택뱅리쌍, therefore, would be Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang Just because somebody Anglicised the phrase wrong from the start, doesn't mean I have to adhere to it. It makes me cringe every time some dude says 택방리쌍 when they're trying to pronounce Taek-Beng-Lee-Ssang.
It's like Lee yong ho and Lee Yeong Ho then ? Romanization made "Yong" when it's actually "Yeong" if i recall correctly
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EPT
