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I think an apt analogy to make from today might be Larva. Nobody doubts that he is one of the best zergs of today in terms of pure gaming ability, but his ability to compete with everything on the line, with your opponent doing literally everything he can to push you off your comfort zone, has been lackluster in general. Of course, it is an insult to ZerO to contrast his career achievements to Larva current achievements as a competitor, but I believe there are some parallels to be drawn here.
An interesting point, but in fairness how long has Larva been good. It seems like at best it's within the past year or less. He's really only had one league, if that, where we were really thinking of him as a highly promising zerg player.
It's a very impressive breakthrough for him, as it's very rare for a player, especially someone not newer to SC in general, to make that sort of jump...but it does remain to be seen if he can bring that to this next ASL.
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TLADT24920 Posts
On September 05 2017 13:11 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +I think an apt analogy to make from today might be Larva. Nobody doubts that he is one of the best zergs of today in terms of pure gaming ability, but his ability to compete with everything on the line, with your opponent doing literally everything he can to push you off your comfort zone, has been lackluster in general. Of course, it is an insult to ZerO to contrast his career achievements to Larva current achievements as a competitor, but I believe there are some parallels to be drawn here. An interesting point, but in fairness how long has Larva been good. It seems like at best it's within the past year or less. He's really only had one league, if that, where we were really thinking of him as a highly promising zerg player. It's a very impressive breakthrough for him, as it's very rare for a player, especially someone not newer to SC in general, to make that sort of jump...but it does remain to be seen if he can bring that to this next ASL. Larva seems to choke on stage. It's kinda odd to see because he's clowning around infront of his viewers in between games yet infront of some fans, he can't perform. I personally hope that this ASL is finally the one where he breaks this and moves forward!
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Thanks. Of all the metrics, this is basically the one that mirrors most closely how I gain respect for players in reality. Players know how important the Bo5 is, so I think they prioritize it the most when they're ready to put everything they have into the game. When it comes to proleague or qualifiers, that's more of a metric for consistency in the absence of the ultimate motivator. Players dig deeper for the Bo5, always even if they say they try their hardest any game. Bo5 is when people start learning your name and attaching to ideas about your personality and playstyle, and that's a big motivation boost for the competitor.
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Very interesting thread. It's absurd how much JD and Flash were above everyone else. NaDa's record also looks terrifying.
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Although there are more variables to consider, this would be my huge over-generalization of these various formats of competition. I would personally characterize things as such:
1) Best-of-fives results represents a player's ability to prepare for a certain player across multiple maps.
2) ProLeague results represents a player's ability to prepare for a certain player for a specific map.
3) Winners League results represents a player's ability to prepare for multiple maps.
Most successful best-of-five players of all time (sample restricted to 1999 ~ 2012):
1) NaDa: 40-12 (76.92%) 2) Flash: 26-8 (76.47%) 3) Jaedong: 25-8 (75.76%) 4) BoxeR: 15-14 (51.72%) 5) Bisu: 14-6 (70%)
Most successful ProLeague players of all time (sample restricted to 2003 ~ 2012):
1) Jaedong: 181-85 (68.04%) 2) Flash: 167-67 (71.37%) 3) Stork: 160-97 (62.26%) 4) Bisu: 138-63 (68.66%) 5) Sea: 136-82 36 28 (63.55%)
Most successful Winners League players of all time (sample restricted to 2009 ~ 2011):
1) Flash: 66-15 (81.48%) 2) Jaedong: 59-22 (72.84%) 3) Bisu: 54-23 (70.13%) 4) Light: 49-24 (67.12%) 5) HiyA: 46-27 (63.01%)
I already touched on the subject in the post below:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/525382-using-maps-to-figure-out-player-characteristics#12
Basically, if I were to characterize the entire spectrum of players, from those who shined the most with preparation starting from the left, and gradually progressing towards to thoses who shined without individualized preparation, I personally would have the following list of players:
FanTaSy - Jaedong - Flash - Bisu - Light
Bisu is a special case, because he has two identities in my opinion. MBC Game Bisu, and SK Telecom T1 Bisu. MBC Game Bisu was a monster in a best-of-five setting, performing even better than what was expected of him, if you took into account his performances elsewhere. SK Telecom T1 Bisu seemed to be on the other side of the spectrum. It seems to me that during his stay at the team, Bisu became more sound fundamentally speaking, but became quite predictable with his builds. I'll just quote myself to prevent rambling on about the same thing over and over again.
On August 11 2017 14:53 Letmelose wrote: A comment from Mind seems to line up quite well with this theory. Mind said that when he practiced with Bisu, he was the type to just spam games non-stop on the given map pool for the upcoming important match. This is in very stark contrast to someone like iloveoov, one of the greatest minds of the game, practiced, who focused heavily on the optimization of strategies and build orders rather than perfecting his execution through endless practice.
Mind said that Bisu never spent time discussing his choice of builds during his practice sessions, and this coincides with what Kingdom once said about the difference between BeSt and Bisu, saying that BeSt was the more cerebral of the two players, while Bisu had the superior work ethic. Mind also said that Bisu wasn't the type to pay attention to all the meticulous details to really evil (as Grubby put it, in the video I linked above) builds, but someone who relied heavily on his form, and high levels of performance to succeed.
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