EPTOn September 28 2017 22:13 intotheheart wrote:
I might be asking a dumb question, but what is it about NaDa that he had so many games played more than Flash? Tournament density, or just career length? iirc he was active well into 2009 but also didn't have amazing results by that point.
I might be asking a dumb question, but what is it about NaDa that he had so many games played more than Flash? Tournament density, or just career length? iirc he was active well into 2009 but also didn't have amazing results by that point.
NaDa is the most accomplished professional player of all-time. He was a top player, for full five years, from 2002 to 2006. That's roughly equal to the duration of the entirety of Flash's career. During those five years, this was NaDa's record, and results in open tournaments (tournaments open to all professional gamers), I'll also list the results of their rivals:
NaDa (2002~2005 record only)
494-272 (64.58%)
3 x OGN StarLeague
3 x KPGA Tournaments (precursor to MSL)
2 x iTV Ranking League
1 x GhemTV StarLeague
1 x OGN StarLeague finalist
3 x MSL finalist
iloveoov (2002~2005 record only)
247-129 (65.69%)
2 x OGN StarLeague
3 x MSL
Flash (his entire career)
498-203 (71.04%)
3 x OGN StarLeague
3 x MSL
1 x OGN StarLeague finalist
1 x MSL finalist
Jaedong (only counting his career after Flash made his debut)
491-229 (68.19%)
3 x OGN StarLeague
2 x MSL
1 x OGN StarLeague finalist
3 x MSL finalist
NaDa won around 135% more ProLeague games than Midas, if we only include ProLeague games from 2003 (when ProLeague first started), until the end of the 2006 calendar year. Of course, the numbers for two-versus-two games are not taken into account.
Flash won around 104% more ProLeague games than Jaedong, if we only include ProLeague games starting from Flash's debut.
Now, NaDa has only played 79 ProLeague games (roughly 10% of his total game pool) during this five years time frame. Flash has played in 315 ProLeague games (roughly 45% of his total game pool). I think there's no need to say that the ProLeague played a much more significant part during Flash's active years. NaDa took part in more open tournaments and invitationals (such as the Shinhan Masters for a more recent reference).
The only thing that's somewhat comparable between the peak years of these two gamers is the the fact that Ongamenet and Gembc (later became MBC Game) hosted individual leagues at roughly a three month interval for years on end. As you can see, NaDa has accomplished more than Flash (same number of first place finishes, but superior numbers for NaDa for literally every other podium finishes) when we look into the results of these two open tournaments hosted by the two broadcasting stations that hosted the most number of individual tournaments out of anybody.
As you can see, both NaDa and Flash competed in very different landscapes. When NaDa was around, there were four television stations broadcasting their own versions of the StarLeague (Ongamenet is the only television station still running, the rest went out of business). ProLeague started off in 2003, and was initially comprised of one-versus-one, and two-versus-two games (NaDa was quite beastly at two-versus-two games as well). By the time Flash made his debut, doing well in the ProLeague became a much more integral part of being a top level player.
By 2009, NaDa was basically done as a top level professional, but even then he was still progressing as far as the round of eight. This was back when basically there were hundreds of active professional players with dozens of new recruitment being made every couple of months, so that's eight years of NaDa reaching at least the quarter-finals without skipping a single year, during the most vibrant years of professional Brood War (in terms of general popularity).
Flash probably would have surpassed NaDa's accomplishments had professional Brood War stayed around, but there are arguments to be made in this case also. Brood War was the most played game by the young males in Korea for years, but by the time Flash made his debut, this was no longer the case. While the professional scene grew in scale (better infrastructure, more sponsors, higher wages, and more coaches), the actual top television ratings was slowly regressing from 2004/2005, when the viewership numbers hit a record high, and the general player pool for Brood War was declining also. Flash was part of pretty much the last generation of Korean youth to dedicate themselves towards the game of Brood War. Most of the Korean kids born in the 1990's moved on to MOBA games such as CHAOS (Korean version of DoTA), and League of Legends. Flash was in a much better shape than NaDa five years into his professional career, but part of that has to do with the fact that the turn-over rate for top players slowed down significantly after Flash's ascension to power.
