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This might be a little long. Since this is the first blog I'm writing, I feel as though I should introduce myself a bit first. I'm a 20 year old junior who goes to a state college in KY and studies english, specifically literary theory very intensely. I love writing/reading, of all genres and all kinds (poetry, novels, plays, freeform, etc.)
Last summer I was unable to find a job so I decided to spend the majority of my time playing starcraft and attempting to improve. It was a way to keep my mind active and my reflexes not dull (previous summers I had played bass or not done anything besides work, but I'm at the point where I dislike playing music alone and had no one to play with).
I've always been a player of games who prefers to think about my actions more than actually doing them, so studying replays and examining build orders was something I found I greatly enjoyed, enough that I made a strategy thread about a specific trend in PvZ. Onto the real contents of this post :
There was recently a thread in broodwar where they attempted to define who was s-class by win ratio, and I decided to finally type up a list of Elo peaks >2200 in a matchup, for all time. After some debate I came to agree that 2180 or 90 was probably slightly better, but I will stick to 2200 for this series unless I wish to do some of Reach's or very old players. The idea behind the 2200 cutoff is that at this point, the player is favored to win by 76% vs a player with 2000 elo, and that very few players have ever reached this in any matchup, less than 5 in everything but TvZ and ZvT, and very rarely more than 3. However, this isn't going to be about defining S-class, it's something far different and more interesting, IMO.
I realized while typing up this list that tlpd has a wonderful tool which links you to the game that that peak matchup game was at, and I think I would like to start a series of examinations of each S-class players' peak games in each matchup, especially some of the older ones like Yellow, since they were before I ever followed pro-gaming. The reason I think this is interesting is because these are the games these players played right before they were toppled in their respective matchups, and is probably one of the best ways to observe the changing metagame in the matchups. The more modern the players, the less accurate it is, though, and before 2006 2180 is probably equivalent to our current players 2220's.
+ Show Spoiler +For easy reference, here is the list I made : ProtossPvZ + Show Spoiler +
Bisu 2229
Nal_ra 2218
Free 2192 (Closest)
PvP + Show Spoiler +
Bisu 2255
Best 2246
Reach 2193 (Closest)
Stork 2185 (4th)
PvT + Show Spoiler +
Jangbi 2258
Stork 2252
Bisu 2222
Nal_ra 2205
Reach 2189
Best 2188
TvZ - this is long + Show Spoiler +
IIloveoov 2304
Nada 2264
Sea 2235
Xellos 2230
Midas 2227
Flash 2223
Boxer 2220
Forgg 2203
Hwasin 2201
Iris 2188
TvT + Show Spoiler +
Flash 2246
Nada 2212
Sea 2205
Xellos 2203
Iris 2199
Goodfriend 2194
TvP + Show Spoiler +
Iloveeov 2236
Midas 2222
Nada 2215
Fantasy 2199
Sea 2196
ZvZ + Show Spoiler +
Jaedong 2344
Luxury 2212
Savior 2208
Chojja 2205
Yellow 2203
Hotforever 2187
ZvT + Show Spoiler +
Yarnc 2240
Jaedong 2235
Yellow 2230
Savior 2216
Gorush 2216
July 2209
Junwi 2182
ZvP + Show Spoiler +
Savior 2272
Jaedong 2237
July 2227
Chojja 2187
Yellow 2182
Suggestions for which player/matchup I should pick?
Some of the oldest ones are probably impossible, for instance Yellow's ZvT peak is this game, with no VOD or battle report :
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/games/5495_YellOw_vs_NaDa
The finals of that msl are available, but not what I'm looking for- they are pretty amazing though, Oov goes valks, goliaths and tanks to deal with dark swarm - in 2003.
Currently debating these, as they are actually doable and not very recent:
Nal_Ra pvz/pvt (vs Chojja on rpoint / Light on monty hall)
Iloveoov pvt (Reach on bifrost)
Nada TvZ (oversky @ bifrost)
Yellow ZvP (Zeus @ Requiem)
Savior ZvT (Shine @ monty hall)
The lack of VODS for some makes it really difficult to do. I'd rather not do something like Savior's ZvP because it's really well known, and in addition, is one of his random wins over Bisu in group stages. Boxer's TvZ is the same, it's from 2007 and a win over savior on monty hall.
I would love to do gorush's zvt or Goodfriend's tvt, but no VODs to be found.
Also, what is the itv ranking league? Tons of these were played on it and there are no VODs anywhere, or any real information about the tournament.
For this to be truly complete, I would love to do both the game where they peaked, and the game right after where they peaked - in the Yellow example, he gets destroyed by Oov's mech, likely due to excellent defiler play in previous games. But I can only infer without the games vs Nada.
First : Yellow vs Xellos
+ Show Spoiler +This is essentially what I had in mind : Xellos v Yellow at Nostalgia, mycubeosl 2003. This game is from the midst of Yellow's 15 game vT winning streak, and differs from modern ZvT/TvZ in a massive amount of ways. Xellos goes for a 1 base build (not exactly surprising), but gets an incredibly late Academy, choosing to go factory first and getting a machine shop to research mines. His engineering bay is not exceptionally late, but muta harass was almost nonexistent without the discovery of stacking. He moves out with about 10 mnm + f and 2 vultures, moving towards yellow's base to force sunks/bust, planting mines along the way. However, Yellow has gone early lurkers, moves up Xellos' ramp with around 6 lings and 2 lurkers, and kills 50-60% of the workers in Xellos' base, in one of closest moves I've ever seen (The comsat ran out right when one more hit from an scv would have killed it). From there on, Xellos attempts to recoup and uses mines to force Yellow from his ramp and punish aggression, killing several lings and eventually succeeding in taking his natural. During this, Yellow has expanded twice more across the map and powered drones fairly hard, and has a massive economy to Xellos' fairly wrecked one. Xellos, however, has actually massed up a fairly large mnm army and moves out at ~14 minutes. Yellow sees this as an opportunity to drop 5 or 6 lurkers + a few lings in Xellos main and stops mining again. Up to this point, Yellow has never engaged Xellos' main force, instead backstabbing at every opportunity. Xellos is killing Xellos' 4th, and the camera pans to the view of something like 30 or 40 lings streaming in, which surround the mnm force and absolutely annihilate it.Yellow expands 2x more and then morphs guardians for the finishing blow, which are irradiated and do nothing besides kill a tank. At this point, it's 5 bases to two, and Yellow starts going ultra ling, using 3 lurkers and 1 guardian to control and slow the push- he destroys the key tank and drops tons of cracklings in Xellos main, and Xellos ggs right as he sees the ridiculous ultra force being saved up. Key differences from modern ZvT : Muta harass. Modern ZvT revolves around this early game, however, Yellow uses a similar mechanic that essentially accomplishes the same thing - back stabs. In the very early portion of the game, when Xellos moves out, his army is far superior to the two lurkers and small group of lings Yellow has (with 2 sunk at natural), however, when he does move out, after he is getting close to Yellow's base, yellow runs up Xellos' ramp and with 2 lurkers and 6 lings takes out the puny 2 firebat/2rine army guarding the ramp, and uses his lurkers to take out the scvs mining, as turrets have not even been started yet. All Xellos can use to defend are vultures + mines, which get slaughtered by the lurkers. The principle behind this play is very similar to Muta harass, but requires a different thought process and worked with inferior forces, due to Yellow's excellent control - he is keeping Xellos in his base for as long as possible, and punishing him whenever he moves out. This pattern continues further, with him repeatedly dropping Xellos' main whenever Xellos tried to move out, with what were too large to be just harass drops, but still too small to be doom drops. After this, he controls Xellos' ramp with lurkers because he knows that Xellos will be very low on scans, and prevents Xellos from effectively doing anything for almost 4 or 5 minutes. The biggest difference though, is the amount of units used. Modern zvt frequently focuses on building a massive army like the kind we see used at the end of this game, however, Yellow utilizes a minimum number of units to do a maximum amount of damage - his large army at the end wasn't even necessary for him to win, his smaller armies harassed the T so effectively that they effectively won him the game without making any units besides overlords, drones, lings, and lurkers. With 1 guardian and 3 lurkers he does more damage than he did with 6 guardians, his small army control was superb and probably unmatched today. The lack of muta stacking and defiler play clearly makes ZvT a much harder matchup, but one which Yellow's specific playstyle was uniquely suited to - later tonight or tomorrow I'll cover one of the games that ended Yellow's ZvT peak elo - his series in trigem 03 msl vs Iloveoov.
Second: yellow v Iloveoov :
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=100152
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Yeah that's the thread I was referring to, but I decided to put a little more thought into it. Plus that discussion has started going in circles like it always does. (Fantasy is s-class. No he's not. Yes he is. No. Yeah. Nuh-uh. )
And no, I didn't post this in that thread... I posted a specific list from this post in that thread. Blog is about something entirely different, I DO NOT CARE about the definition of s-class, and who is or isn't currently in it.
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Baa?21246 Posts
All this tells me is that YellOw's awesome, especially with your point that there's some ELO inflation over the years.
This is an interesting project, but I don't know what it's gonna really prove. Good luck hunting VODs though.
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On August 17 2009 06:57 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
All this tells me is that YellOw's awesome, especially with your point that there's some ELO inflation over the years.
This is an interesting project, but I don't know what it's gonna really prove. Good luck hunting VODs though.
It's more of a metagame examination, and this is one method to track the evolution of a matchup. Matchups that we consider stable like ZvZ might actually have been very different in 2003, etc. I would love to find Yellow's peak zvz game.
And yes, Yellow is undoubtedly the best ZvT player of all time. Fake yellow really took after him in that regard.
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Just finished the first one, sorry for the triple post.
This is essentially what I had in mind :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af-jrBi9FFU
Xellos v Yellow at Nostalgia, mycubeosl 2003.
This game is from the midst of Yellow's 15 game vT winning streak, and differs from modern ZvT/TvZ in a massive amount of ways.
Xellos goes for a 1 base build (not exactly surprising), but gets an incredibly late Academy, choosing to go factory first and getting a machine shop to research mines. His engineering bay is not exceptionally late, but muta harass was almost nonexistent without the discovery of stacking. He moves out with about 10 mnm + f and 2 vultures, moving towards yellow's base to force sunks/bust, planting mines along the way. However, Yellow has gone early lurkers, moves up Xellos' ramp with around 6 lings and 2 lurkers, and kills 50-60% of the workers in Xellos' base, in one of closest moves I've ever seen (The comsat ran out right when one more hit from an scv would have killed it). From there on, Xellos attempts to recoup and uses mines to force Yellow from his ramp and punish aggression, killing several lings and eventually succeeding in taking his natural.
During this, Yellow has expanded twice more across the map and powered drones fairly hard, and has a massive economy to Xellos' fairly wrecked one.
Xellos, however, has actually massed up a fairly large mnm army and moves out at ~14 minutes. Yellow sees this as an opportunity to drop 5 or 6 lurkers + a few lings in Xellos main and stops mining again. Up to this point, Yellow has never engaged Xellos' main force, instead backstabbing at every opportunity. Xellos is killing Xellos' 4th, and the camera pans to the view of something like 30 or 40 lings streaming in, which surround the mnm force and absolutely annihilate it.Yellow expands 2x more and then morphs guardians for the finishing blow, which are irradiated and do nothing besides kill a tank. At this point, it's 5 bases to two, and Yellow starts going ultra ling, using 3 lurkers and 1 guardian to control and slow the push- he destroys the key tank and drops tons of cracklings in Xellos main, and Xellos ggs right as he sees the ridiculous ultra force being saved up.
Key differences from modern ZvT :
Muta harass. Modern ZvT revolves around this early game, however, Yellow uses a similar mechanic that essentially accomplishes the same thing - back stabs. In the very early portion of the game, when Xellos moves out, his army is far superior to the two lurkers and small group of lings Yellow has (with 2 sunk at natural), however, when he does move out, after he is getting close to Yellow's base, yellow runs up Xellos' ramp and with 2 lurkers and 6 lings takes out the puny 2 firebat/2rine army guarding the ramp, and uses his lurkers to take out the scvs mining, as turrets have not even been started yet. All Xellos can use to defend are vultures + mines, which get slaughtered by the lurkers. The principle behind this play is very similar to Muta harass, but requires a different thought process and worked with inferior forces, due to Yellow's excellent control - he is keeping Xellos in his base for as long as possible, and punishing him whenever he moves out. This pattern continues further, with him repeatedly dropping Xellos' main whenever Xellos tried to move out, with what were too large to be just harass drops, but still too small to be doom drops.
After this, he controls Xellos' ramp with lurkers because he knows that Xellos will be very low on scans, and prevents Xellos from effectively doing anything for almost 4 or 5 minutes.
The biggest difference though, is the amount of units used. Modern zvt frequently focuses on building a massive army like the kind we see used at the end of this game, however, Yellow utilizes a minimum number of units to do a maximum amount of damage - his large army at the end wasn't even necessary for him to win, his smaller armies harassed the T so effectively that they effectively won him the game without making any units besides overlords, drones, lings, and lurkers. With 1 guardian and 3 lurkers he does more damage than he did with 6 guardians, his small army control was superb and probably unmatched today.
The lack of muta stacking and defiler play clearly makes ZvT a much harder matchup, but one which Yellow's specific playstyle was uniquely suited to - later tonight or tomorrow I'll cover one of the games that ended Yellow's ZvT peak elo - his series in trigem 03 msl vs Iloveoov.
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Jaedong's zvz peak is 2344
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Wow, I love that you're doing this. I'd personally like to see you do one on iloveoov's TvZ or July's ZvP 
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United States13896 Posts
On August 17 2009 06:35 Nevuk wrote:
Also, what is the itv ranking league? Tons of these were played on it and there are no VODs anywhere, or any real information about the tournament.
iTV was another Korean TV channel back in the day that featured professional SC tournaments, but it went under when the channel went on strike and never went back on air.
iTV League Format
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On August 17 2009 09:41 Mindcrime wrote:
Jaedong's zvz peak is 2344
Woops, thanks for catching that. JD and Oov are the only 2 players to ever be 2300+ in a matchup, ever. For some reason I put JD's current vZ instead of peak.
On August 17 2009 10:17 MutaDoom wrote:Wow, I love that you're doing this. I'd personally like to see you do one on iloveoov's TvZ or July's ZvP
Iloveoov's game has no VOD, unfortunately - However, I will be doing his mech game vs Yellow tomorrow if I don't have too much reading. No class 4/5 days of the week makes me happy (having 7 hours straight of classes on the other day is bad, but eh).
July's ZvP was his series vs Kal. I won't do anyone currently peaking like he is, they have to actually have lost and have the metagame be escaping their style, which is not true of his zvp at all. (I may do his ZvT sometime). JD's ZvZ seems like a very attractive one as well, because ZvZ has changed tons in the last month or so, and even he is vulnerable in it.
On August 17 2009 10:19 p4NDemik wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2009 06:35 Nevuk wrote:
Also, what is the itv ranking league? Tons of these were played on it and there are no VODs anywhere, or any real information about the tournament. iTV was another Korean TV channel back in the day that featured professional SC tournaments, but it went under when the channel went on strike and never went back on air. iTV League Format
Thanks for the info- I'm guessing it's impossible to get any vods off it, unfortunately.
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United States2186 Posts
I would be somewhat cautious with this approach, i,e don't rely only on ELO but judgment as well.
In some cases, it is not a problem. oov's TvZ was clearly at its peak before the Julyzerg games. However in others it's kinda messy. Savior's ZvT was at its peak in the Shinhan 3 Finals vs Nada. His play became much worse after that loss to Bisu, and he was certainly not the same player at his ELO 'peak' in May 07. ELO is kind of a messy system with inflation, underrated players, and games not being included etc, so if you follow it to blindly you wind up at hilarious conclusions like Yellow's ZvT is better than Saviors.
In addition when doing the analysis you have to keep in mind the maps. Nostalgia is going to require a different approach than other maps because of the mineral only nat.
If you can avoid these potential pitfalls then this is a really great project and I hope you can keep it up. That analysis of Yellow vs Xellos is really nice and thought provoking
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On August 17 2009 14:17 Ver wrote:I would be somewhat cautious with this approach, i,e don't rely only on ELO but judgment as well. In some cases, it is not a problem. oov's TvZ was clearly at its peak before the Julyzerg games. However in others it's kinda messy. Savior's ZvT was at its peak in the Shinhan 3 Finals vs Nada. His play became much worse after that loss to Bisu, and he was certainly not the same player at his ELO 'peak' in May 07. ELO is kind of a messy system with inflation, underrated players, and games not being included etc, so if you follow it to blindly you wind up at hilarious conclusions like Yellow's ZvT is better than Saviors. In addition when doing the analysis you have to keep in mind the maps. Nostalgia is going to require a different approach than other maps because of the mineral only nat. If you can avoid these potential pitfalls then this is a really great project and I hope you can keep it up. That analysis of Yellow vs Xellos is really nice and thought provoking
Yeah, I'm trying to make sure these games only come from long streaks of winning after seeing the Yellow. But it's very fair to say that Yellow was comparatively more dominant in zvt than savior ever was (however, he didn't have the beastly zvp to back it up), especially since we probably don't have some games. To say he was better is ignoring an increase in skill, which I don't want to do.
It's really impossible to straight up use them due to the lack of VODs, so I have to get a bit creative with their match list - the peaks come after a long period of dominance in the matchup.
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EPT
