EPTWhile not purporting to represent authentically how well or badly a player is playing, I did fiddle around until I found a basic calculation to sort unequal records. It's got weaknesses: a loss with no offsetting wins simply isn't counted, so Juni and Grape (0-4) end up with the same goose-egg (then again, Grape's better than Juni). But at the top I think it does a decent job sorting out players, at least by actual wins and losses if not skill. The top 18:
1.
Flash (KT), 13.00 (13-0)2.
Fantasy (SKT), 9.31 (11-2)3.
Neo.G_Soulkey (Stars), 8.64 (11-3)4.
Stork (KHAN), 7.56 (11-5)5.
Jaedong (T8), 6.67 (10-5)6.
Bisu (SKT), 5.88 (10-7)7.
Stats (KT), 5.79 (9-5)8.
BaBy (T8), 5.33 (8-4)9.
BeSt (SKT), 5.06 (9-7)10.
Last (STX), 4.92 (8-5)11.
Leta (CJ), 4.90 (7-3)12.
TurN (KHAN), 4.17 (5-1)12.
Dear (STX), 4. 17 (5-1)14.
EffOrt (CJ), 4.08 (7-5)14.
JangBi (KHAN), 4.08 (7-5)16.
Brave (KHAN), 4.00 (6-3)16.
Calm (STX), 4.00 (6-3)18.
Crazy-Hydra (KT), 3.57 (5-2)I realize 18 is a sort of odd number. It's (neatly) 25% of the 72 I mentioned up at the top of the post, but I attach no real importance to that curiosity. The real point is that everyone below CH is either short on wins or winning percentage to keep up. A few games, and some of the bottom of this list and the top of the rest could trade places. As may be.
The important point to this topic is noting who's at the top, however they got there. Breaking it down by team:
Air Force ACE: 0 (
Kal ranks #t19 with a 6-5 record.)Woongjin Stars: 1 (#3
Neo.G_Soulkey. Stars' other stars are clustered in the 20-25 area.)CJ Entus 2 (#11
Leta, #14 EffOrt. Other Entusmen are within shouting distance: Hydra (#t19) and Movie (#t26).)Team 8 2 (#5
Jaedong, #8 BaBy. Jaehoon is #23. The others...)STX SouL 3 (#10
Last, #13 Dear, #17 Calm.)KT Rolster 3 (#1
Flash, #7 Stats, #18 Crazy-Hydra. Wooki is #24.)SK Telecom t1 3 (#2
Fantasy, #6 Bisu, #9 BeSt. SKT's 4th best, n.Die_soO, doesn't show up until #t30.)Samsung KHAN 4 (#4
Stork, #12 TurN, #t14 JangBi, #t16 Brave. Reality is tied at 26th with Movie.)That Samsung KHAN is the deepest team in Proleague should come as no surprise. Last year's campaign featured somewhere between two and four impressive rookies, depending on your impressions of TurN, Grape, Brave, and Reality. With an extra year of playing time, and smart additions of Shine and RorO to finally bolster their Zerg line, KHAN should have been among the favorites to take it all - as they have amply demonstrated by now by vaulting to the top of the league, hammering previous leaders KT Rolster twice in two weeks.
Of those not quite at that level, KT Rolster and SK Telecom T1 follow them closely in depth and in the standings. In fact, while the dreaded three-headed dragon of SKT is well-known and maybe even over-rated, KT's success deserves a notice.
Compare KT to Woongjin. If you asked the average Brood War fan - certainly before the season, but maybe even now - which was the deeper team, you would get about 70% saying Woongjin, and the number would be higher except KT has a lot of fans. But in reality, so far KT's the one putting up solid results across the board - Crazy-Hydra's 5-2 would be a nice addition to Woongjin's record if Stars had kept him - and Woongjin is, essentially, barely hanging on behind an all-star performance from their newest ace, Neo.G_Soulkey.
The ace match may have gone, but I'm inclined to think that it's not a coincidence the top four teams right now are the four teams with the four best players in the game, by record: Flash, fantasy, Soulkey, and Stork.
Of course, what you do with your good players also matters: for instance, STX's initially apparent depth is belied by their placement - all at the bottom of the good end - and the utter lack of anything behind those three. Bogus is now 5-8 on the year; hyvaa is somehow STX's 5th, and is 4-6.
I said at the beginning my calculation doesn't sort out losing players if all they do is lose: however, by comparing the number for the whole team to the numbers put up by each player, we can see, team by team, which one's doing the best with what they have:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CZY9N.jpg)
Flash puts KT way out in front, but continued play with poor results from Mind, HoeJJa, and Action is hurting them. Of course, the Proleague season is a marathon, and none of those three are scrubs, and KT *does* need a fifth player sometimes. So long-term it's not a bad thing. But the idea that Flash is being let down by his teammates persists because it is still a real thing. It's just that now it's the tail end of the order that's weak, not the #3 spot (or #2 if Lux was off doing sinister things that week).
We should also be developing the idea that Calm (or maybe Last?) simply doesn't have a team behind him. STX's results compared to its best players are actually worse than KT's, which is depressing: STX ought to be in contention, but just can't get there. One wonders what KHAN's or SKT's coaches could do with this group.
On the other end of the spectrum, Woongjin and CJ - two teams with assumed star power but mediocre results - are actually showing almost as well as they could be. In Woongjin's case, this is because they have nobody else to play - Team Eight shows the same pattern. In CJ's case, it seems to be more that all of their players are identical pretty good automatons, with better or worse luck as may be.
(It's worth nothing that even though I've talked up the differences, they may not be that significant: the worst team by this comparison (STX) still is playing at 82% of their players' raw value; the best (Woongjin) only has 92%. Does that 10% matter?
Also worth noting: I'm tracking games only, here, so good or bad luck with 3-2 matches shifts teams *coughkhancough* in the standings while that doesn't necessarily match the overall game records.)
