D Ranks Individual Tournament Season 5 - Page 4

It's been discussed at length in other threads that there are multiple factors at play that do not invalidate all players who have a higher max than D+. I will attempt to summarize them here so that in the future people can just refer to this post. Although obviously my position on this is biased (being one of the players in question), I feel that because I have had to deal with this issue so frequently over the past 1+ years, I can give a decent summary:

1. D+ players who have hit C- only need a ~30% winrate on MotW and only slightly more on non-MotW against other D+ players. The real difficulty is holding the C- rank and winning against other C- players - which is where most players who have a max of low C- get pushed back into D+, because they now have to win ~43% of their games against stronger opponents in order to STAY C-. Hence the idea of "hitting C-" as opposed to "being C-". I think that most players here who sign up with a max of C- are players who have fall in the former category, as is testified by their performance in DR leagues.
   
2. The distinction therefore between a D+ player who has never hit C- and a D+ player who has is often simply a matter of games played. You have to be in the bottom 33% of all D+ players in order to have never hit C- if you play many games. However, I guesstimate/think that most players in this league (and on ICCup in general) have never played more than say ~50 games a season, therefore making it seem like they are more "true D+" than a player of equal skill who has played 100 games that season and hit C- once or twice during that time. If a player plays 10 games and hits D+ with a record of 8-2 or something, he is rarely persecuted, but if a different player then gets C- with 30-60, he is suddenly invalidated?
   
3. The low number of games played also means greater statistical insignificance of rank - you can get a good lucky handful of games against weak foreign players and hit C-, whereas a better player playing at Korean hours and not dodging Koreans will not.
   
4. A lot of these players that hit C- stop laddering after that point, therefore getting their low C- peak, which is actually just 1 win against D+ or even D that can send them into this zone. Effectively these players have proven that they are better than only ~30-35% of the D+ population.
   
5. sB.Birdie has stated numerous times that the ICCup rank system is very flawed and that this is part of that flaw. The main reason is because this ranking system is not an Elo ranking system, which would be much more accurate in representing skill level than the current blanket system of ranks.
   
6. Players such as myself and mg.arb who have hit higher ranks (C) a decent amount of time ago are not currently C level in skill. The fact that there are fewer people, most of which are more dedicated on average than before the advent of SC2, on ladder, makes our skill level approximately D+ now because D+ is harder to get out of imo. Also we have factors like injury and inactivity which have made our skills deteriorate. My most recent "active" season results were 28-26 D+ from last season and 89-166 D+ a year ago, for example. This is not a sufficient justification, hence why replays were requested for many other DR tournaments, either universally or from players specifically. After that, the administration made a decision on whether or not they deem our skill level fit for the tournament.
   
7. There is also the matter of performance - although I might have the highest max rank in this tournament, I also went 4-4 in DRAKTL and lost to players who have listed themselves as D here. Clearly, I feel the skill gap is much smaller than the max rank tells - especially if you consider unique player weaknesses, like certain MUs or strats.
   
8. Finally, there are different ways of hitting C-. Even though I might be able to hit C- or maybe even higher if I only play PvT the entire way though, that is not the nature of ladder xP. I'm sure there are other players here who could hit C- if they did 6 pool cheese, I know I did once - I got to C- with a bit under 50% winrate with JUST 6 pool cheese in a matter of 2-3 days of light laddering (for the record this was the season after I got C and the only 3 days I laddered because I wanted to stay in my clan after getting banned for inactivity lol). After a few games your ling micro improves and it becomes easier lol. But would you say that my Z skill level was C-? It's actually more like D- haha xD

I don't really want to argue because I don't really have anything else to add, and these are just logical musings - the final say lies with the administrator, and in some cases the population (as with chrisolo's polls for DRAKTL). There is really no point in arguing about it if the administrator has chosen to either make the cut at D+ and never higher or D+ and has hit higher. The holiday ICCup tour is one case where there was a distinct limit of "NEVER above D+", and there were smurfs even in that ( bm)burbon is c-/c iirc), and they STILL didn't win. It's just a very messy situation overall, but my main point is the following:

We're not as good as you think we are lol.