On June 05 2025 19:07 Kyle8 wrote: debating Kespa era is stupid IMO. the pros of today are old & washed up & the KESPA era folks would learn how to beat them & do the same strategies,
BUT
today's pros would win for sure until the meta caught up all those years of knowledge.....
people back then played such unoptimized crap
Yea bro soulkey and snow are so old and washed lol
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Big picture stuff like the meta changes, probably not that long no.
At the very bleeding edge of the game, there’s a metric fuckton of optimisation and improvements over the years, that is basically everything. Every wee micro trick, optimal response, even something like mineral boosting.
I’d imagine that would take considerably longer, and elements of this are accelerated quite a bit in the post-Kespa, or I suppose you could say ‘open’ era.
Less so the ‘what?’, more the ‘how? or the ‘why?’ I guess is really the accelerant.
Soma is atypically good at mineral boosting (IIRC, BW experts can correct if I’m mistaken!) and just squeezes out a little more money to hit benchmarks slightly faster.
One can see from a VoD, ‘hey Soma has a bit more money’, clearly it is something possible as he’s doing it. What game mechanic he’s actually exploiting and how that works, not necessarily.
Whereas hey I’m Soma, ‘here’s a full guide with explanations of the mechanics on how I do that’, way more time-efficient.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
They talk about it around 30 minutes here:
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
It’s also different for each player. Nony said that style didn’t suit him at all where as Idra said it did. Terran is extremely mechanically difficult, so that may be why he responded better to that kind of training.
Anyway, the Koreans were so incredibly far ahead of the rest of us, so while it’s not sustainable for the long run, there must have been something to it. And who are we to criticize that when we have no results to support it.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
SC has a speed option. You can literally practice things more slowly if you can't do them faster.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
SC has a speed option. You can literally practice things more slowly if you can't do them faster.
Yeah, right. Any more brilliant ideas? Next, we play tournaments at slow? How about offline against the computer. See who wins fastest in the slowest speed. Turtle against the rabbit race. PS: mechanical speed is what makes Starcraft special. We could play Starcraft 2, but we don't.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
SC has a speed option. You can literally practice things more slowly if you can't do them faster.
Yeah, right. Any more brilliant ideas? Next, we play tournaments at slow? How about offline against the computer. See who wins fastest in the slowest speed. Turtle against the rabbit race. PS: mechanical speed is what makes Starcraft special. We could play Starcraft 2, but we don't.
The suggestion was about practice, not tournaments.
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
SC has a speed option. You can literally practice things more slowly if you can't do them faster.
Yeah, right. Any more brilliant ideas? Next, we play tournaments at slow? How about offline against the computer. See who wins fastest in the slowest speed. Turtle against the rabbit race. PS: mechanical speed is what makes Starcraft special. We could play Starcraft 2, but we don't.
The suggestion was about practice, not tournaments.
If your suggestion was everyone ought to practice like Mini I would say yes. Otherwise, this is supposed to be practice, not casual.
On June 06 2025 02:15 Bonyth wrote: [quote] Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
SC has a speed option. You can literally practice things more slowly if you can't do them faster.
Yeah, right. Any more brilliant ideas? Next, we play tournaments at slow? How about offline against the computer. See who wins fastest in the slowest speed. Turtle against the rabbit race. PS: mechanical speed is what makes Starcraft special. We could play Starcraft 2, but we don't.
The suggestion was about practice, not tournaments.
If your suggestion was everyone ought to practice like Mini I would say yes. Otherwise, this is supposed to be practice, not casual.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
If you want your brain to learn very fast, very well coordinated movements very well, you need to do them very slowly, very relaxed, very controlled at a very slow tempo, and increase progressively the speed. Every single musician knows that.
Playing starcraft is on a mechanical level not so different from playing a hard piece of piano.
If I were to coach someone, i would put the game settings on very slow, and play very clearly, with absolutely zero tension, and zero unnecessary movement.
I know for a fact it would bring better results in a fraction of the practice time, and prevent injuries later down the line.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
Well, you have a point here, it is true that closing up with other opponent that used to be your equal and continued to play, and are still playing might take longer than 3 months. I am currently experiencing it.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
If you want your brain to learn very fast, very well coordinated movements very well, you need to do them very slowly, very relaxed, very controlled at a very slow tempo, and increase progressively the speed. Every single musician knows that.
Playing starcraft is on a mechanical level not so different from playing a hard piece of piano.
If I were to coach someone, i would put the game settings on very slow, and play very clearly, with absolutely zero tension, and zero unnecessary movement.
I know for a fact it would bring better results in a fraction of the practice time, and prevent injuries later down the line.
Yes, but we are not learning to play the harmonica, or exercising to gain muscle mass without losing range of motion. This is Starcraft. It has a batch input structure with 0.5 second buffer. If you are not up to speed, you won't be able to dodge lurkers with marines. That is not smart, that is plain wrong. PS: also your idea of injury is wrong. These kinds of injuries are due to repetitive motion. You could say bad posture although I cannot verify, was never good at physiotherapy. I cannot tell what Flash has. If you tell me I can tell you how it develops. There are strength trainers who bash bricks. Apparently, every microfracture increases trabecular bone density. It doesn't come at first. You need to put in the hours like Howard Levy says 10000h is necessary for mastery of the instrument. I've heard it for swimming, too. It is not related to the speed of the motion. Carpal tunnel is also a strain injury you can treat with a vertical mouse that you click buttons to the palm of your hand instead of towards the ground. This is also how you can develop a knee injury at cycling if you use opposing muscle groups simultaneously if your saddle position is wrong. Some swimmers like Michael Phelps have better RoM because they have some form of laxity - their muscles don't work as hard. For normal people without laxity, we have carpal tunnel due to stronger wrist bands that can pinch the medial nerve in wrist extension. If you want to control the same mouse without the same effort, you need a lighter mouse AND a better posture. Your flexors and extensors are contracting simultaneously to lock your wrist which is not how it was meant to be used, like the cycling example. PS2: also, NSAID pain killers in the first 3 days of the injury inhibit healing process. That is what Flash did on occasion.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
If you want your brain to learn very fast, very well coordinated movements very well, you need to do them very slowly, very relaxed, very controlled at a very slow tempo, and increase progressively the speed. Every single musician knows that.
Playing starcraft is on a mechanical level not so different from playing a hard piece of piano.
If I were to coach someone, i would put the game settings on very slow, and play very clearly, with absolutely zero tension, and zero unnecessary movement.
I know for a fact it would bring better results in a fraction of the practice time, and prevent injuries later down the line.
Yes, but we are not learning to play the harmonica, or exercising to gain muscle mass without losing range of motion. This is Starcraft. It has a batch input structure with 0.5 second buffer. If you are not up to speed, you won't be able to dodge lurkers with marines. That is not smart, that is plain wrong.
From a mechanical learning viewpoint, Starcraft and the harmonica are extremely similar. What you can do differs, but how you learn your instrument is virtually identical. It's exactly as Biff says. I've played various musical instruments for many years, and from that experience I can say that treating SC practice like musical practice is very smart and highly recommended. I can't put it into an exact percentage, but a good portion of the practice should focus on slow movements. This helps the brain truly understand what's going on by breaking down big complex tasks into digestible chunks. It's the same with SC as with music.
Theoretical SC knowledge also has strong overlaps to musical theory. Learning the name of musical notes and keys and what they sound like is extremely similar to learning the SC inputs, how the units move and what the terrain does or doesn't allow.
I can add that this way of practicing is so highly regarded nowadays that it's also being done this way in sports. Training is no longer just about pushing your muscles to the limit all the time. A good amount of focus is now on visualizing movement patterns. What use is a bigger muscle if you don't know what to use it for or how to optimize the direction of your force?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
If you want your brain to learn very fast, very well coordinated movements very well, you need to do them very slowly, very relaxed, very controlled at a very slow tempo, and increase progressively the speed. Every single musician knows that.
Playing starcraft is on a mechanical level not so different from playing a hard piece of piano.
If I were to coach someone, i would put the game settings on very slow, and play very clearly, with absolutely zero tension, and zero unnecessary movement.
I know for a fact it would bring better results in a fraction of the practice time, and prevent injuries later down the line.
Yes, but we are not learning to play the harmonica, or exercising to gain muscle mass without losing range of motion. This is Starcraft. It has a batch input structure with 0.5 second buffer. If you are not up to speed, you won't be able to dodge lurkers with marines. That is not smart, that is plain wrong.
From a mechanical learning viewpoint, Starcraft and the harmonica are extremely similar. What you can do differs, but how you learn your instrument is virtually identical. It's exactly as Biff says. I've played various musical instruments for many years, and from that experience I can say that treating SC practice like musical practice is very smart and highly recommended. I can't put it into an exact percentage, but a good portion of the practice should focus on slow movements. This helps the brain truly understand what's going on by breaking down big complex tasks into digestible chunks. It's the same with SC as with music.
Theoretical SC knowledge also has strong overlaps to musical theory. Learning the name of musical notes and keys and what they sound like is extremely similar to learning the SC inputs, how the units move and what the terrain does or doesn't allow.
There is a finer way to say it. It is analog. However the question is where do you get the experience if you don't recognise we rise on top of the shoulders of giants. Any person who doesn't put in the work will NEVER learn the instrument, like myself, lol. PS: also what your brain breaks down is a highly contentious subject. I know from my endocrinology professor people on good thyroid status have stronger synapses to learn information. You might be falling behind if you aren't in good form. This also takes practice by being a pro with health surveys.
On June 05 2025 20:47 Bonyth wrote: for some reasons people tend to think that you can close the gap in knowledge in a matter of days (when talking about teleporting kespa players to current tournaments) also same people: foreigners cannot get in ASL because the knowledge gap is too big
We believe what we want to believe, huh?
How long do you think it would take to close the knowledge gap? Beside theory, I only have my own little experience. I have been away for 4 years, it took me 3 months to catch up with the new meta (and I am nowhere near a genius, actually I found myself pretty bad). The most difficult was zvp. Rest is pretty much similar.
Sure, if you compare yourself from the past to yourself from the present, it would seem that way. But if you had imaginable friends who were your equals these 4 years ago and they continuosly played starcraft, you would have had 20% win rate against them now. With time, going up to 30% and slowly and slowly up towards 50%.
Anyways, perhaps I shouldnt have written my post in the first place, as I don't know it myself for sure, but if gaining that knowledge gap was so easy, wouldnt we see more foreigners near ASL level? I think the likes of Draco or Nony had the speed, multitasking, mechanics on top level, so what was really holding them from matching, or even touching, top korean level of play? Is it just that they were worse in the aspects above? Or was it more about game knowledge? (game knowledge = decisions that you make based on what you see and understanding what needs to be done to increase your odds for winning). I believe it's game knowledge and time they would have to invest to get to top kor level.
According to Nony, the reason he didn’t reach his full potential in Korea, was because all they did was grind games 12 hours a day. He didn’t really get to learn more from Koreans. So yes, it was game knowledge as far as I understand. Interestingly Idra thought it was good practice.
I really don’t think consistently practicing anything 12 hours a day is a productive way to learn.
I’m quite certain that 6 hours a day with method and a fresh mindset would get anyone further than 12 hours being miserable and just binging games.
You are not accounting for time. Those were teenagers back then. You can work teenagers on sugar drinks alone. Today you cannot get them to play well with a bad sleep the night prior.
That’s not the point. What i mean is you don’t learn very efficiently by doing something 12 hours a day. Conscious, focused practice is infinitely superior as a way to improve. No one becomes a concert pianist but just playing mindlessly 12 hours a day. They do very conscious practice, scales, exercises, studies, practice slowly, etc.
Esports are a young discipline, and the way they are approached is very primitive imo. The simple fact that no one practices StarCraft slowly, for example, tells you all you need to know.
Practice Starcraft slowly, what does that mean? The fact stands there is a huge resemblance between how Jaedong and my camping coach started basketball. Jaedong survived the qualifiers, I forgot the name. My camping coach said they couldn't win a game for two years. His star youth team was put against two year older players as qualification.
If you want your brain to learn very fast, very well coordinated movements very well, you need to do them very slowly, very relaxed, very controlled at a very slow tempo, and increase progressively the speed. Every single musician knows that.
Playing starcraft is on a mechanical level not so different from playing a hard piece of piano.
If I were to coach someone, i would put the game settings on very slow, and play very clearly, with absolutely zero tension, and zero unnecessary movement.
I know for a fact it would bring better results in a fraction of the practice time, and prevent injuries later down the line.
Yes, but we are not learning to play the harmonica, or exercising to gain muscle mass without losing range of motion. This is Starcraft. It has a batch input structure with 0.5 second buffer. If you are not up to speed, you won't be able to dodge lurkers with marines. That is not smart, that is plain wrong. PS: also your idea of injury is wrong. These kinds of injuries are due to repetitive motion. You could say bad posture although I cannot verify, was never good at physiotherapy. I cannot tell what Flash has. If you tell me I can tell you how it develops. There are strength trainers who bash bricks. Apparently, every microfracture increases trabecular bone density. It doesn't come at first. You need to put in the hours like Howard Levy says 10000h is necessary for mastery of the instrument. I've heard it for swimming, too. It is not related to the speed of the motion. Carpal tunnel is also a strain injury you can treat with a vertical mouse that you click buttons to the palm of your hand instead of towards the ground. This is also how you can develop a knee injury at cycling if you use opposing muscle groups simultaneously if your saddle position is wrong. Some swimmers like Michael Phelps have better RoM because they have some form of laxity - their muscles don't work as hard. For normal people without laxity, we have carpal tunnel due to stronger wrist bands that can pinch the medial nerve in wrist extension. If you want to control the same mouse without the same effort, you need a lighter mouse AND a better posture. Your flexors and extensors are contracting simultaneously to lock your wrist which is not how it was meant to be used, like the cycling example. PS2: also, NSAID pain killers in the first 3 days of the injury inhibit healing process. That is what Flash did on occasion.
Mate, i have been playing the violin since i am four years old, and played professionally for 20 years. I did auditions and competitions all my life. And I can guarantee you that playing Tchaikovsky concerto is as at the extremely least as difficult as playing SK terran with perfect macro, flawless micro and insane multitasking. As a matter of fact, it’s so hard that it’s borderline impossible if you haven’t started playing as a small kid AND have practiced every single day of your life.
I know plenty of people who have practiced by just playing an absurd lot, very fast, with no method. They end up injured, and they end up not playing as well as people who have method in what they do. They are tense (hence the injuries), it’s messy, there are lots of unnecessary muscular activity. And that leads me to think what they were doing in those houses in Korea was absolutely stupid. They injured and made life absolutely miserable for a bunch of very talented kids.
I don’t think esports as an industry has had time to learn how to approach learning mechanically demanding games the most efficiently. And i think that will come off esports continues to exist.
EPT
