“Maybe amongst amateurs… the best among amateurs? But I don’t think he’s progamer level.”
What almost seems like dramatic irony now, these were JangBi’s words describing Nal_rA’s play earlier this year. After seeing one of his recalls:
Yet in today’s match against BByong – who now has a win rate against Protoss of 45.45% and an overall win rate of 42.86% – some of JangBi’s recalls weren't much better.
JangBi still holds the ELO peak in PvT. When thinking of his versus Terran moments like this spring to mind:
In that time, almost two years ago, JangBi reached three Starleague finals in just 5 months. After losing two of them 3-1 to Bisu and the other to Luxury he began to slump to an extent. But slumping as players do, and as he did then, never have I seen a player slump so hard as JangBi in the last few months: + Show Spoiler [JangBi's Current Record] +
Finally breaking his 0-11 losing streak with a win over HoeJJa his luck didn’t turn as he lost to Hydra and SKT1’s rookie Terran, Ssak, putting him out of the MSL. In his next match game, over two weeks later at the beginning of Proleague round 2, against Saint, he secured another win. That made two wins in his last 15 games, both against Zergs who’s records are as following: + Show Spoiler [HoeJJa's Current Record] +
Nothing to get too hyped up about. But in his interview after his win over Saint, he seemed to be regaining confidence. He said he is a player of momentum, “When I win, I go on a winning streak, and when I lose, I fall into a losing one.” (See full interview here). So I hoped he was right, that he could find his way out of this. But it wasn’t to be as just three days later he lost to Stats.
When JangBi went up against Zero last week I assumed it would be a non-event, another failure, we can re-live some of it thanks to Zona’s commentary on the LR Thread:
Zona December 12 2010 14:13 jangbi = screwed but now he's moving out with 6 sairs - hunting down fast OL's but mass lings moving out for zero jangbi better hold his choke!
December 12 2010 14:16 jangbi taking his 3rd at 6 but zero adding more and more hydra morphing a few lurkers too I don't think Jangbi can hold
December 12 2010 14:18. jangbi on 7 gates now, shuttle loads up dt his observatory finishes zealot/archon needs to flee from lurkers outside jangbi's nat lurkers burrowing in range of the nat mass hydra join them jangbi sending out zealots one by one to die he still has no detection hydra moving into the nat! probes not being pulled hydra trying to snipe retreating templar
December 12 2010 14:18. hydra about to destroy jangbi's robo AND spinning core zero about to lose his lair in his main but jangbi losing his nat zero loses his lair! ol/hydra take their revent on the dt jangbi's 3rd not mining at all, 2 probes there idle
December 12 2010 14:21. jangbi not contrlling his airs [sic.] though and loses the last 3 of them zealot/templar drop on zero's main tries to storm the retreating drones, only gets 3 - huge storm drop at the nat though - probably 12 drone kills!
And as the game rolled on: He took a break to smile at the camera! Was it true, was JangBi really back? Zero is a top level Zerg, and he had been ahead all game, this was an amazing comeback.
So I went in to today’s game with high hopes, stupidly high hopes. Not too long into the game: + Show Spoiler [LR Thread] +
And though it was a long – and quite exciting – game, these turned out to be recurring themes. JangBi seemed slow to deal with and clean up harasses, he was careless with mines, at one point he engaged BByong’s army before his Zealot’s arrived, saving himself by a clutch stasis so his Dragoon’s could escape just as four or five Zealots arrived. Later we saw what looked like a “Bermuda recall” but JangBi cleverly took out all BByong’s detection so the recall did a lot more damage than expected destroying a lot of depots. But the game trawled on, and after a lot of expos being taken out by both players, JangBi finally gg’d while losing the last of his army in the final engagement. Before today BByong's TvP was 40% (okay, he'd only played ten TvP's in his career) but a better Terran would have ended that game far far sooner.
JangBi's decline can be seen most clearly from the following statistics: 2008 All - 68 wins - 32 losses (68.00%) PvP - 22 wins - 14 losses (61.11%) PvT - 27 wins - 10 losses (72.97%) PvZ - 19 wins - 8 losses (70.37%)
As pointed out by Mortality, his PvT has gone from being his best match-up to his worst match-up. He has gone from almost a 73% win-rate to a shocking 35%. His overall win-rate has plummeted in that time too, dropping lamost 13% each year. He has gone from almost S-class to, as he described Nal_rA, maybe amateur... "the best among amateurs but..."
In the last few days we got see some glimpses of the old JangBi, that epic spell micro – an example from today:
But what we have seen is only a shade of the old JangBi. Maybe January needs to try something different, when Bisu was slumping earlier this year Coach Park changed his practice routine, he didn't play Bisu for a few matches and when he came back he was on form again. Whatever January needs to do for one of her star players, she needs to do it soon. Not since Savior's fall a few years ago have I seen such a slump (and after the match-fixing scandal that can hardly be counted any more).
Jangbi has always been incredibly inconsistent. That game against Nada with the insane storms sort of felt like his debut as an s-class progamer. But around the time he was making it to starleague finals, he just sort of started slowly falling apart. He became just plain uninteresting a while ago. I got sick of seeing his retarded play that really didn't do justice to the monstrous potential he showed when he first made it big on the scene.
If you've been watching Jangbi over the last few years you would sense his loss in confidence. He lost his edge. To be honest, I never thought he was that good of a player. He definitely had good storms, but from what I recall early on in his career he would always rely on gimmicky builds like proxy reavers. His element of surprise is gone. :/
Jangbi was at his peak when I started to follow progaming, his actual state is quite sad. I don't think he is coming back, his slump was too deep for too long.
Protoss' hope lies with Kal, Best, Free and Pure (I'm biased towards Pure, really like his play when he wins). Despite his twelves games winning streak I'm still not convinced that Bisu is back, and Paralyze still has to prove his worth.
On December 15 2010 02:06 Caos2 wrote: Jangbi was at his peak when I started to follow progaming, his actual state is quite sad. I don't think he is coming back, his slump was too deep for too long.
Protoss' hope lies with Kal, Best, Free and Pure (I'm biased towards Pure, really like his play when he wins). Despite his twelves games winning streak I'm still not convinced that Bisu is back, and Paralyze still has to prove his worth.
Pure, Free and Best haven't been doing too well lately, I agree with you about Bisu, until I see him beat a few solid Terrans I won't be convinced he's fully back. I think by.Sun probably has more potential than Paralyze.
On December 15 2010 02:03 StarStruck wrote: If you've been watching Jangbi over the last few years you would sense his loss in confidence. He lost his edge. To be honest, I never thought he was that good of a player. He definitely had good storms, but from what I recall early on in his career he would always rely on gimmicky builds like proxy reavers. His element of surprise is gone. :/
Actually, I always thought of him as a more solid mechanical player. He never really seemed to have a terribly strong sense of timing to me, but was a very solid player who rose with the macro age of the game when it was really settling in.
I mean...compared to Stork, it's really really really unfair to call Jangbi gimmicky, lolol.
i guess this thread is wrong, i mean i would compare jangbi with fbh , they are exceptional players , you can't say he reached 3 finals by luck , and those skills are not forgotten , the fact that this thread is missing, is the confidence of the players , it's like a moving sand , u know that u can beat your opponent but by the fact that u question your self and your abilities u already lost the game even before it begins
I think we can agree on one thing though. He hasn't been a good player in a very long time and I don't see this changing anytime soon. Maybe more Protoss friendly maps would help, but somehow I doubt that.
It's always nice when Jangbi wins . His game against ZerO was amazing, one of the best comebacks I've seen in a while. I hope he gets out of this slump and dominates again.
I never understood the reason why he slumped so hard in the first place. I would love to see the old strong jangbi back, sadly I doubt it's going to happen.
On December 15 2010 02:47 dinmsab wrote: I never understood the reason why he slumped so hard in the first place. I would love to see the old strong jangbi back, sadly I doubt it's going to happen.
Yeah I don't get it. He was great... Wonder what changed.
The first starleague I watched from start to finish was Lost Saga MSL. I remember my 2 favourite players at that time were Jangbi and Luxury, and I was so happy when they both made the finals. After much consideration, I ultimately ended up cheering for Luxury in that match. But had I known Jangbi losing that match would make him become terrible (and I guess you could say Luxury winning that made him terrible as well, but it's hard to tell with the match fixing shenanigans), I wouldn't have wanted the series to go that way.
i feel so bad for janbi, hes one of my favorite protoss players i really really hope he gets out of his slump also he was one of the first players i watched when i started watching pro brood war a few years back
That was a great write-up. I really enjoyed it, thank you. I've only been following BW for about one and a half years so I wasn't really around when Jangbi was at his peak. I've seen VODs though and it's sad how poorly he's playing now.
stork always seemed to regard jangbi as better than him in interviews, citing practice game results and in-team rankings. seems to be a case of misfortune, nerves, and low morale? i don't know. at this point, it seems too late for him to get his shit together for good anymore.
Look at m18m, a player with the talent of stats who never got any playing room because of an unmodifiable a-team lineup. Jangbi's practice time has been lower than any other progamer's since his MSL silver, and that's only the coach's fault.
I'll tell you what's hurting Jangbi. It's kind of a bizarre case.
Let's go back and look at Jangbi's history. When he first came onto the scene he was rumored to be stronger in practice than Stork, and while his overall results didn't support this claim, his PvT results showed a player at least on par with Stork, one of the candidates for #1 all time PvT. Up until his series with NaDa (one of the best PvT series's of all time from both Protoss and Terran perspectives) he maintained 72% wins over Terran. In order to solidify his position as one of the dragons, Jangbi stepped up his game in PvZ and PvP. Just to toss some numbers out there, in the year before his series with NaDa, Jangbi went from an inconsistent 8-10 record in PvZ to a 31-22 record, winning 66% of his games that year and his PvP similarly went from an atrocious 5-11 to a respectable 30-26, winning 63% of his PvP that year.
Basically, Jangbi went from being a one match wonder to an S-class demolisher.
Now let's look at recent stats:
Jangbi is 6-6 in PvP in 2010. Okay, not great, but a number of those games were against solid PvP performers: Horang2 (1-1), Shuttle x2 (0-2), Kal x2 (2-0). That kind of record isn't especially bad when you consider half his games were played against players in the top 5 PvP ELO. Statistically, Jangbi's slip in PvP hasn't been too bad.
Jangbi is 14-10 (58%) in PvZ in 2010. Which is actually pretty good considering how strong ZvP has been. Granted, he's 4-5 in the past 6 months, but 9 games isn't much of a sample. Jangbi's PvZ ELO peak occurred in his match against Roro on May 25 of this year. PvZ is not what's holding Jangbi back.
I think now it should be obvious what the problem is. jangbi is 11-20 in PvT in 2010, a pathetic 35% for a former 70+% Terran killer. He's currently on a 7 game loss streak. Including offline qualifiers, Jangbi is 4-9 in PvT in individual leagues in 2010, 3-9 if you drop those games.
Jangbi's problem is that his best match-up became his worst. Auto win/strong/strong became amatuerish/moderately strong/moderate-moderately strong. Insubstantial dives in PvZ and PvP... HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE dive in PvT.
On December 15 2010 08:17 Mortality wrote: I'll tell you what's hurting Jangbi. It's kind of a bizarre case.
Let's go back and look at Jangbi's history. When he first came onto the scene he was rumored to be stronger in practice than Stork, and while his overall results didn't support this claim, his PvT results showed a player at least on par with Stork, one of the candidates for #1 all time PvT. Up until his series with NaDa (one of the best PvT series's of all time from both Protoss and Terran perspectives) he maintained 72% wins over Terran. In order to solidify his position as one of the dragons, Jangbi stepped up his game in PvZ and PvP. Just to toss some numbers out there, in the year before his series with NaDa, Jangbi went from an inconsistent 8-10 record in PvZ to a 31-22 record, winning 66% of his games that year and his PvP similarly went from an atrocious 5-11 to a respectable 30-26, winning 63% of his PvP that year.
Basically, Jangbi went from being a one match wonder to an S-class demolisher.
Now let's look at recent stats:
Jangbi is 6-6 in PvP in 2010. Okay, not great, but a number of those games were against solid PvP performers: Horang2 (1-1), Shuttle x2 (0-2), Kal x2 (2-0). That kind of record isn't especially bad when you consider half his games were played against players in the top 5 PvP ELO. Statistically, Jangbi's slip in PvP hasn't been too bad.
Jangbi is 14-10 (58%) in PvZ in 2010. Which is actually pretty good considering how strong ZvP has been. Granted, he's 4-5 in the past 6 months, but 9 games isn't much of a sample. Jangbi's PvZ ELO peak occurred in his match against Roro on May 25 of this year. PvZ is not what's holding Jangbi back.
I think now it should be obvious what the problem is. jangbi is 11-20 in PvT in 2010, a pathetic 35% for a former 70+% Terran killer. He's currently on a 7 game loss streak. Including offline qualifiers, Jangbi is 4-9 in PvT in individual leagues in 2010, 3-9 if you drop those games.
Jangbi's problem is that his best match-up became his worst. Auto win/strong/strong became amatuerish/moderately strong/moderate-moderately strong. Insubstantial dives in PvZ and PvP... HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE dive in PvT.
On December 15 2010 07:14 r33k wrote: January is a terrible coach, how is this news.
Look at m18m, a player with the talent of stats who never got any playing room because of an unmodifiable a-team lineup.
So that would make Oz's Cho also terrible because under his watch ggaemo and perfectman were both bad? Coaches aren't the only variables in the equation.
Jangbi has been going downhill for a while (just like FBH did the previous year), though he still has moments of brilliance, like those storms vs Zero. Maybe his passion for the game is starting to fade, maybe he's just not able to keep up well as in previous years, maybe its just a matter of moral/self esteem, or maybe its something in his personal life that is distracting him.
Bisu actually got a very long break... one that I bet teams like KHAN can't afford to put their players on, especially when PL is almost twice every week now.
But still, given that Jangbi's stats dictate that he's incredibly likely to lose when fielded, perhaps he should be given one.
On December 15 2010 16:08 Bifur wrote: I love it. JangBi should stop playing SC. I hope he retires and never returns to professional SC
On December 15 2010 07:14 r33k wrote: January is a terrible coach, how is this news.
Look at m18m, a player with the talent of stats who never got any playing room because of an unmodifiable a-team lineup.
So that would make Oz's Cho also terrible because under his watch ggaemo and perfectman were both bad? Coaches aren't the only variables in the equation.
Jangbi has been going downhill for a while (just like FBH did the previous year), though he still has moments of brilliance, like those storms vs Zero. Maybe his passion for the game is starting to fade, maybe he's just not able to keep up well as in previous years, maybe its just a matter of moral/self esteem, or maybe its something in his personal life that is distracting him.
Oz's coach Cho was regarded as bad for different reasons, people remember him now for how he overworked JD and how he did everything and anything to keep him. Apparently people choose not to remember or plain don't know how he basically pidgeonholed Anytime into going to the army or retiring.
Anytime being the team captain and senior player had its effects on the team mostly because of the position of respect among the team players that he held.
Jangbi was also a senior (although not the oldest player on the team considering that Khan used to have fbh and frozean aswell), but being a finalist Jangbi basically had his PL lineup spot always reserved, and with the lower and less supervised training time that Khan has his skills have completely deteriorated. Passion has nothing to do with this, and if it did he lost passion in 2009 after losing to Luxury in the finals.
When my friend introduced me to starcraft a few years ago, I was watching a PvP between Jangbi and someone and I couldn’t understand what was going on. Then Jangbi did two simultaneous storm drops and I’ve been hooked on starcraft since. Jangbi is still the only protoss I root for outside of the SKT house (with the exception of Nal_ra.) I may be overly optimistic, but I still see something in Jangbi that makes me believe he can come back. The things that made him great are all still there, just less polished than they once were. He will probably never get back to go-to-three-finals form, but he can turn it around to become a respectable force in proleauge. Maybe he can take a lesson from slump proof stork on how to be consistent. Don’t give up, Jangbi fighting!
On January 09 2011 16:04 Brutaxilos wrote: sigh, jangbi is actualyl my favorite progamer except hes just kinda bad now and i dont see his name show up anymore
Don't read this if you didn't watch tonight's SWL: + Show Spoiler +
I have much more faith now for my favorite Protoss player; I feel that tonight's performance in WL with 2 wins will give him much more confidence so that he will play even better in the future... We may even see an all-kill coming from him too if he keeps on going with this momentum! :DDD
On January 09 2011 16:15 Spica wrote: Don't read this if you didn't watch tonight's SWL: + Show Spoiler +
I have much more faith now for my favorite Protoss player; I feel that tonight's performance in WL with 2 wins will give him much more confidence so that he will play even better in the future... We may even see an all-kill coming from him too if he keeps on going with this momentum! :DDD
On January 09 2011 16:15 Spica wrote: Don't read this if you didn't watch tonight's SWL: + Show Spoiler +
I have much more faith now for my favorite Protoss player; I feel that tonight's performance in WL with 2 wins will give him much more confidence so that he will play even better in the future... We may even see an all-kill coming from him too if he keeps on going with this momentum! :DDD
On January 09 2011 16:15 Spica wrote: Don't read this if you didn't watch tonight's SWL: + Show Spoiler +
I have much more faith now for my favorite Protoss player; I feel that tonight's performance in WL with 2 wins will give him much more confidence so that he will play even better in the future... We may even see an all-kill coming from him too if he keeps on going with this momentum! :DDD
Guys you really shouldn't delude yourself into thinking something like 2 wins is going to "rebuild Jangbi's confidence." People have been saying that for over a year whenever he wins the occasionally impressive game and then continues to suck it up most of the time.
I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong when it happens, and I myself fell into the trap of "This is where he turns it around!" mentality with Jangbi himself, but Jangbi remains an extremely talented player who is completely lost amongst the current state of the game.
On January 10 2011 20:35 TwoToneTerran wrote: Guys you really shouldn't delude yourself into thinking something like 2 wins is going to "rebuild Jangbi's confidence." People have been saying that for over a year whenever he wins the occasionally impressive game and then continues to suck it up most of the time.
I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong when it happens, and I myself fell into the trap of "This is where he turns it around!" mentality with Jangbi himself, but Jangbi remains an extremely talented player who is completely lost amongst the current state of the game.
And i hope it says that way, at least until we get to trading period. FPL just starts and he does a 2-kill. I could have been like top 10 in my group if it wasn't for him.
Jangbi was probably my favorite player back when he was dominating in PvT. His 2 gate expand into reaver was so well timed and he had the best storms in history. It was like watching a bonjwa at work. Really sad to see him detoriate but it's probably due to his own motivation rather than his potential.
On January 10 2011 20:35 TwoToneTerran wrote: Guys you really shouldn't delude yourself into thinking something like 2 wins is going to "rebuild Jangbi's confidence." People have been saying that for over a year whenever he wins the occasionally impressive game and then continues to suck it up most of the time.
I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong when it happens, and I myself fell into the trap of "This is where he turns it around!" mentality with Jangbi himself, but Jangbi remains an extremely talented player who is completely lost amongst the current state of the game.
Why are you being so pessimistic about Jangbi? Sure he's slumping hard nowadays and is indeed quite lost in his games right now, but it won't kill anyone to still have hope in a very talented player. You may call it naive hope or something along the lines of that, but even a single win can boost confidence for a player. Regardless if they've been losing their past 50 games and then suddenly get a win, perhaps that one win will motivate that player to try to perform even better in the future, so we can see an improved performance from them. That certainly doesn't mean that with 2 wins, it's like "Ahhhhh Jangbi's back!!!", but it doesn't hurt to still cheer on and support an excellent player who's just lost his spark.
I'm not trying to pick a fight with you or defending Jangbi for great justice or anything; I'm just saying that no matter who is in a major slump, there should be at least a little faith that they will do better in the future, even if they fall over and over again. Root for the underdogs! ^^
Man I loved watching Jangbi's PvT. It was so aggressive and I always felt he was the favorite no matter who he played when he got matched with a terran. Him and Stork used to be the ultimate vsT duo and both on Khan too...now it's just Stork.
Nice writeup! I remember when I first heard of Jangbi was in an interview with Stork, where Stork was saying how Jangbis PvT was better than his because he was faster! Hopefully he can return to that peak sometime again
I don't understand why people obsess so much over that game. JangBi didn't do any miraculous comeback, it was just Fantasy being terribad. Him floating 1500 minerals on two base can't be attributed to JangBi being good, both players just... played a terribad fifth set. Nothing else. Even if he did win the gold, he didn't really deserve it, though I guess neither did Fantasy so whatever.
EPT
JangBi’s words describing ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xguVf.jpg)
BByong – who now has a win rate against Protoss of 45.45% and an overall win rate of 42.86% – some of 
Luxury he began to slump to an extent. But slumping as players do, and as he did then, never have I seen a player slump so hard as ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/v91ii.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Cebn9.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GhjpQ.jpg)
Zona’s commentary on the LR Thread:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/h6s2a.jpg )
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/qpMiE.jpg )
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Lvjyf.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pmC8D.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/20W6n.jpg)
. His game against ZerO was amazing, one of the best comebacks I've seen in a while. I hope he gets out of this slump and dominates again.
