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On April 06 2012 16:58 NoctemSC wrote:Very good quality first post, welcome to TeamLiquid  I honestly believe many foreigners have the potential to be as good as Koreans. Notice how I said potential? The reason for that is simply because Koreans practices A LOT more than 99% of foreigner pros. Practice makes perfect as the old adage would say. Stephano only practicing 3-4 hours a day and beating top tier Code S players shows this. I'm by no means a Stephano fanboy but realistically, could you imagine the beast that would be awoken if Stephano played as much as the Korean pro players? TL&DR Koreans practice a lot more than Foreigners.
1. He practices more than that. Don't kid yourself. Also, way to go Stephano for starting this stupid rumor. He has said in numerous interviews that practically all he does is play Starcraft. He says he doesn't have any other hobbies except working out sometimes and eating. Either he has very short days or his practice regiment lasts a bit longer than 3 hours.
2. Stephano has looked extremely mortal lately, especially considering his poor MLG and Iron Squid tournaments. Not really sure how he stacks up to top tier koreans, as he hasn't played very many of them recently (when he does, he usually loses).
3. Diminishing returns. An extra hour of practice has a much larger impact on results going from 4 to 5 hours than from 12 to 13. In fact, many koreans probably practice too much. Stress and frustration, as well as the tunnel vision that results from long practice sessions, can have a negative impact on results.
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Joke post?
There isn't a single relevant foreign T. Kas and Thorzain are at least 1 or 2 orders magnitude worse than the top Korean T.
The only somewhat competent player is Stephano. But he's never been forced to play GSL, where playing the same 2-3 builds is the fastest way to get figured out and knocked out.
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Nigger please, check the 2012 premier tournament results:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RyMy4.jpg)
User was banned for this post.
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I like your optimism. But, sometimes it is best to look at things realistically so you don't get let down as much.
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When a foreigner wins a GSL then.
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the GSL is a format that favours training infrastructure and structured team support. Koreans will dominate GSL, because they're currently the only ones with that kind of backing.
In any other tournament format, Foreigners can and will pull of frequent upsets. They won't consistently beat top Koreans four matchups in a row, but the skill gap is close enough that a good day can lead to good Foreign results.
Are Koreans still the top players? Without a doubt. Is that skill level insurmountable? The results speak for themselves - no.
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In general, most Koreans are still better than most foreigners.
However, the skill gap is still much smaller than what it had been in BW right before the SC2 beta. Back then, even dominant foreigners like Idra struggled against even B-teamers of major teams, and no one except for a few wild-card Chinese players could even comprehend taking a single game off of a decent A-teamer.
SC2 hasn't reached that point yet, but it has the potential. Foreigners actually were somewhat competitive for a while during the early years of BW history, though there just weren't as many events aside from WCG for them to compete against Koreans compared to what we currently have in the SC2 scene. There was the AMD/Hexatron team that actively tried to bring progamers like Rekrul, Elky, and Nazgul to compete in Korea. Foreign players could take games off of Koreans in the early WCGs.
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i agree with kennigit. also using the IPL as an example of how the foreigner scene is doing is just wrong. besides a few top Europeans they are ALL at copenhagen games and the gathering this weekend, not at IPL.
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On April 06 2012 17:16 aFganFlyTrap wrote:
i agree with kennigit. also using the IPL as an example of how the foreigner scene is doing is just wrong. besides a few top Europeans they are ALL at copenhagen games and the gathering this weekend, not at IPL.
Can you name the ones that you think would have a chance at winning IPL4? Because there are more than a dozen koreans in attendance that I wouldn't be too surprised to take it, and there are even more that aren't attending.
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On April 06 2012 17:14 eviltomahawk wrote:
In general, most Koreans are still better than most foreigners.
However, the skill gap is still much smaller than what it had been in BW right before the SC2 beta. Back then, even dominant foreigners like Idra struggled against even B-teamers of major teams, and no one except for a few wild-card Chinese players could even comprehend taking a single game off of a decent A-teamer.
SC2 hasn't reached that point yet, but it has the potential. Foreigners actually were somewhat competitive for a while during the early years of BW history, though there just weren't as many events aside from WCG for them to compete against Koreans compared to what we currently have in the SC2 scene. There was the AMD/Hexatron team that actively tried to bring progamers like Rekrul, Elky, and Nazgul to compete in Korea. Foreign players could take games off of Koreans in the early WCGs.
The gap right nowis smaller not only because of state of the scene (most top progamers playing BW), but also because of the volatile nature of the game. Grrrr and Elky were outliers; they were successful before the heavy practice regimen became standard.
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On April 06 2012 17:13 WolfintheSheep wrote:
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the GSL is a format that favours training infrastructure and structured team support. Koreans will dominate GSL, because they're currently the only ones with that kind of backing.
In any other tournament format, Foreigners can and will pull of frequent upsets. They won't consistently beat top Koreans four matchups in a row, but the skill gap is close enough that a good day can lead to good Foreign results.
Are Koreans still the top players? Without a doubt. Is that skill level insurmountable? The results speak for themselves - no.
Practically "any other tournament format" means that koreans travel across the world and most of them rely on a translator for everything. Just because some foreigners, who are more used to traveling and can get by on english, do well in a few matches at MLG doesn't mean that the skillgap isn't large.
The GSL is the only place where jetlag, a messy schedule, shitty living, and fatigue doesn't affect the play, generally. Most people fly out for weekend tournaments a few days beforehand, with all that entails, while foreigners often spend months in korea but still can't get anywhere in the GSL. (most stay in a teamhouse too, but that doesn't seem to help)
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On April 06 2012 17:10 00 wrote:Nigger please, check the 2012 premier tournament results:
Was that necessary?
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On April 06 2012 17:07 Kennigit wrote:
Really depends how you want to look at the sets of players. Can the top 1% of foreigners compete with the top 1% of koreans? On average probably not. Can the top 50% of foreigners (pros) compete with the top 50% of koreans? I'd argue yes, and it's shown regularly in show matches, clan leagues etc. Ret 3-0ed Ganzi the other night in a show match. Ganzi is not MMA, but he is high level. Huk regularly beats excellent koreans, stephano, thorzain etc etc.
Hey now, I love HuK and am in no way a fan of Stephano, but HuK has sadly never beaten Stephano in a tournament game (to my knowledge atleast, I believe HuK is 0-4 against Stephano) and I doubt they have played on the ladder much. That being said, HuK is also 1-2 against Artosis' Zerg in tournament games...
Koreans fighting!
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Sadly, at the moment, Koreans are still too far away. In my opinion there are several reasons for that. Firstly, Korea is a single country, and it has almost as many players as the whole Europe server. That is a huge advantage for the Koreans, as there's a larger player pool, who all speak the same language. If any country in Europe had the same amount of people playing, Koreans wouldn't be impossible to defeat. Secondly, there's the cultural difference. As I've heard(I'm not sure), Koreans may practice for 10+ hours, which is crazy. This may be like that because of the parents who force their children to get to top universities, without caring about their emotions and/or childhood.
If we take a look at CS 1.6, it has a large player pool in Europe among several countries, which hasn't completely made it uneven for other countries(ofc Sweden's imba there, just because it is/was so popular there). Right now, the only problem with Koreans vs International scene is, in my opinion, the player pool. If all countries would have that large proportion of players as Korea, there wouldn't a country whose metagame is too far ahead of others.
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United States97276 Posts
On April 06 2012 17:31 Hall0wed wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 17:07 Kennigit wrote:
Really depends how you want to look at the sets of players. Can the top 1% of foreigners compete with the top 1% of koreans? On average probably not. Can the top 50% of foreigners (pros) compete with the top 50% of koreans? I'd argue yes, and it's shown regularly in show matches, clan leagues etc. Ret 3-0ed Ganzi the other night in a show match. Ganzi is not MMA, but he is high level. Huk regularly beats excellent koreans, stephano, thorzain etc etc. Hey now, I love HuK and am in no way a fan of Stephano, but HuK has sadly never beaten Stephano in a tournament game (to my knowledge atleast, I believe HuK is 0-4 against Stephano) and I doubt they have played on the ladder much. That being said, HuK is also 1-2 against Artosis' Zerg in tournament games... Koreans fighting!
I dont think he was saying Huk beats stephano. I think he meant to say that Stephano and ThorZain are examples of players like Huk that can beat Koreans. Just written a little confusing but I think this interpretation would make a little more sense
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I dont think so, not yet. Koreans still seem to be dominant in terms of pulling all the way through a tourney and actually winning it, but I have felt like there is a trend towards more 'foreigners' advancing higher (semis etc) as time goes on. Cant wait to see what IPL4 will bring today :D
On April 06 2012 16:48 Caephus wrote:
Foreigners Fighting!
…and when they’re all knocked out, go MKP.
And this.
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On April 06 2012 16:50 Teoita wrote:
Some of the very top foreigner players have the ability to take a series of koreans, but until you see most foreigners consitently placing as high in GSL as koreans you can't say there isn't a skill gap between the two groups of players.
Basically this. We scrape by trying to keep 1 foreigner in GSL and thats mostly because of invites.
On April 06 2012 17:23 mrtomjones wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 17:10 00 wrote:Nigger please, check the 2012 premier tournament results: Was that necessary?
Sure as heck beat down the OP thinking foreigners have arrived.
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On April 06 2012 17:18 zefreak wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 17:16 aFganFlyTrap wrote:
i agree with kennigit. also using the IPL as an example of how the foreigner scene is doing is just wrong. besides a few top Europeans they are ALL at copenhagen games and the gathering this weekend, not at IPL. Can you name the ones that you think would have a chance at winning IPL4? Because there are more than a dozen koreans in attendance that I wouldn't be too surprised to take it, and there are even more that aren't attending.
i dont think you understand my point -_-
but to humour you ill give you a list of player that are not attending IPL
happy
kas
cloud
lucifron
thorzain
bratok
titan
nightend
grubby
snute
morrow
elfi
turuk
happyzerg
and these are just SOME of the names as CPG and TG12
to name some more.
naniwa
nerchio
fraer
mana
biGs
diestar
strelok
satiini
socke
darkforce
beastqt
lalush
goody
dbs
tarson
hasuobs
xlord
delphi
feast
naama
(if you even DARE say "but none of them will win!" then you sir are an idiot and do not understand what we are actually talking about.)
you will never get 90% of europe and korea at 1 tournament to gauge how well both the scenes fair vs each other. thats why using tournaments like IPL to compare both the scenes is silly. sure you can speculate but dont use IPL as a reason to why your argument is correct.
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Not really. Compare the best of foreigners vs the best of Koreans back in April 2011 for the Korea vs The World showmatch where we barely lost, it wouldn't be anywhere near that close today I feel.
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Of course it hasn't. Not even close, and it never will either. There will only ever be a select few compare in any way but even they won't be at the top top level.
What a silly question.
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EPT
