[Shanghai Major] Group Stage Day 2 - Page 5

On February 26 2016 04:50 Azarkon wrote:
Ehome looked bad, though not sure whether they looked much worse than they did at MDL, because the games then were pretty bad, too, as we all said at the time.

But the obvious change from MDL to now is the performance of other teams, such as Secret, who looks to have improved, and the Koreans, who look to have improved several times over.

Were this to hold for other Western teams, then this tournament is already decided - the Chinese are going to lose, the West is going to win, with the Koreans having a shot at taking it too but not necessarily a big one because Secret is, after all, not even one of the three best Western teams in the tournament.

We have every cause to trust that the bulk of the teams ought to be playing at a higher level than they did a month ago because of the fact that this is a larger tournament and the fact that they've had a month to prepare.

But we've seen, today, that Ehome is actually playing worse while CDEC is still as bad as they were before, so this lack of improvement on the side of the Chinese teams is specific to their region. One explanation is the time of the tournament - ie after new years for China - but another explanation is simply that this is the same old skill they've had since the middle of 2015, and thus it's just a return to normal after MDL, which Western teams didn't prepare for.

Whatever the case, I want to say the following: last year when they held a tournament at this time, the best Chinese team in the group was actually Xiao8's retired players team, while the Koreans were dead last in the tournament.