The Stephano Fan Club - Page 151

On January 25 2012 23:24 Maeh wrote:
Live now http://fr.justin.tv/mstephano with no lags !!!!

On January 26 2012 00:20 Ylrahc wrote:

Stephano stop torturing Bling you'll upset him :s

On January 26 2012 07:04 BatCat wrote:
Yay, Stephano vss MaNa coming up! Two friends duking it out!

On January 25 2012 12:42 Olinimm wrote:

Seriously, come on. I mean I know this is a fanclub but seriously.

Anyway Stephano is immensely talented so I do hope he continues to play, but if he does decide to pursue his studies, I wish him luck in that as well.

On January 26 2012 07:13 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:


He is one of the best Western players in the world on 3 hours. Practicing, for example, 4 hours is more than just the practice you would gain from 2 hours plus 2 hours, so if he were to commit to practicing, say, 10-16 hours, his skill would increase exponentially. The amount of skill he would be wielding then would be more than enough to smash all but the very best into the ground and even then it would be a tough fight.
Oh, by the way, I'm not a major fan. I just know that if Stephano was about 5-10 times better or so (if the skill cap is even that high), no one would be able to beat him.

On January 26 2012 07:13 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:


He is one of the best Western players in the world on 3 hours.

On January 26 2012 07:49 Ylrahc wrote:

He is at the Millenium gaming house atm, playing dozen of games a day, streams, custom games, tournaments, and living in a SC2 oriented environment. It is safe to say he spends most of his time thinking SC2, so this 3 hours a day was maybe true 6 months ago, it is definitely not true any more, especially since he went pro. He can't train more than he can now w/o being sick of the game.

That said, he is most probably the best foreigner, with no weak matchup, one of the world's best ZvP and is the only foreigner who (to me) looks like he plays like a korean (timing, hability to steamroll even the toughest opponents, coming back from almost lost situations, etc). So yeah, he may not be the best player in the world, he may not even be top5 (though it's arguable ), but he is for sure up there in the top20 or smg.

On January 26 2012 10:10 The_Darkness wrote:
On the whole practice issue, I think it's possible that Stephano practices somewhere in the range of 3-4 hours a day.

If you have an unusual ability to focus you can get more out of your time than most people, which I'm guessing is likely the case with Stephano. Look at, for instance, his ability to respond to drops (which is vastly superior to every other foreign zerg); he and Leenock are the best zergs in world at doing so IMO. (Since Leenock is in high school he likely also practices no more than 4 to 6 hours a day at most during the school year.) It seems like, no matter what's going on, he almost always instantly responds to drops. I think this comes from his ability to multitask well (which I would guess that correlates fairly well with how good your working memory is) but also it's just a matter of an unusual focus on the task at hand.

In other fields, 3 or 4 hours of practice is completely reasonable. In music for example, the best pianists in the world often seriously practice no more than 4 hours a day. Much more than that and, at least for music, there seems to be rapidly diminishing returns. I'm not saying the same holds true for Starcraft but music like Starcraft is complicated and generally very difficult to do extremely well. If so, then pro players might not be accomplishing as much as they think they are by practicing 12 hours a day. On the other hand, because video games unlike music are, for most people, much more "interesting" -- pracitcing an instrument requires tons of repitition; every game in Starcraft even if broadly the same has loads of variety; thus it may be less of a chore to practice starcraft (for most people of course, not all); thus it's possible that some can focus while practicing Starcraft II for a much longer period than most top musicians can when practicing an instrument.

In any event, as a big time fanboy, I've suspected for a long time that Stephano is some sort of genius at Starcraft, and this allows him to get away with practicing so little. Putting aside all his tournament success, although his accomplishments on the ladder are dismissed by his detractors, his 64-1 run on the EU ladder and his +70% win rate in Korea are both staggering achievements. A 64-1 run speaks for itself. With respect to his KR ladder accomplishments, for a foreigner to go to Korea and have the second highest win percentage of any zerg on the KR ladder immediately is inconceivable, especially when Stephano's practice partners are effectively just EU masters level and GM players on the ladder. (I would liken his success on ladder to someone graduating from highschool and then starting as an all star in the NBA as a rookie.) Every other foreigner has taken quite a while to adjust -- including those with previous Korean experience, and their results have not been close to Stephano's even after they get used to the play.

In any event, unless Stephano has a bunch of smurf accounts (which I don't think he does -- his style is readily identifiable -- I feel like the community would know if he was smurfing) you can see how many games he's playing on a daily basis and the number of games he plays is in line with practicing 3 to 4 hours a day. When he plays more than that it's often because he's playing several tournaments in the same day.

In sum, I tend to believe that on average he practices 3 to 4 hours a day because he has an unusual ability to concentrate (even for a pro gamer) and is a genius