After a month without any meaningful Starcraft, the EVER OSL Offline Preliminaries were finally upon us on the 30th of September. Every player who didn't manage to get seeded into the OSL had to fight their way through a 8(or 9)-man bracket in an unforgiving single elimination, Best-of-3 format in order to qualify for this season's OSL Round of 36. It's the stage of the tournament where the most upsets are bound to happen, with the unknown rookies and B-teamers eager to prove their skills against the established pros, striving to beat them by any means possible.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the qualifiers had its share of surprises once again. Many players who were supposed to get into the OSL somehow managed not to, and we also have ourselves a couple of new, definitely unexpected Royal Road candidates. I'm sure you all are eager to know wether or not your favorites made it in and who managed to fail miserably, so here are the results of the preliminaries, with my personal(and biased) comments.
Although this group didn't have any of the top names in it, it still was quite competitive with Lomo, Movie and to some extent SoO all having a chance to win the group. The only real surprise in the group was 45[Name] beating SoO. The rest of the group was pretty straight-forward. In the group finals, Movie managed to defeat Lomo 2-0. This can without a doubt be attributed to Lomo's lack of practice time due to his vacation in Canada with his best friend. Group B + Show Spoiler +
This group didn't have many surprises. Which is quite sad in and of itself, since Midas, once the best Terran in the scene, lost to SangHo of all people, and I don't think of it as an upset. GuemChi was, at least to me, the favorite to win the group, and that he did. GuemChi and SangHo seem to be clashing quite a bit lately; Who could forget their epic elimination race PvP from a few months back? A new rivalry in the making, perhaps.
Group C's biggest name is definitely Sea, who almost all the foreigners and even some Team Liquid moderators love. Given HoGiL's subpar ZvT and Sea's always solid TvZ, Sea definitely was the favorite to win this group. However, it seems like Sea has decided to start failing in the individual leagues a bit earlier than is typical for him, and hence we instead get to see HoGiL in the Ro36. Admittably, HoGiL's run was pretty nice, going 6-0 while playing against all three races. Still, I'd much rather see Sea in the Ro36 than HoGiL, who's just another Zerg to me. Sure, his ZvP is decent, but in this era where the Protoss are suffering in general, that's not going to help him much. He's just going to lose to any decent Zerg or Terran he comes accross.
This is a group that should make Plexa the fans of the old-school happy. After destroying the Proleague back in Round one, Pusan fell off the map again for the rest of the season. However, here he is, sweeping his entire group. I would say that given his recent form, both keke and hyvaa would have been the favorites over Pusan, but here he proves at least myself wrong. Speaking of keke, he gave walkovers in both the MSL and the OSL preliminaries. I wonder what that is all about...
I'm positive that most people expected UpMaGiC to advance from this group; I sure did. However, things don't always go as planned, and both him and FailFist lost to mediocre Protoss players in the semi-finals. This gives us an "exciting" PvP group finals, and we somehow get to see... Jaehoon in the Ro36. Seriously, Jaehoon? Well, I'd take Jaehoon over Spear any time of the day, but he still is really bad, and I can't help but think that Ro36 is the furthest he gets.
Oh god. FrOzean? CuteAngel? In The OSL? Oh god! That's all I can say. The overwhelming favorite to win this group was Iris, but he somehow lost to a relative rookie in Major, who FrOzean somehow managed to beat. It truly is painful seeing FrOzean advance instead of Iris. There are a few other players of note in this group, namely GosI[Flying], who after all-killing MBCGame Hero in the STX Masters hasn't really done much, and these qualifiers aren't an exception to that. Tempest was pretty hyped as an amazing macro player a while back, but he really hasn't done anything useful yet, and continues that trend here.
The only players here who I'd have given a decent chance to qualify into the OSL were RorO and July. Rightfully, they also played in the finals. Unfortunately, July's ZvZ has been quite terrible as of late, and hence, for the disappointment of many, RorO advances instead of him. I'm sure that July would give us a far more entertaining OSL with his amazing ZvP. RorO is quite mediocre in just about every way, and I don't expect him to get past the Ro36. Besides these two, there really weren't other notable players other than Sair, but he's always been quite subpar and his performance here isn't impressing yet again.
In my opinion, the biggest favorite here by far was sKyHigh. To most people, the most noticeable player in this group is BoxeR, but I really didn't think his form would be good enough to defeat sKyHigh's monstrous TvT (9-1 last 10). 815's ZvZ is awesome and his ZvP is quite good, but his ZvT is clearly his weakest match-up. It's unfortunate to the BoxeR fans, but this group went as expected; sKyHigh defeating both BoxeR and 815 to claim a place in his first OSL. He's definitely a potential candidate for the Royal Road.
This was a pretty subpar group, with Pure taking it as would be expected. Much hasn't been playing well for a while now, and losing to the horribly named maestro (don't steal other people's nicknames!) wasn't as big of a surprise as it would have been a year ago. aMeBa, also known as Ace, won a few games for MBC in the proleague just before the end of the season, and was hyped quite a bit. It'd have been nice to see how he would do in the OSL, but at least for now we'll just have to content with seeing him in just the Proleague, if there. ToSsGirL is a girl, and hence everyone likes her. It's too bad that she really isn't on the level of most of the players in even this subpar pool.
When looking at these results, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. Kal's best match-up used to be PvZ, yet he somehow manages to lose to... Just? Just who is he, anyway? This was one of the biggest upsets in the entire preliminaries. With Kal out, there really would be 3 people with a chance in this group; Miracle, RuBy, and LuCifer. Ruby joined ACE a while back, so you'd imagine that he wouldn't be able to perform as well as he used to. Still, he manages to defeat both the up-and-coming Miracle and Lucifer, who was hyped as one of the best new Protoss-players, until Jaedong completely destroyed him in the Arena MSL. A highly surprising group at least to me, hopefully Ruby won't just get rolled over like he has done in the past leagues he's been in.
Reality! I couldn't believe that the results of this group could be reality. Free should have had a complete lock on this group, with Reach and Modesty the other players with a sliver of a chance. But Free gets 2-0'd by Reality! Really? A largery disappointing group overall, with Reach losing to some no-name and with Free failing to get into yet another OSL. I really hope that Reality isn't in reality just another s2 who really doesn't do anything but lose to any decent player. However, he did manage to defeat Free, so there is hope that he won't be a total waste of time. At least I hope so...
This group's results make me so sad. sAviOr, after saying how he's going to win a Starleague, manages to lose to someone called Bubble. Bubble. Seriously, Bubble? The group was suited to you so well and you manage to lose to Bubble. Well, albeit being the biggest upset of the group, it's not the only one. PianO somehow managed to lose to Someday. Then again, his TvP is abysmally bad, but I didn't think it was that bad. Maybe someday we will hear something more about Someday. Because of these upsets, the player advancing from this group is ggaemo! He's Oz's second best Zerg... sadly, their only Zerg player is Jaedong, so ggaemo is kind of like a B-teamer. A truly depressing group, let's hope that ggaemo doesn't get overrun by everything and everyone. You can always hope...
This group's favorite to win was definitely Horang2, although Yellow definitely was the player most people were cheering for. Sadly, he managed to disappoint us with (yet another) horrible performance, losing 2-0 to someone called Moon. And no, it's not the WC3 pro, either. Another upset was TheZerg losing 2-0 in the first round to another no name. Not a good group for Zergs, apparently. Well, luckily currently the best and most deserving player got through, and hopefully we will get to enjoy some more of his entertaining, cheesy creative play in this OSL.
This is another group where the favorite had no problems in getting through to the OSL. After getting a walkover against Wuk, who he most likely would have destroyed had they played, he went undefeated against the newcomer SKT Zerg n.Die_soo, and Shuttle. Shuttle is most famous for his miraculous semi-final run in the GOM Season 1, but he really is just a worse version of BackHo. Which is why I really don't understand how Baby managed to lose to him. After his series against JangBi, I really thought his TvP would have been more than enough to take on Shuttle.
During his MSL run, I really started liking fOrGG's play. His terrible micro and amazing macro would always make me think about iloveoov, even though I wasn't around back when he dominated. That's why, it really was quite disappointing when he started losing everywhere. So Oz got rid of him, like they've done to all of their good players besides Jaedong. I really hope forGG starts performing like he used to now that he's getting used to KT. Most of the reason for his slump is the fact that he totally forgot to play TvP, though, and by the results of this group, you really can't judge wether or not that has changed at all. Nada was the fan-favorite of many, but he's been playing so badly as of late that this group as well was taken by its clear favorite.
Really has been here quite a few times. He seemingly easily gets through a subpar OSL qualifier group, and then completely fails to deliver with his predictable extremely standard hardcore macro style. I really was looking forward to CJ's new hope of Protoss, Snow qualifying, or even the amazingly named Killer. Instead, we get eSTRO's "Ace" player, who really is like a Flash that's not good; He'll easily defeat bad and terrible players, but will lose to every better player. I really don't see Really getting too far in this league, either.
Ever since his MSL victory, Luxury has been slumping like crazy, losing just about everywhere instantly. However, lately he has been playing a bit closer to his full potential, and his effortless qualifying into this fall's EVER OSL definitely reinforces the thoughts that he might be coming back to at least a decent form, even though the group wasn't the most difficult. KT is looking really strong this season, by the way, and it'd be a complete shock if we didn't see them do well in the upcoming Proleague. Besides Luxury, there really weren't any other notable players. You might want to mention Tester, who's been playing terribly for eSTRO for years now, but overall it was quite a lackluster group.
The last couple of groups really haven't had any surprises in them, and this group definitely doesn't change the trend. The recent MSL-champion Calm had no trouble taking this group and securing his place in his first OSL. It's quitea shocker if you think about it; Calm is such a good player, but still hasn't ever been into the OSL. The furthest he has ever gotten before was the OnGameNet Star Challenge back in 2007. A potential Royal Roader, without a doubt. Casy was the favorite of many people in this group, but his TvP has always been depressing, and the trend continues here, as he loses to a rookie Protoss 2-0.
If the few last groups were quite predictable as far as the advancing players go, this group definitely was the complete opposite. The biggest shock in the group was definitely brought upon us by TheRock failing to qualify into the OSL, where he has been about 4782082 times. Seriously though, BeSt somehow lost to DDONG, whose name, I've heard, literally means "poo" in Korean. Oh, how far the silver medallist from just over a year ago has fallen. Even in the KeSPA rank, he is behind BackHo of all people, essentially endangering his position as one of the Six Dragons. Because of this gigantic failure, we now get the horribly named Barracks(who ret actually managed to beat in iccup a while back) into the OSL Ro36. Despite being a Royal Road candidate, I really don't think we're going to see anything special out of him in this OSL.
Huyk used to be the laughing stock of most of the community for quite a while, mostly because of him blowing advantages in ridiculous ways. He's known to have a lot of problems with his nerves, but he finally seems to have gotten them together, ever since he managed to all-kill STX Soul in the STX Masters Cup Finals. On paper, great was the favorite here, but it really doesn't come as a surprise that Hyuk managed to defeat him; Hyuk used to be an almost successful ZvZ-sniper back in the day, after all. Xellos dropping out of course disappoints the fans of the old-school players, but he really isn't on the level of most of the top players anymore, and I for one am excited to see what Hyuk has to offer for us in this upcoming OSL.
After the shocking Group S, we're back to the predictability. JangBi clearly outclasses everyone in this group. HoeJJa and Notice are the other two players of note. Notice did really well in the beginning of this year, and was looking like a new STX star in the rising. However, he's been doing a bit worse recently, and might just turn out to be just another mediocre player like Lucifer for example. HoeJJa also caught many people's attention with his creative play, utilizing burrow effectively, but he really hasn't been able to do anything significant in any league yet. His most notable achievement up to this point is his Ro8 spot in the GOM Season 2, where he got completely destroyed by Bisu.
Firebathero. Love him or hate him, but he definitely gives some highly entertaining interviews. He has been slumping heavily for quite a while now, but at least this season's OSL starts kindly for him. He even managed to beat a Protoss! The rest of the group was pretty lackluster, with MVP being most well-known for always having his mouth open like a fish, and Tazza once beating Bisu but doing nothing otherwise. No surprises here.
Another group with the favorite winning, but I'm actually quite sad about that. I've had my eye on yCh ever since his epic game against Free, and I really would have liked to see how yCh manages to do in the most prestigeous Starcraft league in the world. Even though he managed to beat Mind in the first game, Mind will be the one advancing. Well, let's hope that Mind actually plays as well as he should and makes a deep run this time around. When he's playing at his best, he really is one of the most entertaining Terran players to watch.
This is the group that HiyA really should have won, he couldn't have hoped for an easier group. Instead, he fails in yet another individual league, leaving Jaedong awfully lonely in yet another Starleague. Shine isn't a bad player and he's played some good games, but he really is quite a subpar player. Then again, I think I still prefer him over HiyA in this Starleague, just because I like mediocre Zergs more than mediocre Terrans. Apparently, now that the Terran Shine retired, Shine[KaL] can finally be called just Shine. Progamers with their creative nicknames...
Race Distribution of the Preliminaries
7 7 10
As we can see, the results are a lot more even than in the last preliminaries. What is this, Protoss isn't extinct? In fact, it is no longer a massive amount of Zergs infesting the Starleagues, but we rather seem to be getting quite a few Terrans, with a couple of complete newcomers as well. It's kind of interesting how it's this even in the OSL compared to the MSL preliminaries, I wonder if the maps have something to do with this?
We're finally done with each group! First, see the most interesting parts of the winners' interviews here, and then let's see who the players we are going to see in the EVER OSL are:
As we can see, the lack of seeds really hurts the Protoss even though there were just as many Protosses as there were Zergs advancing from the preliminaries. Even so, the race destribution isn't that bad, and with the exception of a couple of Protoss players I won't mention, this OSL is stacked with just about every top player you could ask for, and is hence shaping up to be one of the best OSLs EVER.
So after all of this, how did the OSL Round 1 groups turn out? Well thanks to GTR, here are the groups;
Good read. A good amount of players I like have made it actually so I'm pretty satisfied, though maybe 1/3rd of said players were already seeded, haha. I still have faith in ToSsGirL :3 She'll bring it someday.
Few no-namers getting further than I thought. I'd have killed to have more Protoss, especially Flying get further in. Would really like to see any P in the finals.
Though I'm very, very happy to see Mind advancing. Probably my overall favorite Terran player after Nada and here's hoping he plays some good games like we all know he can. Though if he wins apparently he has to face Flash. Other than that and the possibility of Stork/SkyHigh I'm not too terribly excited.
Awesome write up though. I didn't get to see any of these games so it was nice catching up.
Yeah it's hard believing we have 10 Terrans but Iris, Sea, and Nada are not one of them.
Also, there's only 6 hite players in the OSL, not 7 like you listed. The only dragon in is Horang2...
Wow there's a good chance we'll have 6 hite players in the ro16 IMO (maybe a bit of fanboyism talking now), though HoGiL will have a damn tough time beating Flash. Not impossible though, HoGiL looks to be in good form getting in both starleagues quite comfortably.
Horang2 should take care of FrOzean pretty easily and should give EffOrt a run for the Money as well. Leta and go.go are already in the ro16 IMO ^^
Not exactly the best P lineup for a potential Legend of the Fall. However, at least there is a fair number of them. Plus, Bisu and Stork have gotten their game up, so we will have to wait and see how this turns out.
oh man great write up cant wait for the potential stork vs skyhigh or luxury vs hwasin too bad for mind he needs to play flash which mean no chance at all
This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legends of fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
Great analysis. I really look forward to seeing how well Skyhigh and Calm can do in their first OSL as they have done so well in proleague and other leagues lately.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legends of fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
Sure, give me the statistics the next time and I guess I'll use them, since, well, I have no access to them otherwise. Some things though. I believe BackHo is a much better player than Shuttle, if you disagree, well boo-hoo. Oh playstyle? I meant in the skill of fluking to the Ro4 of a tournament, not playstyle. It's kind of a joke. If you didn't expect Jaehoon to beat FireFist, that must say a lot about his skill. Also, if you didn't know this is a televised tournament. Not to mention I'd have gotten flamed by far more people than you if I had said that Frozean is good, which I truly think he isn't.
MVP 2-0 Violet I guess was an upset, although it's worth noting that Violet had just about no televised PvTs from the time where he played well. Sure, he stomped 5 terrible TvPers, but it's still by far his weakest match-up. Although, I admit, that was a fuck up by me and I definitely should have mentioned it. I mostly concentrated on the group winners and yeah, I made a mistake in neglecting that.
I don't know how you can call 815's ZvT his best match-up by far if you've ever seen his ZvZ. Once again, this is a televised tournament, I don't really care about iccup results. This is a write-up for an OSL, not an iCCup tournament. And of course those players aren't bad players, but they sure as hell are underdogs against players like Jaedong and Bisu who they will be facing.
Would you rather have me write "every player in this group is amazing, seems like the best player won, he has amazing potential, he's going to win the OSL!" for every group's predictions? Also, I personally have never been a fan of Shuttle's play, and I have my opinion and his 40% PvT record to support me. We're not comparing the players to foreigners or B-teamers, but top-class progamers. I also think it's cool if Frozean beats people offline, but until he does it on TV, it really doesn't matter. Ever seen Magma win an OSL?
Why on earth is Skyhigh hyped too much and you say that Frozean is underrated, when they both are really("really" with Frozean) good offline but have nerve problems, not to mention that Skyhigh is a lot better than Frozean and he's a lot newer to the scene, whereas Frozean has been faling consistantly for 10 years and had like a 0-543728 record last PL season? And I'm supposed to say he's amazing because he beat Effort offline? Next you'll say that TheRock is a very good and consistant player because he's been to the OSL so often, right?
I guess I should base my OSL, a Televised Tournament, predictions on offline games, practice games, and iccup tournaments, then. Would that make you happy?
One thing I got to say though, I have to agree with you on Jaehoon's amazing PvT! Here's a true gem of his, an exceptional display of his PvT prowess:
Now, before reading that post I was supposed to apologize to everyone. I did parts of the write-up at different times and in different moods and with different amount of time in my disposal, so it was quite inconsistant throughout, and some parts have more/different humour than the others. Also, I probably missed some things from inside the groups during the times I didn't have enough time to be as thorough as I'd have wanted to. Also some inconsistancy and most-likely some misinformation in the exact group results is possible.
Overall I think it went all-right, took quite a while ><
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legends of fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
Sure, give me the statistics the next time and I guess I'll use them, since, well, I have no access to them otherwise. Some things though. I believe BackHo is a much better player than Shuttle, if you disagree, well boo-hoo. Oh playstyle? I meant in the skill of fluking to the Ro4 of a tournament, not playstyle. It's kind of a joke. If you didn't expect Jaehoon to beat FireFist, that must say a lot about his skill. Also, if you didn't know this is a televised tournament. Not to mention I'd have gotten flamed by far more people than you if I had said that Frozean is good, which I truly think he isn't.
MVP 2-0 Violet I guess was an upset, although it's worth noting that Violet had just about no televised PvTs from the time where he played well. Sure, he stomped 5 terrible TvPers, but it's still by far his weakest match-up. Although, I admit, that was a fuck up by me and I definitely should have mentioned it. I mostly concentrated on the group winners and yeah, I made a mistake in neglecting that.
I don't know how you can call 815's ZvT his best match-up by far if you've ever seen his ZvZ. Once again, this is a televised tournament, I don't really care about iccup results. This is a write-up for an OSL, not an iCCup tournament. And of course those players aren't bad players, but they sure as hell are underdogs against players like Jaedong and Bisu who they will be facing.
Would you rather have me write "every player in this group is amazing, seems like the best player won, he has amazing potential, he's going to win the OSL!" for every group's predictions? Also, I personally have never been a fan of Shuttle's play, and I have my opinion and his 40% PvT record to support me. We're not comparing the players to foreigners or B-teamers, but top-class progamers. I also think it's cool if Frozean beats people offline, but until he does it on TV, it really doesn't matter. Ever seen Magma win an OSL?
Why on earth is Skyhigh hyped too much and you say that Frozean is underrated, when they both are really("really" with Frozean) good offline but have nerve problems, not to mention that Skyhigh is a lot better than Frozean and he's a lot newer to the scene, whereas Frozean has been faling consistantly for 10 years and had like a 0-543728 record last PL season? And I'm supposed to say he's amazing because he beat Effort offline? Next you'll say that TheRock is a very good and consistant player because he's been to the OSL so often, right?
I guess I should base my OSL, a Televised Tournament, predictions on offline games, practice games, and iccup tournaments, then. Would that make you happy?
Now, before reading that post I was supposed to apologize to everyone. I did parts of the write-up at different times and in different moods and with different amount of time in my disposal, so it was quite inconsistant throughout, and some parts have more/different humour than the others. Also, I probably missed some things from inside the groups during the times I didn't have enough time to be as thorough as I'd have wanted to. Also some inconsistancy and most-likely some misinformation in the exact group results is possible.
Overall I think it went all-right, took quite a while ><
Way to misread everything i wrote lol. Judging skill by televised games is not a good idea, as it takes more than skills to play well under such conditions. And OSL prelims were not fully broadcasted, just some games that were picked by whoever it was, not mentioning no fans at all standing and watching you play on the big screen. I expected FireFist to beat Jaehoon, not because the latter is bad, but because FireFist is good, especially his ZvP. And you say that they would be underdogs if they face Jaedong or Bisu. What an argument is that? Everybody would be an underdog if they face Jaedong or Bisu lol. Do you know why a certain player is sent for Proleague? Because of his results in PL, OSL, MSL? No, he is sent because he showed good results in practice, that's why practice games do count as a certain indicator of skill. I didn't say FrOzean had nerve problems and i said that TV games differ A LOT from practice games and in offline prelims players dont feel such pressure as during the broadcasted games on stage. And this is not your predictions, it's you recap of OSL offline prelims. Sure, it's not your fault that u don't have access to certain information and you could write it simple, but instead you chose the amusing way of doing it. Sure, why not, if you have nothing to write about. And learn to read please.
Edit: forgot about 815. I watched his ZvT a lot. Those were practice replays, not iccup and he was amazingly good. He has certain problems against mech but against bionic play he is amazing. Sure it would be his worst mu when you look at his TLPD page.
On October 07 2009 03:26 NukeTheStars wrote: Lol, nerd fight. This is why some people hate Teamliquid, you know. Elitist jerks battling it out to see who is the most elite jerk of them all.
On the topic of the groups, this round of 36 is shaping out to be one of the best in recent memory. So many great potential match-ups!
roMAD, I can't help but think of Sea, who is supposed to be one of the best players ever in practice but can't seem to translate that into individual league success. You have a point that icCup replays provide a much more indepth analysis into a player than VODs, but that doesn't take the pressure of playing live games into account. Most of these players are very young and, judging by some players' supposed practice success but lack of individual league success, the pressure gets to some of them.
Yup, occasionally the admins here can be quite elitist. I'm not saying all the time, mind you, but I think even you can agree that the "I KNOW MORE ABOUT SC THAN YOU" mindset creeps its way into more than one admin post
And to get back on topic again - one of my subscribers told me I should post my hype video here, so I suppose I finally will -
NukeTheStars: I thought I introduced you to SC2GG/SC2GG to you(at least you conveniently found them after I commented on your vid to contact them), and if you didn't know, I've been primarily from SC2GG since I got into Starcraft.
I have played Super Smash Bros Melee competitively for almost 6 years. I used to be the best player in Finland for quite a while and had no problems beating the other good players in my home or when visiting their houses or such. However, once I played on stage in a large tournament organized by Nintendo, I made a lot of fuck ups I'd never, ever make normally and played like shit. It's a lot different from playing offline. Even if my problem with playing in front of an audience might be bigger than most, I'm sure it's a factor for almost everyone.
I'm not sure what your point is. That you've watched a lot of 815 replays? Well, good for you. He can be good in practice but that doesn't matter much in the OSL. They're not my predictions, but a recap? Well, read again. Seems like we get to look forward to your amazing recap of the next prelims with your extensive knowledge of the practice games and iccup games, since we all know that those matter more than how well you do under pressure and in broadcasted games. Last reply to you, don't care about amazing practice games until they achieve something useful.
On October 07 2009 03:39 Shikyo wrote: NukeTheStars: I thought I introduced you to SC2GG/SC2GG to you(at least you conveniently found them after I commented on your vid to contact them), and if you didn't know, I've been primarily from SC2GG since I got into Starcraft.
I have played Super Smash Bros Melee competitively for almost 6 years. I used to be the best player in Finland for quite a while and had no problems beating the other good players in my home or when visiting their houses or such. However, once I played on stage in a large tournament organized by Nintendo, I made a lot of fuck ups I'd never, ever make normally and played like shit. It's a lot different from playing offline. Even if my problem with playing in front of an audience might be bigger than most, I'm sure it's a factor for almost everyone.
I'm not sure what your point is. That you've watched a lot of 815 replays? Well, good for you. He can be good in practice but that doesn't matter much in the OSL. They're not my predictions, but a recap? Well, read again. Seems like we get to look forward to your amazing recap of the next prelims with your extensive knowledge of the practice games and iccup games, since we all know that those matter more than how well you do under pressure and in broadcasted games. Last reply to you, don't care about amazing practice games until they achieve something useful.
Yeah sure, so let's call everyone trash, because they are so bad they don't deserve to be in the OSL, because they haven't achived anything. Great.
Oh and you know the title reads 'Offline Prelims Recap'
I'm pretty excited for all the Samsung involved matchups. They all look fairly promising though I think Stork will anhilate Skyhigh. Jangbi Kwanro will probably be the match to watch.
So who wants to put bets on FBH beating another toss?
Great write up Shikyo, thanks for putting in the time. I really enjoyed the summary. The ro36 looks very exciting with the Stork vs Skyhigh possibility.
Romad, idk why you are making these comments when he obviously put in a lot of effort to do this writeup. Who gives a shit what a player does offline in practice? You say a player is good in practice, but not in games? That means he is not a good player. Of course he is "good", but obviously not the favorite over S and A class players who Shikyo was predicting to win the group.
He did the best he could with the information that was given to him. He doesn't have these secret replays like you do. Its far better to base a players results off of on stage (and prelim) games that actually count for something. You can't tell me Frozean is good because he beat Effort on iccup when Effort doesn't even care. You have to use the fact that did horrible im proleague.
I mean are you honestly trying to say that a players is good if does well in practice as opposed to a player who delivers in pressure filled, important matches? You have got to be joking.
So, which Protoss can make it to Ro16: Group A Pusan can do it beating fOrGG and then Canata consecutively. Pusan should try really well even thought he was on fire in OSL/MSL prelims.
Group B Bisu should take his group easily no matter who is it, Really or Shine, he will win if he will not overrate himself
Group D Barracks is not main problem for JangBi, he will win him if he want while Kwanro can be real obstacle. In last PvZ JangBi lost even to YellOw[ArnC], so it's really hard to predict who will win. It only matters who will prepare better.
Group E This group is similar to Group B. After beating Jaedong 2-0 it is no problem for Stork to beat unknown Zerg ggaemo. Also after beating fantasy 2-0 it is no problem to beat sKyHigh. All that Stork should do is to play his standart play and don't choke
Group K Who is Pure? No matter because Hyuk is nobody too. Leta is not king of TvP so Pure has at least a chance to surprise us
These Protoss will probably fail : Group C BackHo is so middle player now while Calm is S-class player lately. Calm will probably destroy both Reality and BackHo 2-0.
Group F Movie is real dark horse in this OSL. He already beated Jaedong in last MSL but he is still so inconsistent. Even if he will defeat Light he will probably lose to hero who is ZvP specializer.
Group H Another dark horse Jaehoon find himself with low TvPer firebathero and last-generation Zerg ZerO who will probably eat Jaehoon, maybe with queens tt
Group I Poor poor GuemChi, he will play first set with Luxury. It's pity but he has no chance to win, maybe 1%
Group J Horang2 will most likely beat FrOzean but there is EffOrt in second set. No! It's trap! Change your group, Horang2, lol
On October 07 2009 04:01 Nick_54 wrote: Great write up Shikyo, thanks for putting in the time. I really enjoyed the summary. The ro36 looks very exciting with the Stork vs Skyhigh possibility.
Romad, idk why you are making these comments when he obviously put in a lot of effort to do this writeup. Who gives a shit what a player does offline in practice? You say a player is good in practice, but not in games? That means he is not a good player. Of course he is "good", but obviously not the favorite over S and A class players who Shikyo was predicting to win the group.
He did the best he could with the information that was given to him. He doesn't have these secret replays like you do. Its far better to base a players results off of on stage (and prelim) games that actually count for something. You can't tell me Frozean is good because he beat Effort on iccup when Effort doesn't even care. You have to use the fact that did horrible im proleague.
I mean are you honestly trying to say that a players is good if does well in practice as opposed to a player who delivers in pressure filled, important matches? You have got to be joking.
Probably i am taking this too hard, but it was unnecessary to put such lines as 'Seriously, Jaehoon?', 'Oh god. FrOzean? CuteAngel? In The OSL? Oh god! That's all I can say' etc etc
On October 07 2009 04:01 Nick_54 wrote: Great write up Shikyo, thanks for putting in the time. I really enjoyed the summary. The ro36 looks very exciting with the Stork vs Skyhigh possibility.
Romad, idk why you are making these comments when he obviously put in a lot of effort to do this writeup. Who gives a shit what a player does offline in practice? You say a player is good in practice, but not in games? That means he is not a good player. Of course he is "good", but obviously not the favorite over S and A class players who Shikyo was predicting to win the group.
He did the best he could with the information that was given to him. He doesn't have these secret replays like you do. Its far better to base a players results off of on stage (and prelim) games that actually count for something. You can't tell me Frozean is good because he beat Effort on iccup when Effort doesn't even care. You have to use the fact that did horrible im proleague.
I mean are you honestly trying to say that a players is good if does well in practice as opposed to a player who delivers in pressure filled, important matches? You have got to be joking.
Bolded part is what really is important here and something certain people need to realize.
Also, thanks a lot for the post! ^_^ I agree with everything you said, by the way.
Romad, I believe what I said and you can disagree, but don't call me clueless if I think Iris is more exciting than Frozean. Now last reply to you, stop tempting ><
On October 07 2009 04:01 Nick_54 wrote: Great write up Shikyo, thanks for putting in the time. I really enjoyed the summary. The ro36 looks very exciting with the Stork vs Skyhigh possibility.
Romad, idk why you are making these comments when he obviously put in a lot of effort to do this writeup. Who gives a shit what a player does offline in practice? You say a player is good in practice, but not in games? That means he is not a good player. Of course he is "good", but obviously not the favorite over S and A class players who Shikyo was predicting to win the group.
He did the best he could with the information that was given to him. He doesn't have these secret replays like you do. Its far better to base a players results off of on stage (and prelim) games that actually count for something. You can't tell me Frozean is good because he beat Effort on iccup when Effort doesn't even care. You have to use the fact that did horrible im proleague.
I mean are you honestly trying to say that a players is good if does well in practice as opposed to a player who delivers in pressure filled, important matches? You have got to be joking.
Bolded part is what really is important here and something certain people need to realize.
Also, thanks a lot for the post! ^_^ I agree with everything you said, by the way.
Romad, I believe what I said and you can disagree, but don't call me clueless if I think Iris is more exciting than Frozean. Now last reply to you, stop tempting ><
Stop putting words into my mouth and ignoring the point i make. Cheers.
I just want to say roMAD that i appreciate your job of defending inconsistent players like frozean and i hope that more of tl.net would someday abandon the cirklejerk of hate and open their eyes.
Did you know that if I say some player is bad, I mean that he's bad compared to the good players and underdogs against the whole top 16? Not that they're bad compared to the rest of the world? No? Apparently.
From what I gathered your point was that although some players aren't popular and are said to be bad they're still very good compared to most people. I know that. Another possible point was that you watch a lot of offline replays and hence know about the players, to that I answer that this is a televised tournament. If it's me being too mean to bad players, well I don't want the write-up to be too fake. If it's something else, you didn't bring your point up very well.
Really tired of this. -_- Write the next prelim write-up.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Basing pure skill on TV appearances only is obviously not 100% accurate but it's one hell of a lot better than your methods which doesn't even guarantee that your observations are from the right player. Even if you would know a players iccup account how many replays have you actually watched of his? 50+? I don't think so.
And please don't use "Trust me I know I'm right" as an argument again unless you want to be ripped apart by 100 nerds again. Why would I trust someone I don't know and never heard of?
On October 07 2009 04:39 Shikyo wrote: Did you know that if I say some player is bad, I mean that he's bad compared to the good players and underdogs against the whole top 16? Not that they're bad compared to the rest of the world? No? Apparently.
From what I gathered your point was that although some players aren't popular and are said to be bad they're still very good compared to most people. I know that. Another possible point was that you watch a lot of offline replays and hence know about the players, to that I answer that this is a televised tournament. If it's me being too mean to bad players, well I don't want the write-up to be too fake. If it's something else, you didn't bring your point up very well.
Really tired of this. -_- Write the next prelim write-up.
First of all it's not a televised tourney as PL, OSL and MSL. This is a huge difference. To summarize, my point was that you can't put it like that: 'Oh god. FrOzean? CuteAngel? In The OSL? Oh god! That's all I can say', because all your knowledge about his skill is TV games. He's bad yet somehow he did manage to win his group. Why, u think, so many upsets happen every qualifier? Because they are all damn good. There are some players who are on another level of the game, but most of them are already seeded. The good example is Sea. He is an amazing player, but he can't perform at his full potential on stage and i still think it's not too late for him to learn setting up the right winning mentality. That's why practice games mean much, they show at what level a player can potentially perform. Most of the participants can beat almost every pro given no pressure. FrOzean or Jaehoon or w/e can fail horribly in RO32 of OSL, but they can also perform to their full potential and show great starcraft. I just thought that the recap should be written in a rather neutral tone, but all i can see here is bias.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Basing pure skill on TV appearances only is obviously not 100% accurate but it's one hell of a lot better than your methods which doesn't even guarantee that your observations are from the right player. Even if you would know a players iccup account how many replays have you actually watched of his? 50+? I don't think so.
And please don't use "Trust me I know I'm right" as an argument again unless you want to be ripped apart by 100 nerds again. Why would I trust someone I don't know and never heard of?
Well, he's probably watched quite a few as he can recognize just about every pro and even most amateurs by their hotkeys in replays, I'd imagine he knows Korean and he's talked to progamers before. I respect him, however, I think his attitude is really crappy here and I do believe it's not a good idea to judge how how good players are by their offline performance.
I mean, Magma was kind of known as the practice game king, but he never managed to bring it to the televised games. Now he's retired, and how many people know that he actually was really good? Not many.
EDIT: Okay Romad, your last post makes no sense. I know everything you said. And I also know that they'll play significantly worse in televised games. Hence it's bad that the players who play well in TV get knocked out. Because it's useless for the players who're bad on TV to win the prelims, because when the games go online they'll just suck. And that's all we, as the spectators, care about. How well they do in the televised games. If they'll just suck, it's a bad thing. So explain that to someone who doesn't know that, I'm done.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Basing pure skill on TV appearances only is obviously not 100% accurate but it's one hell of a lot better than your methods which doesn't even guarantee that your observations are from the right player. Even if you would know a players iccup account how many replays have you actually watched of his? 50+? I don't think so.
And please don't use "Trust me I know I'm right" as an argument again unless you want to be ripped apart by 100 nerds again. Why would I trust someone I don't know and never heard of?
I think you should check the 'Who is who on ICCup Season X' thread, you will be shocked. And you will be shocked to know that i have about 4000 replays of pros from ICCup.
I actually agree with Romad here. Romad is very well-known for being able to determine any progamer's akas purely from replay hotkeys. I see no reason to doubt that he has a bit more knowledge about skills of players as people send him pro replays very often on the condition that he won't release them.
It is true that a player could be considered lacking in skill under high pressure situations when they would not otherwise, but whether or not we are using this as the criteria for judging their total skill at starcraft is the question being debated.
A question for Romad - who would you consider the best off-line player from each race? (Or who has the greatest difference in skill between their skill in tv games and their skill in non-televised games). I think Romad could probably state who the best amateurs are as well, fairly reliably.
Violet failing the OSL prelims wasn't that surprising to me, he strikes me as a player who would prefer to focus on PL and the MSL which he is already in. Something people don't seem to have noticed much is that Violet is very finnicky about maps - on Neo Medusa he has the best record of any toss, even better than Bisu iirc, but on HBR he doesn't do as well and on outsider he just sort of dies. This is supposed to be a characteristic of protoss players in general, though, based upon January's comments concerning why she liked Stork as a player (he has no opinion about maps). The stx master's cup Violet did very poorly until he played on the 2 maps he does well.
Reading through this and remembering free lost his group clicked in my head that I couldn't recall ever having seen free in an OSL. Looking back through his leagues played list in TLPD, I couldn't find one in there either. Did I miss something, or has free seriously never qualified for an OSL? It'd be kind of crazy to think of someone who's been around and successful for as long as free has been as a royal road candidate, if he were to qualify.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Basing pure skill on TV appearances only is obviously not 100% accurate but it's one hell of a lot better than your methods which doesn't even guarantee that your observations are from the right player. Even if you would know a players iccup account how many replays have you actually watched of his? 50+? I don't think so.
And please don't use "Trust me I know I'm right" as an argument again unless you want to be ripped apart by 100 nerds again. Why would I trust someone I don't know and never heard of?
I think you should check the 'Who is who on ICCup Season X' thread, you will be shocked. And you will be shocked to know that i have about 3000 replays of pros from ICCup.
I'm saying that you don't get mass replays of players training. Because the teams don't allow sending them out. I know you're the one who did the determining and stuff but why would the pro teams break their rules and funnel mass replays to a foreigner? I'm not sure here but my guess is that you get replays that leaked onto korean replay sites yeah? Because the players in question found out who a certain pro was and uploaded it. But again that doesn't mean you can determine the true skill of a player especially not how they will perform in major leagues.
I'm saying that unless you have 50-100 replays of every player you can't determine their skill accurately. Not every game played on ICCUP is a serious one and who are you to determine for what purpose each of the players had with their game. There can be multiple reasons for playing differently than normally even on iccup.
On October 07 2009 05:04 Macavenger wrote: Reading through this and remembering free lost his group clicked in my head that I couldn't recall ever having seen free in an OSL. Looking back through his leagues played list in TLPD, I couldn't find one in there either. Did I miss something, or has free seriously never qualified for an OSL? It'd be kind of crazy to think of someone who's been around and successful for as long as free has been as a royal road candidate, if he were to qualify.
You're right. That's really strange, I wonder if it's a conscious choice on his part. I don't think it is, especially as he isn't in the MSL this year, I don't think. (Unless he is seeded?)
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Basing pure skill on TV appearances only is obviously not 100% accurate but it's one hell of a lot better than your methods which doesn't even guarantee that your observations are from the right player. Even if you would know a players iccup account how many replays have you actually watched of his? 50+? I don't think so.
And please don't use "Trust me I know I'm right" as an argument again unless you want to be ripped apart by 100 nerds again. Why would I trust someone I don't know and never heard of?
I think you should check the 'Who is who on ICCup Season X' thread, you will be shocked. And you will be shocked to know that i have about 3000 replays of pros from ICCup.
I'm saying that you don't get mass replays of players training. Because the teams don't allow sending them out. I know you're the one who did the determining and stuff but why would the pro teams break their rules and funnel mass replays to a foreigner? I'm not sure here but my guess is that you get replays that leaked onto korean replay sites yeah? Because the players in question found out who a certain pro was and uploaded it. But again that doesn't mean you can determine the true skill of a player especially not how they will perform in major leagues.
I'm saying that unless you have 50-100 replays of every player you can't determine their skill accurately. Not every game played on ICCUP is a serious one and who are you to determine for what purpose each of the players had with their game. There can be multiple reasons for playing differently than normally even on iccup.
Progamers treat ICCup as another way to practice. Their inteam practice is almost the same as practice on ICCup, except some cases. And i do have their practice replays, although not that many.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill.
What?
He got a frigging unique name tag ofc hes not a 'random russian TL user'
Maybe you missed my point. I don't care if an admin or part of the crew and thinks he knows the exact skill of a player. I won't quote him on it unless he has some information to back that up. Iccup games are not proof of someones skill.
If he was someone living with or observing players in a team first person or a coach or palyer on that team then sure I would say he knows the true skill of a player. Even if Romad would have 100+ replays of every player. How do you expect him to have enough game knowledge to understand all their strenghts and weaknesses. This is something that top foreigners even have a hard time with cross race atleast.
I respect Romads dedication to the community for using his observations and time to spot these players. However when you're seeing Shuttle own some A ranked amateur what exactly does that tell you about his performance in an OSL vs top notch oponents?
I'm merely saying that you're grabbing very unreliable info and comparing it to situations are are completely different. The level of play and pressure in top TV games is so high.
Another thing worth considering is that in practice games you're never trying your hardest. You're most likely practicing a specific build, concentrating on a specific flaw in your play, trying out new strategies, practicing a specific style, and so on. It's very draining mentally to play at your best, and you don't really do that anywhere but the serious games. In my opinion, the players' performance in practice is all nice and good, but completely worthless if you can't prove yourself when it matters.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill.
What?
He got a frigging unique name tag ofc hes not a 'random russian TL user'
Maybe you missed my point. I don't care if an admin or part of the crew and thinks he knows the exact skill of a player. I won't quote him on it unless he has some information to back that up. Iccup games are not proof of someones skill.
If he was someone living with or observing players in a team first person or a coach or palyer on that team then sure I would say he knows the true skill of a player. Even if Romad would have 100+ replays of every player. How do you expect him to have enough game knowledge to understand all their strenghts and weaknesses. This is something that top foreigners even have a hard time with cross race atleast.
I respect Romads dedication to the community for using his observations and time to spot these players. However when you're seeing Shuttle own some A ranked amateur what exactly does that tell you about his performance in an OSL vs top notch oponents?
I'm merely saying that you're grabbing very unreliable info and comparing it to situations are are completely different. The level of play and pressure in top TV games is so high.
I like how you all tell about OSL and pressure in TV games when we are talking about offline prelims here. If your point is about how the bad players qualify and fail miserably in the first rounds, then you should read my post above. Shuttle went 2-0 against Flash on Destination. He went 3-0 against BaBy on Heartbreak and Outsider. He loses to Reality 0-3, who defeats Free 2:0 in the prelims. Few weeks ago Shuttle defeated Fantasy in a TV game on Destination. These results and replays themselves tell me who is capable of what.
On October 07 2009 05:31 Shikyo wrote: Another thing worth considering is that in practice games you're never trying your hardest. You're most likely practicing a specific build, concentrating on a specific flaw in your play, trying out new strategies, practicing a specific style, and so on. It's very draining mentally to play at your best, and you don't really do that anywhere but the serious games. In my opinion, the players' performance in practice is all nice and good, but completely worthless if you can't prove yourself when it matters.
So, does it mean that FrOzean and Jaehoon proved it? Or those prelims didn't matter much? This is the difference between non-broadcasted, thus pressure-free, and broadcasted games.
On October 07 2009 05:00 Nevuk wrote: A question for Romad - who would you consider the best off-line player from each race? (Or who has the greatest difference in skill between their skill in tv games and their skill in non-televised games). I think Romad could probably state who the best amateurs are as well, fairly reliably.
I think FrOzen has the greatest difference in skill between tv games and non-televised matches. As for best off-line player, it's quite a difficult question to answer, they are all good in practice.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Basing pure skill on TV appearances only is obviously not 100% accurate but it's one hell of a lot better than your methods which doesn't even guarantee that your observations are from the right player. Even if you would know a players iccup account how many replays have you actually watched of his? 50+? I don't think so.
And please don't use "Trust me I know I'm right" as an argument again unless you want to be ripped apart by 100 nerds again. Why would I trust someone I don't know and never heard of?
I think you should check the 'Who is who on ICCup Season X' thread, you will be shocked. And you will be shocked to know that i have about 3000 replays of pros from ICCup.
I'm saying that you don't get mass replays of players training. Because the teams don't allow sending them out. I know you're the one who did the determining and stuff but why would the pro teams break their rules and funnel mass replays to a foreigner? I'm not sure here but my guess is that you get replays that leaked onto korean replay sites yeah? Because the players in question found out who a certain pro was and uploaded it. But again that doesn't mean you can determine the true skill of a player especially not how they will perform in major leagues.
I'm saying that unless you have 50-100 replays of every player you can't determine their skill accurately. Not every game played on ICCUP is a serious one and who are you to determine for what purpose each of the players had with their game. There can be multiple reasons for playing differently than normally even on iccup.
Romad gets sent replays from the progamers themselves. He actually has a shitton of them on MSN. It's because he's literally a replay savant, he has some sort of weird photographic memory when it comes to hotkey pattern recognition -- he knows the hotkey layout for every single Korean pro (400+) and often can figure out offraces and amateurs as well. It's insane, and I didn't believe it until we used him to ID players in TSL. If anyone receives thousands of replays sent directly from Korean pros, it's him. Trust me, I've seen some of them. He doesn't give them out because obviously that'd be mostly a breach of trust -- but the guy is legit. If anyone can judge skills from replays, its Romad.
Before you start saying this:
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Romad is the #1 source on player identification through hotkey patterns. Pros go and seek him out to find out who they played on ICCup. It's not uncommon for big name players (even the top tier S-class ones) to send him packs to figure out who they played.
You should really understand who you are talking to before you just call him a "random russian TL user who guesses at player IDs."
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill.
What?
He got a frigging unique name tag ofc hes not a 'random russian TL user'
Maybe you missed my point. I don't care if an admin or part of the crew and thinks he knows the exact skill of a player. I won't quote him on it unless he has some information to back that up. Iccup games are not proof of someones skill.
If he was someone living with or observing players in a team first person or a coach or palyer on that team then sure I would say he knows the true skill of a player. Even if Romad would have 100+ replays of every player. How do you expect him to have enough game knowledge to understand all their strenghts and weaknesses. This is something that top foreigners even have a hard time with cross race atleast.
I respect Romads dedication to the community for using his observations and time to spot these players. However when you're seeing Shuttle own some A ranked amateur what exactly does that tell you about his performance in an OSL vs top notch oponents?
I'm merely saying that you're grabbing very unreliable info and comparing it to situations are are completely different. The level of play and pressure in top TV games is so high.
No. You changed the tone of your argument once you realized who Romad was. At first, you were questioning his ability to ID players and saying he's a "random russian user" who has no way to even know if these replays are of the players he thought. Then, you said there's no way he'd get exclusive replays from Pros because they weren't allowed to send them out.
Now, you're arguing that "nobody has the skill to judge player level based on replays" which is an entirely different argument. It's one thing to say Romad doesn't have the ability to analyze replays (which doesn't make sense because plenty of people can watch and discuss Brood War at a high level without the actual playing skill) and another thing to say Romad can't ID the players and is lying about having so many replays.
You certainly didn't "respect Romad's dedication to the community" when you called him a "random russian user" and questioned him telling the truth about having replays and IDing players. The post he made critiquing the newspost provided a lot of insight that we wouldn't have otherwise, from a source that is pretty reliable. If you don't believe him that's fine, but don't disrespect him by trying to make him out to be some sort of nobody liar. He doesn't deserve that and there's a reason he's got a TL icon.
On October 07 2009 05:31 Shikyo wrote: Another thing worth considering is that in practice games you're never trying your hardest. You're most likely practicing a specific build, concentrating on a specific flaw in your play, trying out new strategies, practicing a specific style, and so on. It's very draining mentally to play at your best, and you don't really do that anywhere but the serious games. In my opinion, the players' performance in practice is all nice and good, but completely worthless if you can't prove yourself when it matters.
So, does it mean that FrOzean and Jaehoon proved it? Or those prelims didn't matter much? This is the difference between non-broadcasted, thus pressure-free, and broadcasted games.
On October 07 2009 05:00 Nevuk wrote: A question for Romad - who would you consider the best off-line player from each race? (Or who has the greatest difference in skill between their skill in tv games and their skill in non-televised games). I think Romad could probably state who the best amateurs are as well, fairly reliably.
I think FrOzen has the greatest difference in skill between tv games and non-televised matches. As for best off-line player, it's quite a difficult question to answer, they are all good in practice.
It seems like some players outperform their off-line results, and this is the reason why they get considered hyped - Flying and Violet are the two I know of. Sangho puts up much better results in practice games, according to an interview with Flying, but Flying's play in the STX masters was much better than Sangho's. Violet practices a ton and puts up good results (I followed his iccup accounts for a while, his PvZ stats were really nice, pvp and pvt less so after he reached A on it), but his PL play is superior to what his iccup stats would indicate.
edit: Hwanni also talked about this in the q&a thread, where he said that teams would eventually give up on players who had confidence issues if they didn't get over them. More and more I think that mindset is more important for televised games, especially in the korean culture which seems to be somewhat averse to being on tv.
On October 07 2009 05:31 Shikyo wrote: Another thing worth considering is that in practice games you're never trying your hardest. You're most likely practicing a specific build, concentrating on a specific flaw in your play, trying out new strategies, practicing a specific style, and so on. It's very draining mentally to play at your best, and you don't really do that anywhere but the serious games. In my opinion, the players' performance in practice is all nice and good, but completely worthless if you can't prove yourself when it matters.
So, does it mean that FrOzean and Jaehoon proved it? Or those prelims didn't matter much? This is the difference between non-broadcasted, thus pressure-free, and broadcasted games.
On October 07 2009 05:00 Nevuk wrote: A question for Romad - who would you consider the best off-line player from each race? (Or who has the greatest difference in skill between their skill in tv games and their skill in non-televised games). I think Romad could probably state who the best amateurs are as well, fairly reliably.
I think FrOzen has the greatest difference in skill between tv games and non-televised matches. As for best off-line player, it's quite a difficult question to answer, they are all good in practice.
It seems like some players outperform their off-line results, and this is the reason why they get considered hyped - Flying and Violet are the two I know of. Sangho puts up much better results in practice games, according to an interview with Flying, but Flying's play in the STX masters was much better than Sangho's. Violet practices a ton and puts up good results (I followed his iccup accounts for a while, his PvZ stats were really nice, pvp and pvt less so after he reached A on it), but his PL play is superior to what his iccup stats would indicate.
Well, to be honest i was impressed by Violet at the beginning, but later on, when i was following his progress and watching his games (TV games), i realized that he still has a lot to learn, which he confirms himself. I talked to Violet a lot and he said he was ranked second in almost all KT inteam tournaments, that's precisely the period when he took on Bisu and showed excellent results. But lately, he's showing worse results in these tournaments and this imo can be seen in his recent games, which were not of a quality a few months ago.
Edit: about your edit ^^ Yes, this is true. They work on mentality very very hard. Like 5 times Dove approached me with a request to write something encouraging for him in English, so he would look at it and train his mind. Too bad he never succeded
On October 07 2009 05:31 Shikyo wrote: Another thing worth considering is that in practice games you're never trying your hardest. You're most likely practicing a specific build, concentrating on a specific flaw in your play, trying out new strategies, practicing a specific style, and so on. It's very draining mentally to play at your best, and you don't really do that anywhere but the serious games. In my opinion, the players' performance in practice is all nice and good, but completely worthless if you can't prove yourself when it matters.
So, does it mean that FrOzean and Jaehoon proved it? Or those prelims didn't matter much? This is the difference between non-broadcasted, thus pressure-free, and broadcasted games.
On October 07 2009 05:00 Nevuk wrote: A question for Romad - who would you consider the best off-line player from each race? (Or who has the greatest difference in skill between their skill in tv games and their skill in non-televised games). I think Romad could probably state who the best amateurs are as well, fairly reliably.
I think FrOzen has the greatest difference in skill between tv games and non-televised matches. As for best off-line player, it's quite a difficult question to answer, they are all good in practice.
It seems like some players outperform their off-line results, and this is the reason why they get considered hyped - Flying and Violet are the two I know of. Sangho puts up much better results in practice games, according to an interview with Flying, but Flying's play in the STX masters was much better than Sangho's. Violet practices a ton and puts up good results (I followed his iccup accounts for a while, his PvZ stats were really nice, pvp and pvt less so after he reached A on it), but his PL play is superior to what his iccup stats would indicate.
Well, to be honest i was impressed by Violet at the beginning, but later on, when i was following his progress and watching his games (TV games), i realized that he still has a lot to learn, which he confirms himself. I talked to Violet a lot and he said he was ranked second in almost all KT inteam tournaments, that's precisely the period when he took on Bisu and showed excellent results. But lately, he's showing worse results in these tournaments and this imo can be seen in his recent games, which were not of a quality a few months ago.
In an interview he said that last season was supposed to be his last, unless he started performing well, so maybe he doesn't feel as much pressure? Also, it has been the off-season, so there's not really been any incentive for anyone to practice (his last televised game besides masters was in July). Regardless, he definitely has potential, and the new maps are ones that seem to be decent for his style, especially Matchpoint, and tornado to a lesser extent.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Basing pure skill on TV appearances only is obviously not 100% accurate but it's one hell of a lot better than your methods which doesn't even guarantee that your observations are from the right player. Even if you would know a players iccup account how many replays have you actually watched of his? 50+? I don't think so.
And please don't use "Trust me I know I'm right" as an argument again unless you want to be ripped apart by 100 nerds again. Why would I trust someone I don't know and never heard of?
I think you should check the 'Who is who on ICCup Season X' thread, you will be shocked. And you will be shocked to know that i have about 3000 replays of pros from ICCup.
I'm saying that you don't get mass replays of players training. Because the teams don't allow sending them out. I know you're the one who did the determining and stuff but why would the pro teams break their rules and funnel mass replays to a foreigner? I'm not sure here but my guess is that you get replays that leaked onto korean replay sites yeah? Because the players in question found out who a certain pro was and uploaded it. But again that doesn't mean you can determine the true skill of a player especially not how they will perform in major leagues.
I'm saying that unless you have 50-100 replays of every player you can't determine their skill accurately. Not every game played on ICCUP is a serious one and who are you to determine for what purpose each of the players had with their game. There can be multiple reasons for playing differently than normally even on iccup.
Romad gets sent replays from the progamers themselves. He actually has a shitton of them on MSN. It's because he's literally a replay savant, he has some sort of weird photographic memory when it comes to hotkey pattern recognition -- he knows the hotkey layout for every single Korean pro (400+) and often can figure out offraces and amateurs as well. It's insane, and I didn't believe it until we used him to ID players in TSL. If anyone receives thousands of replays sent directly from Korean pros, it's him. Trust me, I've seen some of them. He doesn't give them out because obviously that'd be mostly a breach of trust -- but the guy is legit. If anyone can judge skills from replays, its Romad.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Romad is the #1 source on player identification through hotkey patterns. Pros go and seek him out to find out who they played on ICCup. It's not uncommon for big name players (even the top tier S-class ones) to send him packs to figure out who they played.
You should really understand who you are talking to before you just call him a "random russian TL user who guesses at player IDs."
man. it must be the worst feeling getting verbally raped by a mod. he's gonna go into hiding for a few months.
On October 07 2009 08:43 the nooby SC kid wrote: well hope flash atleast make it to semi finalsthis time. U CAN DO IT. and how come i dont see jaedong in the list?
because the current osl champion is seeded into the next OSL
its set up so that if you do well, you don't have to go through prelims every time
On October 07 2009 04:01 Jenia6109 wrote: So, which Protoss can make it to Ro16: Group A Pusan can do it beating fOrGG and then Canata consecutively. Pusan should try really well even thought he was on fire in OSL/MSL prelims.
Group B Bisu should take his group easily no matter who is it, Really or Shine, he will win if he will not overrate himself
Group D Barracks is not main problem for JangBi, he will win him if he want while Kwanro can be real obstacle. In last PvZ JangBi lost even to YellOw[ArnC], so it's really hard to predict who will win. It only matters who will prepare better.
Group E This group is similar to Group B. After beating Jaedong 2-0 it is no problem for Stork to beat unknown Zerg ggaemo. Also after beating fantasy 2-0 it is no problem to beat sKyHigh. All that Stork should do is to play his standart play and don't choke
Group K Who is Pure? No matter because Hyuk is nobody too. Leta is not king of TvP so Pure has at least a chance to surprise us
These Protoss will probably fail : Group C BackHo is so middle player now while Calm is S-class player lately. Calm will probably destroy both Reality and BackHo 2-0.
Group F Movie is real dark horse in this OSL. He already beated Jaedong in last MSL but he is still so inconsistent. Even if he will defeat Light he will probably lose to hero who is ZvP specializer.
Group H Another dark horse Jaehoon find himself with low TvPer firebathero and last-generation Zerg ZerO who will probably eat Jaehoon, maybe with queens tt
Group I Poor poor GuemChi, he will play first set with Luxury. It's pity but he has no chance to win, maybe 1%
Group J Horang2 will most likely beat FrOzean but there is EffOrt in second set. No! It's trap! Change your group, Horang2, lol
Movies strength is PvZ and you forget that he eliminated by.hero from the Avalon MSL. Movie is 2:0 against by.hero and will most likely beat him again.
Good write up, I look forward to Bisu playing against Really or Shine, I never heard of them :D The potential Stork vs Skyhigh is pretty cool too... I also look forward to Effort and Flash playing against their opponents.
On October 06 2009 21:23 iSCd wrote: Kwanro vs JanbBi Stork vs SkyHigh
should be nice
Skyhigh's tvp isn't that great and he is playing the dinotoss. I believe stork got this.
Kwanro v jangbi, jangbi, who arguably can have the 3rd best pvz, fails in pvz periodically. Hopefully he can get through especially since kwanro has been a thorn in khan tosses' ass.
Ironically, both romad and shikyo are right imo haha When doing a massive recap like this you have to make a decision as to how you want to report it, some people prefer to just spout out results with little commentary, others prefer to take a stance and make it an opinionated piece. The latter is what shikyo did. With respect to the shuttle comment, it has its merit. Obviously shuttle and backho have different styles (although, not overly different when you really think about it) but they both made the semifinals somehow, then dropped out. Additionally, making the claim that he is 'worse' has some merit as well - Backho was able to support Jaedong during PL and won a number of critical games which allowed Jaedong to mop up the mess. Neither are top tier Protoss, but on the whole, Backho has posted the better results. In that respect, both of you are right at the same time. Since what you have said romad is also correct.
On October 07 2009 05:53 Hot_Bid wrote: He doesn't give them out because obviously that'd be mostly a breach of trust -- but the guy is legit. If anyone can judge skills from replays, its Romad.
There are 3 pages of replays uploaded by him in the replay section, most or all from progamers. Am I missing something?
On October 07 2009 05:53 Hot_Bid wrote: He doesn't give them out because obviously that'd be mostly a breach of trust -- but the guy is legit. If anyone can judge skills from replays, its Romad.
There are 3 pages of replays uploaded by him in the replay section, most or all from progamers. Am I missing something?
he's uploaded 100 replays in like 3+ years, i assume these are ones that were either public or allowed to be uploaded. plus 100 is probably not a large percentage of what he actually has.
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: This quite a nice write-up, but some of your comments display complete lack of knowledge of players' skills. I am not talking about TV games, i am talking about progamers' skill overall. In my opinion this is the biggest misjudgement of player's skills on tl.net because all of you only take into account their TV games. Of course TV games mean much, but it's just one game in front of a huge audience and mental aspects start to play much bigger role than in practice or qualifiers. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to have a look at their practice games, so this judgement only by TV games is understandable. However, some comments you made are really clueless. Here are some examples:
In group N comment you call Shuttle a 'worse version of BackHo', which is really weird as their playstyle is very different. Shuttle PvT style beats BaBy's style very easily, as he is very good against harass style and his overall PvT is very very good. BaBy's style reminds of FanTaSy's style with many dropships and vuture harassing and his macro is sometimes quite sloppy. So Shuttle easily defends against harassing and just rolls over BaBy's tiny army. On the other hand, Light TvP style is what beats Shuttle really easily. You can call him a master of turtling or whatever. His TvP is all about turtling, i guess the best counter to him is Bisu with his smart recalls. Another thing you say that 815's weakest mu is ZvT? I'd call it his best mu by far, although his ZvP is becoming better and better. And imo SkyHigh is hyped way too much, especially his TvZ. Same as with Shuttle goes to Jaehoon. The guy has crazy PvT and overall he's really good, although i didn't expect him to beat FireFist to be honest. Of course these 'living legendsof fail' in the face of FrOzean and HyuK. They are and were very good players and FrOzean beat both effort and Kwanro 3-2 on Outsider the other day with Effort winning with 4 pool in one of them. He is just very inconsistent and has problems setting his mentality up. HyuK's ZvZ and ZvP are on a high level, although i dunno about his ZvT. As of Group V you say there were no surprises? How about MVP 2-0 Violet? Interestingly though, i consider Violet as much hyped as Gosi[Flying]. He still has a lot to learn and he is very incosistent. But still, i expected him to take the group. Reality is an amazing player, reminds me a lot of FlaSh with his great macro. Watch out for him!
A logical question to me would be 'how do you know anyway?' This information is based on replays and iccup statistics that i have. Not that much, but it helps to learn about player's style and see his potential. I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
It seems to me that basing skill level on TV game appearances is only about a million percent better than basing them off of ICCUP games when you don't even know for sure if the players played all the games on that account or if multiple players used them. Moreover people actually practise and play their best for TV games unlike ICCUP where they might try new stuff out or just practise wierd builds.
Much of your post seems to be refuting the statements that some of these players are bad. Yuo are of course right in that they aren't. All the winners of the groups ARE good starcraft players. But what the OP says isn't that they are bad in general, just that they are bad in comparison to the scene or other top players. You have to learn to read between the lines if you're gonna read TL analysis.
Believe me, i know for sure who played on what account. And i've watched replays not just pure ICCup statistics. The OP statements about some players reflect a generalized opinion of tl.net community. It has nothing to do with comparison, they are considered bad in general.
Sorry for not believing a random russian TL user who uses shared iccup accounts to judge a players skill. An all knowing guy like you wouldn't have missed that koreans mostly share their iccup accounts would you?I'm saying clearly how stupid it is to base skill off of your own guesswork about players you don't even have 100% proof is really them. Stop thinking you know something that the rest of us doesn't because you don't.
Basing pure skill on TV appearances only is obviously not 100% accurate but it's one hell of a lot better than your methods which doesn't even guarantee that your observations are from the right player. Even if you would know a players iccup account how many replays have you actually watched of his? 50+? I don't think so.
And please don't use "Trust me I know I'm right" as an argument again unless you want to be ripped apart by 100 nerds again. Why would I trust someone I don't know and never heard of?
Romad is a god damn SAVANT when it comes to identifying hotkey patterns.
Trust him. He's right.
EDIT: Oh HB already covered this. Well. What Hot_bid said!
On October 07 2009 04:01 Jenia6109 wrote: So, which Protoss can make it to Ro16: Group A Pusan can do it beating fOrGG and then Canata consecutively. Pusan should try really well even thought he was on fire in OSL/MSL prelims.
Group B Bisu should take his group easily no matter who is it, Really or Shine, he will win if he will not overrate himself
Group D Barracks is not main problem for JangBi, he will win him if he want while Kwanro can be real obstacle. In last PvZ JangBi lost even to YellOw[ArnC], so it's really hard to predict who will win. It only matters who will prepare better.
Group E This group is similar to Group B. After beating Jaedong 2-0 it is no problem for Stork to beat unknown Zerg ggaemo. Also after beating fantasy 2-0 it is no problem to beat sKyHigh. All that Stork should do is to play his standart play and don't choke
Group K Who is Pure? No matter because Hyuk is nobody too. Leta is not king of TvP so Pure has at least a chance to surprise us
These Protoss will probably fail : Group C BackHo is so middle player now while Calm is S-class player lately. Calm will probably destroy both Reality and BackHo 2-0.
Group F Movie is real dark horse in this OSL. He already beated Jaedong in last MSL but he is still so inconsistent. Even if he will defeat Light he will probably lose to hero who is ZvP specializer.
Group H Another dark horse Jaehoon find himself with low TvPer firebathero and last-generation Zerg ZerO who will probably eat Jaehoon, maybe with queens tt
Group I Poor poor GuemChi, he will play first set with Luxury. It's pity but he has no chance to win, maybe 1%
Group J Horang2 will most likely beat FrOzean but there is EffOrt in second set. No! It's trap! Change your group, Horang2, lol
Movies strength is PvZ and you forget that he eliminated by.hero from the Avalon MSL. Movie is 2:0 against by.hero and will most likely beat him again.
Let's just say Light will most likely eat them both for breakfast.
In last ~48h I've slept like 5-6h and it's past 1 AM for me now - this is how I enjoyed reading both recap and few pages of arguing.
TBH
On October 07 2009 03:26 NukeTheStars wrote: Lol, nerd fight. This is why some people hate Teamliquid, you know. Elitist jerks battling it out to see who is the most elite jerk of them all.
On the topic of the groups, this round of 36 is shaping out to be one of the best in recent memory. So many great potential match-ups!
There would be no problem imo if Romad had not written
On October 06 2009 22:50 (paladin)roMAD wrote: However, some comments you made are really clueless.
Recap is pretty long, so much time had been spent writing it right? It's the 1st news post by Shikyo too? While being in the same situation, who would care that later on, in the same post there is
I dont want to offend anyone, i just noticed this trend of calling everyone bad just because he lost 6 or 12 games in proleague. They are still good players and if they make it through prelims then it's not just a fluke.
...?
Until Hot_Bid interfered there was 0 guarantee to whatever Romad said... how many people reading those comments do know who he is? I had no idea >.<
On October 08 2009 10:15 thunk wrote: You guys haven't been reading TL if you don't know who Romad is.
I think that you'd actually have to have read the iccup who is who thread. And well, it's quite understandable that some haven't, since not nearly everyone plays on iccup.
Anyway, I think Romad's just pointing out that people are just way overestimating the difference in ability between well-known players and lesser A-teamers and B-teamers. Because we're talking about mostly teenagers here, mental aptitude is quite important when it comes to performing well on the big stage. But in the preliminaries, in an environment that's basically like team practice, it's much easier to perform your best. And in a low-pressure environment, anyone can win a Bo3 from anyone else.
There's a reason why many big names consistently fail in the prelims. This OSL actually happens to be kind of unique because how few upsets there were.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/SilverskY/EVERSL2.jpg)
Lomo 0-2 
Movie
HoGiL 2-0 ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/Picon_small.gif)
7![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/Zicon_small.gif)
7![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/Ticon_small.gif)
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