Playoff Schedule

Out of each group of four, one advances to the finals. Matches are Bo3.

Playoff Preview
by confusedcrib

Finals Playoff Matches:

These are the games that matter, folks. The winner of these groups of four advance to the NASL finals. Their performance up until this point forgotten, these matches mean everything to these players. Expect them to play like it.

*everything with a star next to it has ConfusedCrib's entertainment star of approval, these are matches that I am guaranteeing to be entertaining. Every one of these matches should be great, but the stars are for the one's with a little extra "oomph"

Zenio vs. dde – Korean vs. Up and Comer

This ZvT is going to be incredible. I'm a huge personal fan of DDE's play style. He seems like an awesome mix of Select and Qxc, with incredible macro and aggression. He's still relatively new to the scene, and despite putting out some impressive results, is still counted out by many. This his chance to prove himself, being up against one of the best Zergs in the business of protecting the swarm, oGs Zenio. Zenio, being Korean, is automatically expected to win this match, and I'd even favor him in it. He's very good at multitasking you to death. We should all tune in and root for DDE though, if he wins this match, he has a lot of potential to continue his growth as a player.

MaNa vs. IdrA – Man Who's Been Silent vs. The Gracken

Ever since Dreamhack, we haven't heard all too much about the scary Protoss Mana. In the meantime, he has slowly but surely been making his way up through NASL. Mana is a great player, but he has a huge obstacle standing in his way, the gracken. Idra's PvZ is simply heavenly to watch since he has been working so hard on it, and you need to tune in to see it (as long as he plays with a clear head).

MorroW vs. Socke – Unusual vs. Unusual

Morrow's PvZ, like Idra's, is fantastic to watch. Morrow makes banelings, lots of banelings. What's great about his opponent Socke is that he is not the kind of player who turtle death balls, he'll do anything from the 4 gate nexus cancel to just taking the whole map and getting infinity high templar. I love watching Socke play for his unusual Protoss play. Tune in for the non-standard vs. the non-standard action.

TT1 vs. NaDa - Rematch!

In the GSL World Championships, to quote iNcontroL from state of the game: “TT1 sat across from m-fing Nada and beat him. That's incredible.” TT1 hasn't had much hype since those matches at the World Championship, so the question is: will he be able to beat Nada again and regain his former dominance as one of the best Protoss players?

ACE vs. BRAT_OK – The Obvious Winner vs. The Comeback

I may be just an ignorant American, but I have heard almost nothing about BRAT_OK since the beta. If he manages to beat Ace, then it can mean the beginning of a beautiful resurgence of popularity. Ace has a habit of winning foreign tournaments, and if BRAT_OK can stop him now, then consider me a renewed fan.This is the kind of match you have to tune into just to see if BRAT_OK wins/

HasuObs vs. Fenix – The Most Underrated match

Going into TSL, many people underestimated HasuObs, who managed to make it very deep into the tournament. Similarly, going into MLG, no one expected Fenix to be one of the top contenders after making it through the grueling open bracket. Both of these players play their own style and it's fast paced and exciting to watch. Watching Fenix play is always so fun and exciting and this is another chance for HasuObs to cement his reputation, so he has a lot on the line.

NaNiwa vs. Axslav – Learn Damn You!

This is the PvP you'll want to learn from. Naniwa and Axslav are both top PvP players and know their way around the matchup. Everyone expects Naniwa to win this, but if Axslav is well enough prepared, he has a legitimate chance to take it. Watching Naniwa play PvP is always a pleasure, and if you focus really hard on his play, you can learn so much from it.

DarKFoRcE vs. SjoW – Crazy Good vs. Crazy Good

with a spoonful of learning on the side

Both of these guys play some pretty insane TvZ. Both of these guys styles are easier to replicate than some other players, and whenever I watch Sjow play, I learn one little cute thing to steal from him. If you want to learn how to play TvZ, these guys will teach you.

MC vs. CrunCher – Upset vs. Two?

We all remember the famous Cruncher smiley face, and I think we would all be more than happy to see it in action again. Cruncher proves himself to be great at preparing for matches in advance, he can really plan out games to demolish a particular opponent. I wasn't too big of a fan of Cruncher, I really didn't think he could play too well. But after watching him play some PvP on some streams, I've seen him pure out macro other professional players I'm very confident in his skill level. He has a legitimate chance to take this series.

MoMaN vs. KiWiKaKi – The Best for Last

Both of these players are two of the most inventive, innovative, creative, high level players that I know of. This PvZ will be absolutely fantastic from an observers standpoint due to their high multitasking creative styles. Both of these players want to be in the NASL finals very badly, and will be pulling out their full arsenal for this series. Don't miss it.

The NASL Format is Bad
Unnecessarily Inflammatory Title
by motbob

The NASL Format is bad. The NASL format could be better

It's bad It could be better for the players, because the timeslots are unreasonable for some.
It's bad It could be better for the commentators, because of the sheer number of games.
It's bad It could be better for the viewers, because the average game quality is low.

The Players

It's not bad for all of the players. North Americans and Europeans have their games scheduled at very reasonable times, with players in the US playing during the day and with Europeans playing late in the evening and into the next morning. Both time slots are very standard times for gamers. But Asians (Koreans + Sen) are a whole different story. NASL's filming schedule occurs during early morning, while most of Korea sleeps. It's easy to see how waking up at 4AM to play NASL matches could make the quality of play decrease.

Given that, my question is this: why not cast from replays, at least for some matches? The memory of Clash of the Titans is still fresh in my mind, with all of its technical difficulties and replay sync problems. But surely those problems are not insurmountable. The TSL 3 used a program that automatically told commentators on different sides of North America whether or not their replays were out of sync. Surely, with two computers right next to each other, the NASL could similarly fix their replay de-sync problems. With Koreans playing at times comfortable to them, the level of play should noticeably improve.


The Commentators

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems that the workload put on the NASL casters in general, and on Gretorp in particular, seems excessive. No other commentator commentates close to the amount that Gretorp does, with Tastosis casting a maximum of ~16 Bo3s per week, and with most commentators, save djWHEAT, casting much less. Gretorp, on the other hand, does 25 series per week, every week. This isn't a reasonable workload, in my opinion. There just isn't enough time to meticulously prepare for each series the way a professional sports commentator would prepare for a match, and, in my opinion, it shows.

There are a couple of solutions to this. The first would be to reduce the workload by getting more commentators. The second would be to reduce the number of games casted. I'll talk more about why the second solution might be the better one in the next section.

The Viewers

When you compare the quality of the average game in the NASL to the average game in a TSL, MLG, or any single elimination tournament, the difference is obvious. The structure of the NASL prevents the average quality of its games from being where it should be. In a single elimination tournament, the quality of the games improve as the tournament advances and the bad players are pruned from the player roster. In the NASL, the bad players stick around and ruin the quality of play for weeks and weeks.

Yet, if one looks at professional sports, this shouldn't be that much of a problem. The NFL, NBA, and MLB are all successful entities that run a league format. I'll compare NASL to those particular professional sports leagues to see what makes them succeed where the NASL falls short.

I took the final win percentages of all of the teams in the NBA, the NFL, and the MLB, over two seasons, and looked at the win percentage of the players in the regular season of the NASL. My results are below; you will see that the NASL's players have a wider spread of win percentages than do the teams of all three professional sports leagues. A wider spread of success means more lopsided games, and more lopsided games means lower game quality. Turns out that this is wrong, which makes this next section more important.

+ Show Spoiler [inaccurate graphs] +

The NFL has a high variance in win percentages, similar to the NASL, but there is one very important difference between the two leagues: the NFL doesn't show all of its games. It highlights the best games on Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, and Monday night. The vast majority of the games on the NFL's schedule go unseen by the viewing public. That's how the NFL keeps the average game quality of their league high.

Likewise, the NASL should cull terrible matchups from its broadcast schedule. Perhaps if Zenio is playing Painuser on Friday, the NASL should choose not to commentate that match and release replays instead (thus also reducing the casters' workloads.) Another solution might be to cast all five matches, and to simply not broadcast the worst one. Five best of threes per night is a ridiculous amount of Starcraft, and reducing the daily dose to only four won't disappoint many people, especially if the remaining match is released in the form of replays.

In MLB and in the NBA, viewers don't watch every match. They watch nationally televised matches (AKA the good matches) and those of their local teams. This, again, brings up the average quality of the games watched, unless you're a Cubs fan.

I'm of the opinion, in addition, that there are simply too many players in the NASL. But that aspect of the league, I think, is unlikely to change, so I won't spend any time talking about it.

Game of the Week
by emythrel

This week's game of the week was somewhat more difficult to pick than last week. The other game that I considered is definitely worth a watch if you have VOD access, for it was the most bizarre TvP I think I've ever seen. If you are unsure of which game I speak of go check out Game 2 between SelecT and MC..... you will not regret it.

Sen vs Socke on Crevasse

Our players spawn horizontally at the bottom of the map, Sen at bottom left and Socke at bottom right. Perfect positions for some of the Muta play that I have come to love in this match-up thanks to Moon. Sen goes for 15 hatch, 16 pool while Socke decides on a forge expand and it seems we are in for the long haul. Sen makes a brilliant play stealing the sole gas at Socke's back door natural making his soon-to-be-revealed Stargate play a little less potent. Sen takes a very fast third as Socke begins to make Voidrays.

The game moves right on in to the mid-game as the first Voidray begins to chip away at Sen's third. Two queens come to save it, but Socke brings his Phoenix to lift and takes first blood dropping both Queens. Luckily for Sen, a third Queen pops from the hatch to finish off the badly damaged Voidray before any more damage can be done.



Sen now opts to build a spire to counter the airplay as the growing Phoenix number begins to take down Overlords at a rapid rate, forcing Sen to morph nine Overlords at once to break his supply cap and give himself some room to breathe.

Sen decides to go with Corruptors instead of Mutas for his first round of air units, morphing eight as soon as his spire finishes and follows it up with a gaggle of Mutas when the next set of larvae pop. Socke takes his third as the battle for air supremacy starts to heat up, with so many air units out for the Zerg, Socke's flock of Phoenix begin to die but he has already made the switch to a gateway based army and has multiple Cannon's covering all three of his Nexi. As the game hits the 15 minute mark both players look to take more bases, as Socke tech's to High Templar and Sen pumps round after round of lings and banes.

With both players nearly maxed and Sen banking over 2k, Socke moves out with his blink stalker, sentry and high templar force towards Sen's front door and is met by some 120 lings, 40 banelings and of course those pesky Mutas. Socke is forced to fall back momentarily as Sen swarms forward but a big blink, some clutch forcefields and a couple of nice storms then send Sen packing back home briefly.



It looks like Sen wants to get aggressive as he loads up a squadron of Overlords with Lings and Banes to take on a bombing run at Socke's backdoor nat, killing most of the probes and then follows up with a baneling bust that kills everything at Socke's 4th base, including the nexus.



Socke knows he is in trouble and must do damage while Sen has no Banelings, so the Protoss army rolls in to Sen's front door and is met by fresh Lings and 4 Spinecrawlers, with another eight or so being morphed behind. Some more great FF's and Storms push Sen back for a while but once the extra Spines pop, Socke knows its time to give up on the attack. Sen has been expanding all game and currently sits on 6 bases to Socke's 4, as Socke backs off from the Zerg strong hold he makes a U-turn and heads for the 4th base of his opponent, sacking it and then moving on to the 5th base.



Meanwhile Sen sends off a crack squad of Zerglings to ravage the main base of the Protoss and backs them up with his now sizeable Muta force.



The attack quickly leaves the main as Sen decides the 3rd base is a more valuable target. Socke is forced to maynard all his probes to his recently rebuilt 4th.

Both players' supplies drop below 150 as their armies engage back and forth at Socke's front door, while a Ninja team of Zealots have their way with Sen's top right 6th base, leaving Sen effectively with no mining bases and Socke with very few probes but two mining bases. The action coming so fast its hard to keep up with everything, Sen starts to rebuild his battered economy as he spends the last of his trust fund on Broodlords and manages to push back Socke once more. Banes roll towards what is left of the Stalker, HT and Archon army and a few more sublime FF's and Storms minimize the damage taken by the German Protoss.



Socke is however pushed all the way back to his 4th where he decides to make his stand, taking down 2 Broodlords in quick succession before the extremely slow Queens arrive as backup and show how powerful Broodlords can be with Queens transfusing them, Socke's 4th falls once more, leaving him mining only from his nearly depleted 3rd and back door nat.

Both players now sit below 100 supply and are both in the stone age from an economy standpoint. Sen finally finishes off the Ninja Zealots that have been preventing him mining for so long and gets his 4th back up and running. Socke has made a switch back to Voidrays in order to deal with the Broodlords but as the now tiny armies meet in the centre of the map more great transfuses leave Socke with only 1 Voidray and 3 Stalkers and an Archon to his name. Sen is long distance mining from the base to the right of his 3rd determined to gain any extra income he can and sends another squadron of Lings to disrupt mining at Socke's back door nat once more.

Sen has a 30 supply lead but Socke has the better army composition as the game rolls past the 30 minute mark. Socke decides on another attack at the Zerg front door and catches the Spinecrawlers in transition, Sen is forced to engage while the Spines burrow and Socke is pushed back once again. Sen counters again with his rebuilt Muta force at Socke's backdoor nat. Both players supplies are still dropping slowly as they now sit at around 60 supply, both players manage to find the resources to expand again but Socke loses his back door nat to the ever annoying Mutas before they move on to his 4th base. With Sen back on a decent 2 base economy he decides to tech switch to Roaches as he begins to pull out a larger and larger supply lead.

The last Voidray dies attempting to defend the only mining base but some good storms take the somewhat overzealous Muta force down to red health before Sen is forced to back off.



With his supply now double that of his opponent and his Roach switch fully complete, Sen decides it is time to make the killing blow, a great set of final Forcefields can only delay the inevitable for Socke.



30 Roaches backed up by a Broodlord, Mutas and a fresh round of Lings finish off the remaining Protoss army, forcing the GG from Socke.



Another fantastic ZvP! Again showing the power of Zerg air in the mid-game and the strength of the Protoss gateway army when controlled well. This game could easily have gone either way, but in the end Sen showed that thinking outside of the box along with high aggression can make Zerg an extremely deadly opponent.

You Don't Have to Go Home,
But You Can't Stay Here
by JimLloyd

EGiNcontroL, oGsEnsnare, Liquid’TLO, and FXOMoonglade are out of the playoffs. They won’t have the opportunity to play for the NASL’s $50,000 grand prize, either through auto-qualification or the Playoff Bracket. Season One is over for them. But Season Two isn’t. Because they fall into a tiny hole in the NASL structure where they don’t qualify for the playoffs but also don’t have to re-qualify for next season. That’s interesting, isn't it? But why does this Zone of Mediocrity exist? I’ve concluded that it exists because, otherwise, the fifty players wouldn’t break down into a natural 10-20-4-16 format. [i]Duh.

I know I must sound like a broken record about this after last week’s mini-rant, but I seriously don’t get it. I understand that MLG has a ludicrous format in order to guarantee that there’s marquee match-ups to be broadcast on the streams at all times, but I don’t see what value is added by the NASL’s 10-20-4-16 breakdown of the players. The forums are full of people confused by the system, and/or thanking motbob profusely for his clarifying post last week.

I recognize the desire to have the division winners get some kind of bonus, like the two top seeds in the USA’s National Football League, who get to skip the first round of the playoffs. So I see some appeal to the two-tiered playoff structure. I also see the constraints under which the designers were working. You want it to run about ten weeks with about fifty players; you’re probably going to end up with weird elements like five divisions (five just messes everything up). But maybe they should’ve just changed some of their constraints. If having fifty players is going to result in a crazy post-season, then rather than stick to the nice round number, change that and make the post-season more easily understood.

They could have made the season shorter and had more divisions, or added some more players. Or had fewer players and four divisions. It’s tough trying to put this kind of stuff together, but making it hard for people to figure out what’s going to happen before the playoffs can’t be good (even if they’re used to the absurd complexity of Starcraft leagues). There are probably a lot of people who just want to watch some good Starcraft and don’t really need to place it in the larger league context, but then what value is the NASL adding to the viewer? The NASL has provided us with great games so far, and promises dozens more before the season’s over (and there are lots of other reasons to love the NASL -- see my column from last week for a few) -- there's no reason not to make it easy for us figure out what’s going to happen and to get excited about it!

(And Tiebreak Tuesday? I’ll probably get flamed for this, but who cares? When the playoffs are over, people will point to the Tiebreak Tuesday results and say, “Well, if Player X had been in Group 2, yadda yadda yadda," but those counterfactuals are meaningless; no matter the result, there’d be counterfactuals like that. The truth is that NaDa, IdrA, SjoW (who the website lists as #2 in his division, naturally), and Fenix are all really good players. It’s not like MaNa could end up playing either MMA or me. They all have 6-3 records and are +5 on points. Just seed the playoff brackets so players aren’t playing opponents they’ve already faced (we could end up with two rematches). Or just use an RNG -- even the NFL is prepared to go to coinflips for post-season seeding if two teams are similar enough.)

So we have a four-player bracket to determine placement of those four players into four more four-player brackets, the winners of which will advance with the winner of a fifth four-player bracket to a sixteen-player bracket (which contains the first two players from each of the five regular-season divisions, and one winner of a 1024 player bracket, drawn from players who did not participate in the regular season). So next year’s regular season is going to consist of: (i) the players in the playoffs mentioned above; (ii) seven other players from the aforementioned 1024 player bracket; (iii) eight players from another bracket of indeterminate size that may contain the bottom sixteen regular season players; and (iv) four guys just chillin.’

Okay, rant over. Now some quick-hit thoughts:

When the Games Don’t Matter. Some of the players had already clinched spots in the final going into the last week of the season. What do you, as a player, do then? July, having just returned to Korea from MLG Columbus where he played through the open bracket, didn’t play perhaps as hard as he could have in his match against MoMaN. His six pool in game 2 was the Starcraft equivalent of Curtis Painter. (And MoMaN acknowledged as much in a post-match interview.) SeleCT, on the other hand, decided to have a little fun; “fan service,” I think the kids call it. After beating MC playing straight-up in Game 1, he decided to use some . . . unorthodox strategies in games 2 and 3. Turns out that Battlecruiser rushes are pretty soundly beaten by “a couple Void Rays,” and that mass Orbital Command doesn’t fare well against infinity Carriers. The SeleCT games were fun to watch, though -- MC seemed to take his cue and play along.

When Games That Don’t Matter Actually Do Matter, or: Who Said Counterfactuals Are Meaningless? But what about their opponents? Strelok had clinched his place but played Slush straight up. If he had dogged it and lost (the whole idea of that seems really unlikely from his interviews, but let’s play the game), Slush would’ve ended up in the Zone of Mediocrity where he’d have an automatic place in Season Two; instead he has to re-qualify. And had SeleCT not decided to treat us to his innovative three-nukes-before-expand build, MC might’ve ended up tied with MaNa, which would have resulted in yet another game for Tiebreaker Tuesday.

But look at MoMaN's result! MoMaN was 3-5 and -1 on points leading into the week. If July were to have beaten him either 2-1 or 2-0 -- remember, MoMaN himself admitted that July might have mailed in some of that series -- then MoMaN would have been 3-6, squarely in the Zone of Mediocrity. And since TLO passed on his playoff invite, that means final playoff spot would have gone to . . . iNcontroL. I'm sure the fierce competitor in him is a little hot, but he wouldn't say anything or hold anything against anyone, because he is the most manner person ever. Seriously, it's a tossup between him and Gandhi.

We could see another Korean sweep. If my calculations are correct, it’s possible that each “quadrant” of the Finals’ bracket (I’m used to American college basketball and its regions) could produce a Korean winner, though at least one of the quadrants requires that a Korean come out of the playoff system.

You Finished First. Here's Your Reward! Hometeam favorite Liquid’Ret is rewarded for his #1 seed with a first-round Finals match against the winner of the Open Bracket, who will very likely be a fantastic player. The open qualifier player ought to be seeded #16, but it just works out weird this season because the regular season players were selected by invitation (with which I agreed, for the record) rather than a play-in tournament. In future seasons, the Open Bracket probably won't contain people like ThorZaiN or DIMAGA. So let’s look at some interesting names in the open bracket as of today:

A number of players who were snubbed by the selection committee have their chance now. DeMusliM’s hand works again, so he can give it a shot; his teammates StrifeCro and LzGameR will be in the tournament, too. CoLMinigun will have an opportunity to bring his legions of fans to the NASL next year. And maybe NightEnD will be able to produce a valid Visa. (No Kas, though . . . yet.)

mtwDIMAGA. He was late (along with LaLush, who’s in the open tourney) in applying and wasn’t allowed into Season One’s regular season. Having knocked off July and MVP in the GSL World Championships, DIMAGA would likely have been a favorite in the NASL. Provided he gets everything together, I think it’s unlikely that he’d fail to make the top eight in the Open Bracket at least (guaranteeing him a spot in regular season two).

sixjaxMajOr. If that’s still his name next week, the open bracket qualifier from MLG Columbus should make a good showing. He beat several NASL competitors there -- iNcontroL, Tyler, and TLO. But he did eventually lose to . . . Ret, 2-0.

ThorZaiN. The hero of TSL 3 and one of the breakout performers at MLG Columbus is ready to play in North America again. He has so many fans and is such a good player that it would be huge news if he didn’t qualify for season two. And right now he’s one of the favorites to win the Open Bracket. At Columbus he beat IdrA, SeleCT, Tyler, and Machine, but lost to MC and . . . Ret.

YourFriend. Your friend is playing in the Open Bracket. You know someone -- isn’t that cool? You’d better root for him.

Finally, A Brief Note on SeleCT’s Nationality. I saw that a number of people objected to my characterization last week of SeleCT as “an American.” I see how people could think he’s Korean -- especially since he's a Korean citizen and chose a Korean flag for his TLPD page -- but as an American, I’m officially claiming him. That’s what America’s all about. My ancestors came over in steamships from Europe, and as they disembarked to have their names taken on Ellis Island, they laid their eyes on the Statue of Liberty as part of their first view of their new country. The poem “The New Colossus” is engraved on a plaque inside The Statue, and it famously states: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses / your 350 APM terrans, your big men with shooting range / yearning to breathe free!

Beautiful words from poet Emma Lazarus, and that spirit of inclusiveness was also written into U.S. law with the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1948, 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1250(A)(1):

1. For the purpose of comparison with other states or organizations, a person shall be considered “American,” provided that:
   
   
   • the person is very, very good at something; and
     
     
   • the person maintains a connection with the United States. Such a connection can be proven by a showing that:
     
     
   • the person is related to a naturalized or natural-born United States citizen; or
   
   
   
2. the person resides or has resided within the United States, its territories, or areas within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States; or
   
   
3. the person attends or has attended college, university, or any other educational institution within the United States, its territories, or within an area within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States; or
   
   
4. the person has been referred to at some point as “American” or “from the United States;” or
   
   
5. the person is aware of the general geographic location of the United States; or
   
   
6. upon the declaration of the President of the United States, an agent thereof, a natural-born or naturalized citizen, or other such person.

So sorry, SeleCT’s an American. It’s the law.*

*The information contained in this post does not constitute legal advice, is governed by our Terms and Conditions Of Use, and we, the NASL writing team, are not acting as your attorney. We make no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained in or linked to this post.
In no event will the NASL writing team be held liable to any party for any damages arising in any way out of the availability, use, reliance on or inability to use any information provided by or through the NASL writing team's posts, or for any claim attributable to errors, omissions or other inaccuracies in, or destructive properties of any information provided by the NASL writing team.

The Good, The Bad, and The Outclassed
by emythrel

The Good, The Bad and The Outclassed

It is said that you can't have pleasure without pain, that for there to be winner there must be a loser and that is very much the case in the NASL. The early weeks of this ambitious league were notoriously plagued by technical difficulties, whether it was the video encoding or stream lag and even at times the poor editing everyone and their virtual wife had something to say about what NASL could have done better and let's face it these issues have been flogged to the point of death, shocked back to life and then dunked in acid by the community at large.

I have been an avid supporter of the NASL and their vision for western SC2, however I now find myself drawn to write about the one issue I feel should never have been an issue, the players. I can already hear the screams of the NASL faithful but I must forge ahead, I was never under any illusions that technical difficulties of one sort or another wouldn't ensue during season 1 however I was and still am perplexed by some choices in terms of player talent. The difference in quality between the top and bottom is simply astounding and something that could have been remedied with a better selection process.

It is obvious the some of the players selected for NASL were selected purely on name recognition and not as it should have been done, on talent and proven ability. Being a beloved or famous member of the community should never qualify you for a competition of this calibre, skill is all that matters. With this being said, I present the good, the bad and the outclassed:


The Good

I could talk at length about IdrA, July, KiwiKaKi or the other names you would expect to do well in any competition, however I feel that these guys get enough praise that they don't need highlighting or a lowly scrub like me stroking their ego.

Sheth - Your Friendly Neighborhood Zerg

The name was familiar to me and many others before the NASL due to his participation in the Coaches' Corner podcast, however I was unaware of his prowess as a player.

When I looked at division 1 I would never have predicted that seven weeks in he would be sat on a very healthy 5-2 record in a group that also includes TLO, Morrow, Fenix, KiwiKaKi, Moon and Rainbow. Taking losses only to KiwiKaKi and Fenix and placing himself in a commanding position to comfortably qualify for the play-offs. With only 2 ZvZ's left in his way, the most mannered man in North America even had a shot at topping the group and boy did he deliver.

After taking down Vibe 2-0 he then beat Morrow 2-1 in the final week to take 2nd in the division, knocking Morrow down to the play-off spots in the process. Sheth is definitely on the rise and with his team making the move to Korea for the GSTL we can only expect him to continue improving, could we be looking at a potential rival for Idra's number one NA Zerg spot or will his success be short lived? Only time will tell.

Strelok - The Giant Slayer

Where do I start? The performance of Strelok during NASL season 1 has simply been stellar, literally. The stars aligned from the very beginning for the Ukrainian Terran, taking down superstar after superstar. In the first three weeks he took down both the Koreans in his division and was awarded a walk over against Naniwa. He managed hold on to the top spot in his division from week two, only relinquishing it for one week after his somewhat surprise loss to SixjaxDde.

The list of fallen enemies is impressive to say the least, NaDa, Squirtle, Slush, Haypro, KawaiiRice, MoonGlade and Axlav. When you look at that list, you really get a feeling for just how consistent Strelok has been, he came prepared every week and then delivered to make an 8-1 run through his division, a feat only matched by the legendary BoxeR and Team Liquid's own Ret. Unlike with Sheth, I was well aware of just how good Strelok is but I was still somewhat astounded by his performance, I had expected him to make the play-offs but in a group that includes a BW legend and an MLG champion I simply didn't set my hopes too high.

If Strelok can continue to play with the level of consistency he showed during division play, I fully expect to see him go deep at the live Finals in Ontario.

The Bad

I would like to give a somewhat honorable (perhaps dishonorable?) mention to PainUser in this section for being the only player to go 0-9. This is a somewhat false assessment of Tpain's performance as his new job with IGN and a lack of communication meant he was unable to compete for three of the nine weeks and is why I felt he did not warrant further highlighting.

QXC – The Spanish Flu

As one of the major players in the North American scene, QXC would have been considered a safe bet to make the play-offs for most SC2 fans. Unfortunately for both QXC and the fans, his performance in the NASL has been somewhat disappointing. QXC can claim mitigating circumstances, after all he he spent the last few months in a foreign country studying hard. Combine that with the timezone difference and the sexy Spanish women, and you have a perfect storm of fail.

Its not all been doom and gloom however, QXC recently beat select in the finals of the NA champions trophy and won his final division match against Darkforce, showing that while he may have had his priorities elsewhere than the NASL (and rightly so in my opinion) he's certainly still got the magic. Out of the players whom will not be making the play-offs I confidently predict that should he decide to attempt qualification for season 2, he will make it in without much trouble (I hope I don't have to eat my words!). Now that he has made the pond hop to Korea, we can expect a fully focused QXC for the foreseeable future.

Rainbow - Not so shiny

One of only 2 Korean invitees with a losing record in the NASL, Rainbow certainly can not claim the usual "Lag" argument for his poor performance. No amount of lag makes you lose 6 series out of 9 to "lesser" players, Rainbow has simply been out played more often than not. I would not presume to say that Rainbow didn't take the NASL seriously, or that he is a bad player, however it now seems clear that he is no longer amongst the top tier of Korean players. Still, that fact remains that as a former code S player, I expected more.

Just to put things in to perspective, Rainbow was beaten by Grubby, Morrow, Sheth, TLO, Moon and Vibe. That's hardly a list of scrubs but I think most would agree that as someone who is credited as "one of the most influential BW players to never win a major tournament" there is little excuse for not being able to best what many would call a "mid-tier" pro in Vibe and the lackluster GrubbyGrubby. Did Rainbow simply not prepare? Were his priorities elsewhere? Did he simply give up? Maybe, however he still had a shot at making the play-offs if he could have just flipped one L to a W, flipping two would have secured him a fairly good seed to boot.

Perhaps this will finally put to rest the myth that even the worst Koreans are better than the best Foreigners...... or maybe not.

The Outclassed

Everyone has their own opinions about players, whether or not you like or dislike a player, skill is more important. There are a few players for whom participation in this league was never based on skill, I would challenge anyone to provide me with a solid reason for their participation other than name recognition. I feel that having these players in the NASL has only hurt the reputation of both the players themselves and the NASL, in a competition this stacked with talent there was never a need to have players solely there because they would bring in viewers, it has even at times turned viewers off of the NASL and turned some players into a punchline for the casters and viewers alike.


Artosis – A fallen Hero

Without doubt, in his day Artosis was one of the best Starcraft players outside of Korea. Unfortunately, this is not his day and there are many players whom deserved the spot more. No one loves Starcraft more than Artosis, that is why I was surprised he applied for the NASL. You may think that statement is oxymoronic, I however feel that his love for the game should have told him that he wasn't ready to be playing on such a big stage, love does not equal skill. After qualifying for the GSL way back in Season 1 he has never re-qualified for even code A. His TLPD entry is all but empty and he famously didn't even make it in to the Grand Master league.

Don't get me wrong, I have placed my Liquibet on Artosis nearly every week, I wanted to see him do well but the combination of lack of practice, the horrible time zone difference and the ever present latency problems from Korea have a sum total of making Artosis look out of place playing with some of the best that the Starcraft II world has to offer. Perhaps his record would look a touch better if not for the two walkovers he gave up due to internet problems, but his season was pretty much already over before that point having only managed to beat the equally lackluster Grubby.


Grubby – A Dutchman in New Amsterdam

Here is a simple case of brand recognition trumping substance. Many of his fellow Warcraft III comrades have made the move to Starcraft with resounding success, doubtless this bode well for one of the world's best Warcraft players. With an 1-8 record he finished 9th in his group, managing to finally eek out a 2-1 victory over Rainbow in the final week of division play.

At no point during the NASL have I ever been watching Grubby and believed he could win (even when he eventually did), nor have I been entertained by creative play or close games very often. There have been glimmers of brilliance, but they disappeared as fast as they arrived. Given time I truly believe Grubby has the potential to be successful, but he wasn't and isn't in the same league as 98% of the NASL field. His inclusion in the NASL meant that someone else was left out in the cold and forced to qualify for season 2.

I will give Grubby huge props for sticking out the season unlike some other players, that makes him a hero to me and I hope to see him do better in the future.

Parting Words

There are arguments for and against a selection system based partly on a popularity contest and I am sure many will disagree with my views. The simple facts of the case are this, some players in NASL Season 1 had no right being there, taking places from players whom had the potential to perhaps win the event but definitely taking places from people who would have at the very least secured themselves a spot in Season 2. If players had been forced to qualify for season 1 and then performed badly, at least I could defend the fact that they had earned their place and with a competition that was designed to be the "GSL of the West" there really is no excuse for not forcing players to qualify, even when we had to endure horrible players in the GSL open seasons, we could always say "Well they were good enough to qualify"

Those players whom were over looked in favour of Artosis and Grubby now have to win qualification instead of having it handed to them, if Artosis and Grubby had been forced to qualify there is very little doubt in my mind they would have failed and I will be pleasantly surprised if either manage to re-qualify for Season 2.

While a few other performances were disappointing, Drewbie, Machine, Goody, Ensnare most would have predicted them to do better. While I hoped for better from Artosis and Grubby, neither can truly say they under performed, they were simply beaten by better, more refined players week after week. The only "good" thing to come from their play was the Artosis Pylon and the Grubby Rally, when those are the only positive things I could say without being dishonest, something is amiss.

Predicting the Future of ESPORTS, Yesterday!
by Primadog

Group play as a tournament format has become more popular recently for major StarCraft tournaments. The characteristic of group play - large numbers of games played, pre-determined match-ups, and the round-robin structure - makes it an ideal candidate for statistical projection.

The NASL Prospectus is a weekly group-play projection that I have published since week 3 of NASL. It is an attempt to adopt the mathematics behind NCAA's football computer rankings to predict outcomes of StarCraft tournaments during its group stages. At its basis is an objective algorithm that utilizes only two input variables:

1. The TLPD Elo of each player
2. Current results of the tournament

With NASL divisional play complete, now is a perfect time to look back and evaluate how well the Prospectus have performed.


Hits and Misses

Let us start by comparing the first projection released on May 2nd with the actual divisional play results. The week 3 projection called 12 players' final results perfectly and 35 more within two match-ups of the players' actual records, but it missed on the results of Boxer (predicted 4-5 -1pt, actual 8-1 11pt), ClouD (predicted 6-3 5pt, actual 3-6 -6pt), and Sen (predicted 4-5 1pt, actual 7-2 11pt).

Compared with the actual post-season placements, the initial projection predicted 5 of the 10 automatic Grand Final spots, 12 of the 20 Playoff spots, and 11 of the 16 relegated players. Overall, it called player records to a 72% accuracy, but had an error rate of 46% error-rate in player scores. These results are slightly below the design goal of 70% accuracy by NASL week 3.



Error Evaluation

One important concept behind the Prospectus is that, by using weekly updated group-play results and player Elos, the projections can become more accurate week-by-week. These updates roughly translate to a theoretical 5% improvement in projection accuracy per weeks. To quantitatively evaluate the weekly performances of the Prospectus, I use three accuracy indexes:

1. How does the projected records compare with the actual records?
   (measured against the 225 match-ups of the NASL regular season)
   
2. How does the projected scores compare with the actual scores?
   (Measuring against the maximum scoring error possible: 500pt)
   
3. In NASL post-season, a player can either gain an automatic Grand Final spot, participate in the Play-offs, survive for next season, or be relegated from NASL. How many of these spots did the Prospectus hit on the mark each week?

As expected, the projection generally improved each week. By week 6 of NASL, the Prospectus has called the post-season spots for 38 players correctly, as well their final records and scores within 87% and 78% of actual value, respectively. In fact, the projected record have been consistently within 2% of the target accuracy goal. The predicted scores and player-states faired somewhat poorly in comparison.


Conclusion

The NASL Prospectus performed admirably on its initial run, calling a significant portion of the NASL group play, a month before the NASL regular season completed. This demonstrates that an objective algorithm, properly designed, can be useful for predicting group-play results in StarCraft tournaments.

However, any objective algorithms suffers inherent limitation in its predicative accuracy. The algorithm cannot not reliably account for intangibles such as walk-overs or players under-performing due to work or school. Additionally, with complex games such as StarCraft, a player's skill cannot be easily captured into a single variable. Therefore, machine projections such as the NASL Prospectus should ultimately be viewed as a good point-of-reference, rather than an Oracle for actual StarCraft tournament results.


Future Developments

There are areas for improvement within the Prospectus algorithm. Its current iteration does not account for players' performance per racial match-up (vT, vZ and vP), nor does it account for map imbalances. The TLPD provides sufficient data on these variables that a more sophisticated algorithms can improve the projection accuracy over one currently in use. In the coming weeks, I will propose various implementations of these variable, and test them against the data from NASL and MLG group play.