Photomanipulation by: Meko Click for full-size image
It's safe to say, nobody saw the results of October coming. Battered and listless at MLG Columbus, the foreign cause in Starcraft 2 looked dead after less than a year. It was over, the Koreans were that much better, again. Despite a reset of the skill gap from Broodwar, despite the best Korean Broodwar players not yet having transferred, despite having foreign players in the GSL, the foreign scene seemed hopelessly out-thought and overmatched for a second time. After Columbus came utter disaster after utter disaster. NASL, Anaheim, Cologne, Raleigh, Valencia.
What had gone so badly wrong? Everyone had a theory, but there was a general consensus on the main reasons. The infrastructure imported from Broodwar; of teamhouses, coaches, long practice hours, and single-minded study of the game, had inevitably defeated the patchwork foreign model. A foreigner practicing four hours a day couldn't compete against a Korean playing eight. A foreigner practicing alone after school couldn't compete against a Korean playing all day with no concerns. A foreigner practicing on the North American server couldn't compete against a Korean playing on the Korean server. These were structural and physical handicaps that had taken a toll so quickly that it was unclear whether the foreign scene could create it's own comparable infrastructure in time to mitigate the damage. Still, many teams and players took initiative and tried. Multiple team houses were created this summer, and several teams and players made heavy investments in moving to Korea for a period of time to train. Yet throughout the summer, the bad results continued. A lone victory by HuK at Dreamhack seemed to be more a result of Korean strength than a rebuttal against it.
Then October happened.
You know the facts: in the span of a single month, three different foreigners won four marquee Korean-filled tournaments. IdrA defeated two Koreans to win IEM Guangzhou. Stephano beat four Koreans in a row to win IPL3. HuK and IdrA beat a combined seven top-tier Koreans at MLG Orlando, with HuK coming out victorious. Then, to finish off the schedule, Stephano and MaNa cleaned up the Koreans at ESWC to meet in the finals, with Stephano winning his second championship. At IEM New York, an eventual Korean victory occurred only after Attero defeated Killer and Gatored defeated DongRaeGu and TOP in series play. It's a stunning turn of events, one that must fundamentally change the way we view the foreigner-Korean dynamic, and one that poses many questions which need to be answered. If foreigners can in fact compete with Koreans, then we need to have a good idea of how, so that we can continue to do so.
***
In looking at the events of October, one thing seemed to be clear; we've been approaching this problem with the wrong perspective. Far and away the most common explanation for why Koreans have outperformed foreigners has been that they have an edge in practice. They put in more time, more effectively, against better opponents. Yet that theory simply cannot hold water anymore. October saw three different players with three completely different practice routines on three different servers each have the same degree of success. Stephano practices less than almost any other player of his caliber. IdrA practices against worse opponents than almost any other top professional. HuK, who has often been seen as a pure product of the Korean training machine, nonetheless spends a significant part of his time traveling, away from any routine whatsoever. Individually, each of these players convincingly destroys a crucial tenent of the 'practice harder' theory. As much as it may make sense on the surface, as much as it may have been true in Broodwar, and as much as we might wish it to be true, the evidence is clear—the argument that foreign players must play for more time and in more Korean-like settings to beat the Koreans is a myth.
I don't expect anyone to take this argument at face value yet. But if we allow it for a moment, it's obvious that we have no other good explanation for what accounts for foreigner success. If we accept that a player with Korean training does not inherently defeat a player without it, than why were HuK, IdrA, and Stephano able to conquer the Koreans?
In attempting to find a better explanation for how to win in Starcraft 2, I interviewed all three at some length about their wins, their practice methods, and their perspective on the Korean-foreigner divide. The conclusions expressed in this article were not preconceived, and instead came directly out of conversations with the players. These discussions made it clear to me that in the current state of Starcraft 2, there is not one way to reach the top. Instead, there are a multitude of methods, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Each of the three players has a section in this article that deals with their training, their success, and above all, their mentality—researched by asking the players themselves. Taken together, and with an eye on MLG Providence, I hope that the evidence presented in this article can give the community a more comprehensive understanding—at least for the present—of what it takes to win in Starcraft 2.
by fishuu
The Korean Model
The most successful foreigner in Starcraft 2 to date, HuK is the poster child for the Korean method of training. Renowned for a lack of strategic depth but a strong passion for the game prior to moving to Korea, HuK took to the oGs-TL house and the KR server like a fish to water. Despite not breaking through for the initial qualifier seasons of GSL, he continued to put in more practice hours than almost anyone on the team, refining his mechanics, and executing the pioneering strategies that came out of the oGs protoss line-up. Famously overconfident at Assembly Winter, when he made his 'top three control' statement, HuK was soon able to back up his somewhat cocky statements with results by advancing to Code S and staying there. However despite his success in Korea, it was his victory at Dreamhack Summer, where he easily dispatched July and narrowly defeated Moon twice, that was his coming out party. It was the first time since Dreamhack Winter where a representative from the foreign scene had beaten the Korean invites to win a major LAN event.
Whenever HuK wins, a controversy about the semantics of 'foreigner' and 'Korean' erupts. But while it may be true that HuK's current level of play has a lot to do with his training method of the last year, this semantic argument doesn't seem significant anymore. If the Korean model of training is only one of several possible ways to reach the top level as a player, the distinction between 'foreigners' and 'Koreans' no longer needs to be one of inferior and superior training methods. Instead, what's much more important post-October is the individual.
HuK is a perfect example of this. His strong work ethic going into Korea led to him putting in long hours improving his mechanics on ladder. His exposure to Korean strategies and skill informed his own. There is no doubt that HuK is among the best foreigners in the world because of they way in which he trains. But a close look at his practice shows that none of the ways in which HuK's playstyle has benefited most tangibly from Korea are a direct result of the team-house model. His primary practice routine has been mass gaming on the Korean ladder for the entirety of his stay in the oGs house. He plays relatively few custom games against his teammates or the AI, and does not get extensive help and attention from his fellow players or Coach TheWind. The results of this practice seem somewhat reflected in his play. HuK is famous for mechanics and immunity to cheese, not carefully honed strategies or superlative decision making. What's important to realize however, is that staying in a team-house or breathing the same air as MC are not factors that on their own made HuK such a strong player. Nowhere will I argue that these benefits of the Korean model would not improve HuK's play, or that they aren't positive things for many players. But in the specific case of HuK; given delay-free access to the Korean server, HuK might've been able to improve his play to the same degree in your basement.
That is not to say that there are no secondary benefits to the Korean team-house model that HuK benefits from. In fact, it's precisely this model that allows a practice schedule like HuK's, simply in less obvious ways. One of the primary benefits to the Korean team-house is that it excuses players from having to perform everyday tasks like cooking or cleaning, allowing them to spend more time practicing. The most consistent contribution that being in a team house makes to a player's starcraft ability is merely removing some of the mundane obstacles that would otherwise get in a player's way.
There's one other thing to consider. The least obvious, major benefit that HuK has gained from his stay at the oGs house is a Korean mindset. HuK was always a confident player, but even in his first months in the oGs house he was intimidated by the Korean players. Over time, with success and familiarity, this changed dramatically. Exactly what this meant, and what a Korean mindset actually means is quite hard to accurately describe, but it must be something like believing your unit control is one of the three best in the world. It also must mean a lack of nerves on TV, large stages, or in high pressure tournament situations. And most specifically, it certainly means a strong belief that you are better than almost everyone else, and just as good as the remainder. This comes from playing in the GSL, living with top Korean pro-gamers, and from practicing on the Korean ladder. Overall, it may be the most important thing he has learned.
by fishuu
The Foreign Teamhouse Model
IdrA was supposed to be the most successful foreigner. After having achieved the highest level of foreigner skill in Broodwar, he transitioned to Starcraft 2 and immediately saw his background pay off. But after achieving middle-tier results in a succession of GSL's, he moved back to the United States with the prospect of winning a lot of free money in the foreign scene. There was every reason to believe it would be a smart move; at the time, the foreign scene was booming, the Korean scene was — and still is — stagnating, and IdrA was the best player outside of Korea. But instead, the move largely backfired. An ever growing list of bizarre losses contributed to a sense of disappointment, and bolstered the idea that there was something special about Korean training. With the aim of getting IdrA and all of Evil Geniuses back in shape, the team management set up the west's largest pro-house in Arizona.
There are a number of obvious distinctions to be made about this approach and how it differs from the Korean model. The first is that the team house has the best access to the North American server, by far the weakest of the three major servers, with a skill level at the top that might be something like low masters league in Korea. If players attempt to practice on the Korea server they must deal with significant delay, which must surely mitigate the results of this training. The second point to be made is that the EG pro-house has no coach, and only has a handful of players in it; still far below the density of most Korean training-houses. Coaching and a high density of players are two instrumental factors that allow for the rapid sharing and honing of new strategies among the Korean players. For some time, these distinctions seemed to have been fatal, and the move yielded little tangible results. However, in October, IdrA's breakthrough at IEM Guangzhou and his excellent MLG Orlando reversed the consensus and validated the team house decision. It, like many things, had taken time to have an effect, but the principle of adopting a Korean training house in the west appeared to have finally borne fruit.
In fact, the conventional wisdom about the EG training house has probably been wrong since the beginning. What October has actually shown is that the team house might never have been necessary to improve performance in the first place, and that it was unfair to expect rapidly improving results from it. A closer look at IdrA's turnaround does not challenge this conclusion; his superb recent results do not have a great deal to do with a changed practice environment.
Instead, they have much more to do with an improved mentality. As his mechanics and strategies are relatively unchanged, what has given IdrA recent success is a different way of looking his games and his play.This is not news, IdrA has said this in interviews, and it has been echoed repeatedly by the EG faithful. But it is symptomatic of the cognitive dissonance on these issues that the significance of this has not been really examined. IdrA's previous issues are well known; he left games too early, he allowed feelings about game balance dictate his playstyle, he held on to pre-conceptions and grudges, and he developed mental blocks around certain players. All of these traits resulted in a uniquely self-destructive mentality. But while no player ever developed the same ability to die on his own sword quite like IdrA, it's easy to see many of these mental issues repeated among other foreign players, and even easier to see them come out in foreigner vs Korean matches. In the aftermath of MLG Columbus, most foreign players adopted the idea that Koreans were hopelessly better than they were. This was repeated countless times in interviews and in private. Once you hit a Korean, your tournament was all but over.
IdrA's recent success is the result of frank discussions he had with members of his team, and the beginning of a book club of sorts. While players like DeMusiliM seem to have benefited greatly from the EG teamhouse, It might later be said that the biggest benefit of the EG teamhouse to date was the ease with which the team was able to share Mind Gym, a book about positive thinking, dealing with stress, and learning from failure. After reading this book, IdrA won IEM Guangzhou, and EG's CS team won ESEA #9. For IdrA, the skill to challenge the Koreans was there all along, something IdrA fans rightly insisted despite the mounting disappointments. What needed to change was the mentality.
The parallel between IdrA and HuK's transformations is obvious. When IdrA left Korea, he lost the perceived edge he had held. When HuK went to Korea, he gained exactly what IdrA had lost. When you watch the famous hallucinated void ray game between the two, the point is made completely clear. HuK's audacity, his refusal to admit to being the inferior player for a single game, even when it was obvious, overpowered IdrA's shaky confidence in his lead. This was a Korean mindset defeating a foreigner mindset.
by fishuu
The Lone Ranger Model
Ever since he started to demonstrate his prodigious ability, Stephano has been the biggest mystery in the scene. Extremely little was known about his practice habits, but the general knowledge was that they were not much. From his first major international appearance in the third TSL qualifier, to his remarkable qualification for IPL3, Stephano's supporters and detractors grew in equal measure. To those who watched his play on a regular basis, his position as one of the foreign scene, and perhaps the world's best players was undeniable. To those who looked at his hype and looked at his practice hours, something didn't add up. How could someone who put in four hours a day—and this is how long he practices, by the way—play on the level of those who practiced eight?
At IPL3, Stephano made it official. His insane ability was simply impossible to dispute. But has already been mentioned, Stephano's success stood in direct opposition to the theory of 'more practice, better practice'. It was clear after IPL3, and his subsequent ESWC triumph that either we'd been looking at the foreigner-Korean relationship wrong, or Stephano was one hell of a fluke.
Discussing Stephano gives a good opportunity to present a better picture of how he actually practices. Despite its relatively short duration, Stephano's practice time is quite structured and well thought-out. Starting at a regular time every night, he splits his time between dedicated training, and streaming the European ladder. He rarely plays beyond his usual hours, but rarely plays less as well. In the regularity of his schedule, Stephano gains a consistency that is rare even in Korean pro-houses, where more is often viewed as better. Moreover, his training mindset is strongly focused on his own play, and mostly filters out the irregularities of his opponent's play. That's not to say that he doesn't make adjustments based on his opponent's strategy, but it means that he rarely finds excuses in his opponent's play for his own mistakes. When you have the training mindset that Stephano does, you are constantly working towards playing perfectly yourself, and only as a result, playing better than your opponent.
This mentality allows Stephano to effectively train, despite being in what was theoretically less than optimal conditions. But it also is a massive part of his offline success. More than IdrA, HuK, or probably any other foreigner, Stephano's success can be attributed to an iron mentality. His focus onstage; blocking out the crowd, the casters, and especially the opponent's identity while just focusing on the actual gameplay, is as integral to Stephano's success as having wheels is to a car. You cannot separate one from the other. Stephano's emphasis on mental strength is almost unparalleled, in his opinion, on par with his emphasis on his actual ability. This is perhaps reflected, and helped by his well-kept training schedule. It is an example of the disciple of his approach to Starcraft 2, and at the same time constantly reinforces it.
The house built by examining HuK and IdrA's success is lived in by Stephano. No one so thoroughly exemplifies the 'mind over matter' way of looking at Starcraft 2 than he does. It would be wrong to omit what are clearly excellent mechanics, and a good strategic mind as reasons why Stephano has succeeded. But if you put only these two together, you will wind up with a player like pre-IEM IdrA, or pre-GSL HuK; good, but not elite. It's only that crucial missing element, mentality that distinguishes Stephano.
***
"The way I play is to create a pattern where I have an advantage, and then crush my opponents with momentum. That way my opponent can’t play with 100% of his skill. That’s why I think mind-games are more important than skill." - iloveoov
This article isn't just about the foreigner success in October, it's born directly out of it. Without these wins, the myth of a superior 'Korean training method' remains unchallenged. Without these wins, there is no evidence that you can achieve Starcraft 2 greatness outside of Korea, that you can achieve Starcraft 2 greatness outside of a teamhouse, there's no evidence that you can achieve Starcraft 2 greatness practicing only a few hours a day. But put together, the foreigner revolution in October is pointing out that the emperor has no clothes—or is scantily dressed, at least.
Throughout this article I've steadfastly denied that there exists any such thing as 'superior Korean training'. That does not mean that Korean training is not good or effective, or that it doesn't produce more high level players than any other model. That doesn't mean that the Korean ladder isn't the best ladder. That doesn't mean that the Korean scene doesn't have an insane amount of depth. But at the top, Korean training is not currently a barrier to entry.
The second major plank of this article is an attempt to establish that what does exist is a superior Korean mindset. It seems self-evident that these two are linked; if you spend more time playing Starcraft 2, than you will be more confident about your abilities. But at this point in the game's history, it seems abundantly clear that these two things do not need to be tied together. Skill is important, but once you reach the top, the returns diminish. What is left, unworked upon so far, is mentality. For any player among the foreign scene's upper echelon—from Gatored to HuK—if your mindset can be strong after only four hours of training, or after a day of noob-bashing, or after several weeks of travel, than you have as good a chance at victory as any Korean. Perhaps you can't engineer victory through a strong mentality, but you can avoid defeating yourself, and that might be all it takes.
Might the future look different? We might have good reason to desperately wish it will. At the heart of 'balance' in starcraft is a belief that the better, harder working, smarter player will always win. In challenging the idea that practice is what matters most of all in Starcraft 2, we open up the argument that Starcraft 2 is simply not as balanced a game as we wish to believe. That players who have put in less time, in less rigorous conditions can win is a threat to the basic premise of Starcraft 2 competition. This argument seems like too dramatic an overall conclusion after just a month of foreigner success. But it might be that we all have a stake in rooting for Koreans in the future, if only because it'll mean that practice is slowly starting to make perfect.
But in the near future, as we look towards this weekend's titanic showdown at MLG Providence, it seems clear that foreigners do have a chance. Fourteen of the thirty two Code S players will be in attendance, and it is extremely likely that one of them will win. But that is in a large part because there are fourteen of them, and not necessarily because they're in Code S. Some of the Korean non-Code S players, like PuMa, HerO or Keen could also take home the trophy. But that's because they're not intimidated by other Koreans, not because they're Korean. IdrA and NaNiwa are just four series victories away from winning, they are much more likely to win by virtue of that alone. Ret is five away. SeleCT is six. Both have defeated high-level Koreans recently. Both can win MLG Providence.
This is the glory of the post-October universe. The Koreans might win, but they don't have to. We're back to what counts. Three games, two players, one winner.
Many thanks to HuK, IdrA, and Stephano for giving up their time to talk with me for this article. Thanks to Meko and Fishuu for the images. Thanks to Waxangel for.... support(?) Thanks to motbob for criticism and edits. Good luck and have fun at MLG everyone. Foreigners fighting!
Really hit nail on the head with the different styles of each player, its even more interesting to think about each of the players in their methodology to success.
On November 15 2011 15:54 Puph wrote: No offense to whoever made the drawing, but I...don't understand why Stephano's face is on the body of a naked woman :S (edit) holding a gun
its a picture about the french revolution. time to attend your history lessons :D
Just put up a picture of a Greek mythological creature and then nudity is allowed. Voila. Stephano fits better on a naked Gorgon than a French revolution lady liberty.
On November 15 2011 15:45 Amlitzer wrote: I didn't think nudity was allowed on TL?
Its not nudity, its just a man's chest!
Oh I see it's just man boobs, perfectly acceptable. Stephano getting fat from all that prize money. Now he needs to win MLG so he can afford liposuction. Also, apparently Idra and HuK are race switching to terran by the looks of it.
This article is the equivalent of a baseball home run that goes out of the park at Mach 30, vaporizes half the stands, exits the atmosphere, and settles into low Earth orbit. It heralds a new era in competitive SC2!
Interesting perspective. I'm not sure there is enough evidence to discard the idea of Korea being a generally superior training environment though, and having a direct impact on Korean's generally having more success than foreigners....
Far and away the most common explanation for why Koreans have outperformed foreigners has been that they have an edge in practice. They put in more time, more effectively, against better opponents. Yet that theory simply cannot hold water anymore
I understand that October has been a marquee month for foreign players performing well; but I don't feel that the success of a handful (less than 10, we'll say?) foreign players clears the idea that Korea has a generally superior training environment and infrastruture.
I think the idea of mentality and a Korean mindset having an impact on their success is a perfectly valid point, and perhaps quite a significant one.
I just don't think that it accounts entirely for top koreans generally out performing top foreign players. I think having a superiour ladder (in terms of difficulty in opponents faced), long standing, experienced progamer houses and long, regular training hours has a significant impact on Koreans generally higher performance. In my opinion, this is much more likely to be the larger factor in their success.
Summary: I love your point about the korean mindset being significant, and there being different roads to success at the highest level, but I disagree that the Korean environment doesn't play a very significant part as well.
Might the future look different? We might have good reason to desperately wish it will. At the heart of 'balance' in starcraft is a belief that the better, harder working, smarter player will always win. In challenging the idea that practice is what matters most of all in Starcraft 2, we open up the argument that Starcraft 2 is simply not as balanced a game as we wish to believe. That players who have put in less time, in less rigorous conditions can win is a threat to the basic premise of Starcraft 2 competition. This argument seems like too dramatic an overall conclusion after just a month of foreigner success. But it might be that we all have a stake in rooting for Koreans in the future, if only because it'll mean that practice is slowly starting to make perfect.
This is the only part of the article that I agree with. If practice doesn't make perfect in this game as it does in BW, then I might as well as stop watching. I can only hope that HoTS and LoTV bring more depth, both physical and mental, to this game.
On November 15 2011 16:04 enigamI wrote: Summary: I love your point about the korean mindset being significant, and there being different roads to success at the highest level, but I disagree that the Korean environment doesn't play a very significant part as well.
I think the main point of the article is that it wasn't the it doesn't play a significant role, but that it is not the only way to go about playing Starcraft at the top level.
Edit: BTW great article, really enjoyed reading it.
On November 15 2011 16:14 sermokala wrote: Idra and other NA pros can play on the KR server without delay by useing a proxy in korea. Other then that amazing article.
can, but don't, theyre almost always on NA ladder while streaming
IdrA really performed quite well in October and even this month. pretty awesome season for all of these players. These players are really closing the gap between non-Korean play and Koreans taking wins off of very respectable players.
My personal opinion is that the Korean-training only kicks in MOST effectively after everything has been patched and the game has been figured out which won't happen for years to come. Until then, it's still up for grabs just like these foreigners have showed us.
On November 15 2011 16:20 TheKefka wrote: The only thing I am disappointed about is that you didn't put in Hot_Bids face in the background as well,to photobomb the picture
I honestly wish Wax had mentioned for me to do this, I definitely would have if I had thought about it.
no doubt foreigners are getting better. but the ones that continually succeed to beat the koreans are idra and huk both which spawned from at least 1 year of korean training...
Your post does say that practice is not necessary, and I agree. However, good practice never hurts, so I don't see players slowing down their practice any time soon.
Thank you for the work and thought that you clearly put into this article. As heyoka says there are lots of things to discuss.
With all do respect, concluding that psychology plays a major role in performance at the level these guys are playing doesn't seem like much of a revelation. Any athlete or coach could tell you the same. Believing you can beat someone is an essential part of actually doing so.
One thing the Koreans seem to have that is very likely a product of the discipline and level of training, is consistency. You mention Huk winning MLG Orlando and IdrA placing 4th, but Koreans took 2nd, 3rd, and 5th through 8th. At Blizzcon MVP and Nestea put on a pretty convincing show and Select was only knocked out by consecutive losses to Nestea and Sen (the 3rd place finisher). At IPL, Stephano took first, but again Koreans took 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. IdrA looked impressive in his IEM win, but I don't think that many people would argue that the Koreans who were taking part in that tournament were of the caliber of MVP or Nestea. And at Dreamhack, again the Koreans swept up the rest of the money spots.
The Koreans may not have taken first in the tournaments you mention in your article, but their results certainly seem consistently dominant. IdrA has had recent success, but he is the poster child for inconsistency. Huk's performance at Asus ROG may be an indication that he is wearing himself a little thin. His Code S Ro 16 performance will be a good test of just where he stands. And I'm not sure that Stephano has enough big tournaments under his belt yet to bring him into the conversation. Once people start preparing for him a little more, his 4 hour practice regimen may not seem like such a great idea after all.
Koreans are not inherently more skillful at SC2 than foreigners so it's not really a surprise that some exceptionally skillful players like Huk and IdrA have posted wins. What remains to be seen is if the foreign SC2 players and teams can bring in the kinds of consistent results that the Koreans do.
Also a small technical quibble...the October Revolution was the Russian revolution that brought the communists to power rather than the painting of the French Revolution you have altered.
Nice write up! I feel like your point is spot on, that how well you do in SC2 is a direct result of how you approach the game mentally. Just because you practice in korean and live in a team house doesn't mean you're going to be given some inherent advantage. It depends mostly on what you seek to gain from your practice and how confident you are in your abilities.
It will be interesting to see how Tyler does in the upcoming tournaments. He seems to be the type of guy that when he sets his mind to something he will achieve it. And much like you've pointed out with this topic, when you have that kind of mentality you don't need a training house to get good results. If Tyler's been working hard, and from what I've heard he has, he should be able to live up to your model of confidence and mentality being the key to success. And obviously, since he doesn't live in a team house, he will be a good measure of your theory.
Just because u spend 10 h a day playing doesn t make u better, of course ur mechanics and build ghet better but after a time all top players will have great macro and micro then the importance of the mind set and playng the map rather then the mach up will matter most like in bw.
This article actually inspired me. It was a great read, and your perspective of the different ways to train is what I needed. My goal is to hit Mid-High Master League for a school project, right now at Platinum League. I have been at a slump, and my mentality is just all wrong. Of course I will not be like the pro players, but I think this will help me break through Masters, if not that Diamond.
1. One day more. Another day another destiny-- this never-ending road to Calvary. Tomorrow is the judgement day. Tomorrow we'll discover what our God in Heaven has in store-- one more dawn, one more day-- one day more. 2. Do you hear the people sing, singing the songs of angry men? It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again. When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drum, there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes.
Fly the flag of freedom, foreigners. Fly it proudly, and let its light burst through the darkness of uncertainty like a comet streaming through a starless night.
I could not disagree more with this article. Telling foreigners that they don't need more practice is the wrong advice. Unless you're naturally predisposed to play this game, you need more practice, period.
Pointing out what you consider exceptions is pointless when the vast majority of foreigners just don't practice enough. And when they do practice, if they're not practicing seriously in a focused way, it's also useless.
I don't see any up and coming Koreans playing Skyrim anyway...
On November 15 2011 17:03 how2TL wrote: I could not disagree more with this article. Telling foreigners that they don't need more practice is the wrong advice. Unless you're naturally predisposed to play this game, you need more practice, period.
Pointing out what you consider exceptions is pointless when the vast majority of foreigners just don't practice enough. And when they do practice, if they're not practicing seriously in a focused way, it's also useless.
I don't see any up and coming Koreans playing Skyrim anyway...
That's because they don't stream it...
I've read both Jinro and Huk state that they play other things as well in the oGs house. That's like saying an up and coming athlete never do anything else than train his sport. Yeah... no.
Three players out of a pool of... lots doesn't exactly constitute a revolution. Especially since Idra and Huk have been very very good since SC 2 was released. Stephano's the only real surprise, and he's following the path of the average hyped Korean player.
Come out of nowhere
Assumed is unbeatable
Goes down in flames a few months later
I understand the argument of 'don't practice harder, practice smarter', but It's a very hard thing to do and requires extremely good understanding of the game to be able to do that in the first place. For the majority of pros, practicing harder is definitely the thing to do, just as it is for the Koreans. Most of them aren't near the level of your MVPs and Nesteas, but they can cane the ass of most foreign pros, and that's just down to practice.
On November 15 2011 17:03 how2TL wrote: I could not disagree more with this article. Telling foreigners that they don't need more practice is the wrong advice. Unless you're naturally predisposed to play this game, you need more practice, period.
Pointing out what you consider exceptions is pointless when the vast majority of foreigners just don't practice enough. And when they do practice, if they're not practicing seriously in a focused way, it's also useless.
I don't see any up and coming Koreans playing Skyrim anyway...
That's because they don't stream it...
I've read both Jinro and Huk state that they play other things as well in the oGs house. That's like saying an up and coming athlete never do anything else than train his sport. Yeah... no.
Not to the exclusion of everything else, but pretty damn close.
Stephano is an outlier, but I really doubt the top foreigners aren't putting in a lot of hours of focused, dedicated practice. If you're doing something else on the side then you're going to fall behind.
On November 15 2011 15:54 Puph wrote: No offense to whoever made the drawing, but I...don't understand why Stephano's face is on the body of a naked woman :S (edit) holding a gun
On November 15 2011 15:54 Puph wrote: No offense to whoever made the drawing, but I...don't understand why Stephano's face is on the body of a naked woman :S (edit) holding a gun
The idea that winning is the direct result of hard work is something that makes Starcraft seem like a legitimate sport. Claiming that you can win with mentality like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon only makes the game seem like a fraud. By winning these tournaments Idra et al. are killing esports.
On November 15 2011 17:35 Velr wrote: The best thing about this article were the comments of people that seem to never have seen the original picture and are "offended" by the boobs :p.
As for the article: A little to optimistic for my taste
Yeah, that about sums it up for me aswell... (but there's still hope though )
Haha, what a sursprise ! i go on TL and see the french flag floating ! as a french i'm happy ^^
ps: you have to know that his painting is like the most common illustration on the french history school books, it's impossible for a french kid to ignore this picture, funny it's now here on TL
I'm kinda surprised about how diffrent pathes can lead to the top of Starcraft 2. May be we'll se more "foreigner" winning against Korean but even if not, we will certainly see more epic matches.
By the way, I'm very excited to see MLG Providence and DH to confirm this trend and, by far, Stephano in Korean in december
The first pictures is absolutly hilarious and the other is quite fun too !
I hate to be *that guy*, but in my opinion Stephano's victories don't contribute to the "foreigner is on par with korean" argument. Aside from his IPL victory, stephano hasn't really been show to compete with on par with koreans. And even the koreans he faced in IPL were not Code S caliber. Now, the most notable thing they keep talking about on his article is "his practice schedule", his lack of practice shows in his games. He makes the most irritable terrible micro decisions on the face of the planet. As a zerg I cry tears. Now don't get me wrong, he's a great player, but aside from his IPL run, we have yet to see him consistently play well against the Koreans, something Idra, and Huk have already PROVEN.
Great write up on Idra and Huk,
I still disagree on foreigner revolution. Let's face it, the average skill of pro koreans are still leagues above "pro" foreigners. Fuck, even look at HuK and Idra, both of their great play against Koreans have been result of their travel to Korea.
Now whether or not Stephano is a consistent contender, we don't know, but there is bound to be someone who can play at high caliber play without that much practice, but you know what? There's going to be someone out there that's just as talented as Stephano, AND put in the hours. Then guess what? Stephano's just gunna fade away out of the scene, in fact he's been doing that right now. I seriously don't see any other foreigners competing consistently against the Koreans aside from those who are willing to put down the hours that the Koreans do.
koreans just have the mindset of "i can't lose to a foreigner.. i practiced more, i am superior" that's why they're confident and can play at their best, because they don't fear their opponent.
On November 15 2011 18:17 wei2coolman wrote: I hate to be *that guy*, but in my opinion Stephano's victories don't contribute to the "foreigner is on par with korean" argument. Aside from his IPL victory, stephano hasn't really been show to compete with on par with koreans. .
On November 15 2011 18:17 wei2coolman wrote: I hate to be *that guy*, but in my opinion Stephano's victories don't contribute to the "foreigner is on par with korean" argument. Aside from his IPL victory, stephano hasn't really been show to compete with on par with koreans. .
Stephano had to beat MKP in semi of ESWC.
"consistently beat"
jeez, even destiny beat bomber, you don't seem me hailing destiny as the next foreign contender.
Well written article but poor arguments and somewhat biased opinions.
You're concluding that the Korean's success due to their training methods "simply cannot hold water anymore." simply because of recent October success. But you fail to address the fact that these recent success were all due to the same 3 players: Idra, Huk, Stephano.
But you have to remember, Huk and Idra had been (or still is) trained in Korea extensively, and they have always been the two top foreigners. So them being able to compete here and there with the Koreans doesn't really change what was already happening before.
As for Stephanos, so one genius out of a few million in the rest of the world appears and was able to compete with few of the Koreans. That is simply an exception out of the bunch. Just as Yao Ming exists in the NBA doesn't change the fact that the asian basketball scene is way behind the western.
Fact of the matter is, the most prestige tournament (GSL), there is still yet to be another foreigner doing well there aside from Huk. In fact, just last night, all the invited foreigners got knocked out the first round (again).
All in all, to me, it's still the same few foreigners being successful, with an outlier like Stephanos popping out here and there. And Koreans might be good, but they aren't gods with 100% win rates. Player enough of games (and enough of different players), and some of them will eventually lose. Nothing really out of the ordinary to me.
On November 15 2011 18:17 wei2coolman wrote: I hate to be *that guy*, but in my opinion Stephano's victories don't contribute to the "foreigner is on par with korean" argument. Aside from his IPL victory, stephano hasn't really been show to compete with on par with koreans. And even the koreans he faced in IPL were not Code S caliber. Now, the most notable thing they keep talking about on his article is "his practice schedule", his lack of practice shows in his games. He makes the most irritable terrible micro decisions on the face of the planet. As a zerg I cry tears. Now don't get me wrong, he's a great player, but aside from his IPL run, we have yet to see him consistently play well against the Koreans, something Idra, and Huk have already PROVEN.
Great write up on Idra and Huk,
I still disagree on foreigner revolution. Let's face it, the average skill of pro koreans are still leagues above "pro" foreigners. Fuck, even look at HuK and Idra, both of their great play against Koreans have been result of their travel to Korea.
Now whether or not Stephano is a consistent contender, we don't know, but there is bound to be someone who can play at high caliber play without that much practice, but you know what? There's going to be someone out there that's just as talented as Stephano, AND put in the hours. Then guess what? Stephano's just gunna fade away out of the scene, in fact he's been doing that right now. I seriously don't see any other foreigners competing consistently against the Koreans aside from those who are willing to put down the hours that the Koreans do.
I don't understand why "that guys" like you aren't warned or ban yet.... I'm tired to respond to every trollish post i meet about Stephano, i got the impression this is like Idra/Huk fanboys (and americans 90% of the time) vs Stephano and europe. Just common, you can admit he has proven at least to be as good as a Huk or an Idra. And you CAN'T expect him to win all the games he makes...
Moreover i don't see these kind of posts when Huk loose at the first round of a tournament vs a random (or not) like 75% of the time. Its always "poor huk he travels too much", or"his opponent made a shitty strat he was not prepared for". So why this kind of comments are only made about Stephano ?
On November 15 2011 17:43 BrosephBrostar wrote: The idea that winning is the direct result of hard work is something that makes Starcraft seem like a legitimate sport. Claiming that you can win with mentality like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon only makes the game seem like a fraud. By winning these tournaments Idra et al. are killing esports.
And it's still not true in TONS of sports.
Is Usain Bolt really training that much more or trying that much harder then everyone else? No, he isn't. Is/was Michael Phelps just working harder to Swim the fastest? Don't be kidding. Is Messi the best Football player because he trains more? For sure not.
Talent and Mentaility are BIG and important things that often outdo raw work ethic.
Might the future look different? We might have good reason to desperately wish it will. At the heart of 'balance' in starcraft is a belief that the better, harder working, smarter player will always win. In challenging the idea that practice is what matters most of all in Starcraft 2, we open up the argument that Starcraft 2 is simply not as balanced a game as we wish to believe. That players who have put in less time, in less rigorous conditions can win is a threat to the basic premise of Starcraft 2 competition. This argument seems like too dramatic an overall conclusion after just a month of foreigner success. But it might be that we all have a stake in rooting for Koreans in the future, if only because it'll mean that practice is slowly starting to make perfect.
I really want to come back on that. I'm not sure I completely agree with that and I don't mean to understand how korean work in starcraft, but I guess it relates a lot to usual professional sport training, minus the physical wearyness and plus the mental tiredness. The point is that more practice doesn't mean more skill in any way, and I know that's what the article argues overall, but I don't think we should wish for the players to put more and more hours in training. They should put more and more thought into how they train and what they should do to be better.
I know this contradict eveything that has been done in BW but they're should not be a big difference between someone who trains regularly and conscientiously for 6h a day and someone who put in 10 or 12h. Yeah the latter one we build better mental stamina but at what costs, weaker body strength and overall weaker physical stamina, which are both important to play any game.
I hope future results will prove that a healthier and well thoughout training regiment will be the most effective way to be good at starcraft 2. Not mindlessly grinding your way to the top by putting a lot of hours.
Well written article that makes a few good points that definitely add to an interesting and fun discussion...and so many comments focused on the boobs?! Sigh...
Great write up guys, and here's hoping for continued success for the foreigners at MLG!
I like how the roles are reversed now. Now the people claiming the Koreans were better point at the small sample size, while the people claiming that Korean or not Korean does not matter think the sample size is sufficient.
Seems to me that the article says that "foreigners could be on par with the koreans" and a lot of detractors interpret this as "foreigners is on par".
The argument as I understand it:
Acquire the right mind-set (which is probably damn near the Korean) and with it the right practice and training, the right tournament results will come.
On November 15 2011 18:17 wei2coolman wrote: I hate to be *that guy*, but in my opinion Stephano's victories don't contribute to the "foreigner is on par with korean" argument. Aside from his IPL victory, stephano hasn't really been show to compete with on par with koreans. And even the koreans he faced in IPL were not Code S caliber. Now, the most notable thing they keep talking about on his article is "his practice schedule", his lack of practice shows in his games. He makes the most irritable terrible micro decisions on the face of the planet. As a zerg I cry tears. Now don't get me wrong, he's a great player, but aside from his IPL run, we have yet to see him consistently play well against the Koreans, something Idra, and Huk have already PROVEN.
Great write up on Idra and Huk,
I still disagree on foreigner revolution. Let's face it, the average skill of pro koreans are still leagues above "pro" foreigners. Fuck, even look at HuK and Idra, both of their great play against Koreans have been result of their travel to Korea.
Now whether or not Stephano is a consistent contender, we don't know, but there is bound to be someone who can play at high caliber play without that much practice, but you know what? There's going to be someone out there that's just as talented as Stephano, AND put in the hours. Then guess what? Stephano's just gunna fade away out of the scene, in fact he's been doing that right now. I seriously don't see any other foreigners competing consistently against the Koreans aside from those who are willing to put down the hours that the Koreans do.
I don't understand why "that guys" like you aren't warned or ban yet.... I'm tired to respond to every trollish post i meet about Stephano, i got the impression this is like Idra/Huk fanboys (and americans 90% of the time) vs Stephano and europe. Just common, you can admit he has proven at least to be as good as a Huk or an Idra. And you CAN'T expect him to win all the games he makes...
Moreover i don't see these kind of posts when Huk loose at the first round of a tournament vs a random (or not) like 75% of the time. Its always "poor huk he travels too much", or"his opponent made a shitty strat he was not prepared for". So why this kind of comments are only made about Stephano ?
When was the last time we saw Stephano do poorly in a tournament because of too much travel? oh wait, he doesn't travel extensively. What about Idra you say? 8th place in IPL, after JUST arriving from IEM Ghuanzhao, jetlagged like crazy.
I have no intention of bickering about EU vs NA, because in reality I feel EU's overall average style of play is actually better than NA, but in terms of Stephano vs Huk/Idra, There's simply no contest in terms of who have shown consistent results against Koreans.
EDIT: Why should I get banned? or warned? I asserted a point, and a drew along evidence. It's not like saying "LOL STEPHANO SO BAD FRENCHY, QUIT SC2". Please, if you're trying to assert I'm trolling you, I can assure you I'm not. I made a relevant point in such that I feel that Stephano has yet to prove his worth of "consistently beating koreans".
On November 15 2011 17:43 BrosephBrostar wrote: The idea that winning is the direct result of hard work is something that makes Starcraft seem like a legitimate sport. Claiming that you can win with mentality like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon only makes the game seem like a fraud. By winning these tournaments Idra et al. are killing esports.
And it's still not true in TONS of sports.
Is Usain Bolt really training that much more or trying that much harder then everyone else? No, he isn't. Is/was Michael Phelps just working harder to Swim the fastest? Don't be kidding. Is Messi the best Football player because he trains more? For sure not.
Talent and Mentaility are BIG and important things that often outdo raw work ethic.
Because in physical sports, over training can actually hurt you. Also, I garuntee you Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Messi all trained ON PAR with everyone else, then the other factors such as talent and mentality come into play.
You should never try to make up hardwork with talent and mentality. Do the hardwork, and the mentality and talent will show the difference between being great, and being a legend.
On November 15 2011 17:43 BrosephBrostar wrote: The idea that winning is the direct result of hard work is something that makes Starcraft seem like a legitimate sport. Claiming that you can win with mentality like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon only makes the game seem like a fraud. By winning these tournaments Idra et al. are killing esports.
And it's still not true in TONS of sports.
Is Usain Bolt really training that much more or trying that much harder then everyone else? No, he isn't. Is/was Michael Phelps just working harder to Swim the fastest? Don't be kidding. Is Messi the best Football player because he trains more? For sure not.
Talent and Mentaility are BIG and important things that often outdo raw work ethic.
I don't think any Olympic champion would agree that state of mind can make up for training and effort.
On November 15 2011 17:43 BrosephBrostar wrote: The idea that winning is the direct result of hard work is something that makes Starcraft seem like a legitimate sport. Claiming that you can win with mentality like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon only makes the game seem like a fraud. By winning these tournaments Idra et al. are killing esports.
And it's still not true in TONS of sports.
Is Usain Bolt really training that much more or trying that much harder then everyone else? No, he isn't. Is/was Michael Phelps just working harder to Swim the fastest? Don't be kidding. Is Messi the best Football player because he trains more? For sure not.
Talent and Mentaility are BIG and important things that often outdo raw work ethic.
I don't think any Olympic champion would agree that state of mind can make up for training and effort.
I don't think any would disagree. Why do people have "offdays" when not being ill and in theoretically perfect physical shape? Why is the best Skier that dominated the whole season suddenly failing at the most important event?
Sorry... "Hard Work" is important... But it's not everything, by far not...
Yeah, the best guys on average train as much as they should/can whiteout hurting themselves... Are they all training the best/smartest way of all the atlethes? Some probably do, others for sure don't but still win more or do way better than they "should".
Pretty dam long but just as amazing to read. Great article ! This deserves to be translated in French/German/Russian. It gives a good sense of the passion about the game and would help promote it, imo. Oh and you can bet Stephano will love that first pic ^^ The trolls here are so beautifully naive.
The most obvious answer as to "how can top foreigners take games off not-quite-top koreans?", is that there isn't enough of a variety of skills available within the game at a top level, to seperate most of the very good players. As a result, it's harder for the Koreans to be that much better than everyone else, because the skillset just isn't available within the game. That's my take, and I'm surprised nobody has noted or considered this yet.
Sorry, but I don't agree much with this article, it speaks against itself until the point that it really doesn't say anything (korean training is great but it might not matter even though everyone who's tried it says its superior but in the end it's up to the players but only if they've done training that is or emulates korean training?).
Alot of words to say basically nothing. Although its all very well written "technically" and edited - the message is just too unclear. I love treehugger as much as anyone, but this article I didn't like.
If nothing else, to little time has passed to not being able to make the counterargument that this holy october was nothing more than a fluke.
On November 15 2011 17:43 BrosephBrostar wrote: The idea that winning is the direct result of hard work is something that makes Starcraft seem like a legitimate sport. Claiming that you can win with mentality like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon only makes the game seem like a fraud. By winning these tournaments Idra et al. are killing esports.
And it's still not true in TONS of sports.
Is Usain Bolt really training that much more or trying that much harder then everyone else? No, he isn't. Is/was Michael Phelps just working harder to Swim the fastest? Don't be kidding. Is Messi the best Football player because he trains more? For sure not.
Talent and Mentaility are BIG and important things that often outdo raw work ethic.
I don't think any Olympic champion would agree that state of mind can make up for training and effort.
I don't think any would disagree. Why do people have "offdays" when not being ill and in theoretically perfect physical shape? Why is the best Skier that dominated the whole season suddenly failing at the most important event?
Sorry... "Hard Work" is important... But it's not everything, by far not...
Yeah, the best guys on average train as much as they should/can whiteout hurting themselves... Are they all training the best/smartest way of all the atlethes? Some probably do, others for sure don't but still win more or do way better than they "should".
Competition just doesn't work that way. Good state of mind can make a good athlete better, but it won't make someone who doesn't work hard a winner. This isn't a question of training efficiently, it's comparing people who train in a professional environment to people who practice by playing against amateurs for a few hours a day.
I really enjoyed reading this, and I welcome the contrasting opinion to the conventional view of the Korean practice regimen as the cause of the difference in skill between Koreans and foreigners, your point of view loses a bit of credibility in the face of + Show Spoiler +
Stephano is a target now, people will aim to beat him, like people aim to beat IdrA and Huk.
I feel as though all of them are a bit overconfident with themselves and can underestimate their opponents a lot. So will lose to random players here and there. The haters always come out after that, it's annoying but it comes with any sport.
But on average I'd say korean practice routine results in better players. Shown by where the best players are, where the highest average pro-gamer skill level lies. Average korean pro is better than average foreigner pro. Seen by games that don't have huk steph idra in it. Such general ideas you proposed can't be defined by exceptions.
Not downplaying stephano huk and idra at all. They are the exceptions that are so well known and so good in comparison that by making such claims you're basically saying "be like steph = winning" because it's very possible that a lot of foreigners behave in similar fashions anyways. Also you can't say idra without considering the permanent experience of having been on estro.
And you can talk about mindset variance but huk's improvement in korea overall reflects korean practice environment... Same has been seen with drewbie and qxc. Rain's decline since departing as well. I don't think enough credit is given to how much exactly the koreans practice. Maybe you're right, maybe people who play 3 hours a day on ladder can beat people who play 8 hours a day with practice partners. But that sounds disgusting. Moreover, it's false. Most of the time.
the evidence is clear—the argument that foreign players must play for more time and in more Korean-like settings to beat the Koreans is a myth.
sensationalist nonsense at this point
a few non-korean tournaments is good enough evidence to say that practicing in korea with such mindsets means nothing? + Show Spoiler +
For every example of foreigner domination I could give examples of foreigner failure ... Code A? I had higher expectations :{ Stephano < Boxer floating how much? Want to know how I think boxer won that game after playing terribly day1? Idra did beat bomber, but bomber went marines g3 which I cannot get over. Also, he's a chokemaster and his TvZ not so hot when compounded with that. (Bomber<Moon, haha...) Idra also lost to a korean. Didn't Polt < foreigners? MKP PvT worst, Huk PvT best matchup. Koreans aren't gods and we've known that.
I don't see how you can make such huge claims when your basis is made up of exceptions. I would've agreed with you had this phase lasted for three or four months, but really this looks like a lot of ingroup-outgroup business and the posts support this, as expected :p
HuK is the only consistent foreigner on long-term measurement as he has proven himself as of recent (past 2 seasons) to be able to stay in a mostly-korean tournament (losing to mvp, even nestea does that). ESWC... Does MKP have really bad vision? A weak point. Just mentioning it.
Giving the idea that practicing less is better was a bad way of going about the theme of this post. Practice smarter is fine. Practicing less? If you're one in a million eg stephano yeah sure go ahead and be like that, but that's not going to work for the 99%. That includes pro-gamers.
Also the picture might be in a slightly bad taste, (would you post this on ggplay?) but I'm overreacting most likely, seriously. I thought the guy in the white on the left was a fallen frenchman and should be a fellow foreigner downed in combat :<
The first is that the team house has the best access to the North American server, by far the weakest of the three major servers, with a skill level at the top that might be something like low masters league in Korea.
On November 15 2011 17:43 BrosephBrostar wrote: The idea that winning is the direct result of hard work is something that makes Starcraft seem like a legitimate sport. Claiming that you can win with mentality like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon only makes the game seem like a fraud. By winning these tournaments Idra et al. are killing esports.
And it's still not true in TONS of sports.
Is Usain Bolt really training that much more or trying that much harder then everyone else? No, he isn't. Is/was Michael Phelps just working harder to Swim the fastest? Don't be kidding. Is Messi the best Football player because he trains more? For sure not.
Talent and Mentaility are BIG and important things that often outdo raw work ethic.
I don't think any Olympic champion would agree that state of mind can make up for training and effort.
I don't think any would disagree. Why do people have "offdays" when not being ill and in theoretically perfect physical shape? Why is the best Skier that dominated the whole season suddenly failing at the most important event?
Sorry... "Hard Work" is important... But it's not everything, by far not...
Yeah, the best guys on average train as much as they should/can whiteout hurting themselves... Are they all training the best/smartest way of all the atlethes? Some probably do, others for sure don't but still win more or do way better than they "should".
Competition just doesn't work that way. Good state of mind can make a good athlete better, but it won't make someone who doesn't work hard a winner. This isn't a question of training efficiently, it's comparing people who train in a professional environment to people who practice by playing against amateurs for a few hours a day.
Where did i say that? All i said is that "working the hardest" won't make you a winner alone, not even nearly.
Working the hardest is not even necessarily a good thing if not done in a really smart way...
I hope not to appear as a hater but, regarding Stephano, it should be pointed out that self-reporting is not exactly reliable. That said, I do think that a "train more" mindset is not necessarily as good as a "smart" training mindset (as in, focused training where the player actively endeavors to improve), while SC2 koreans seem to be aiming merely for the first. I would be more careful about the whole "foreigners finally topping koreans", however: we need to see more players playing each other and more matches, because we are currently judging based on tournaments where koreans are very scattered and playing against very unfamiliar opponents.
Yeah, I'm just going to have to totally disagree with this.
You provide an example of three players. Three. Comparing player numbers, I believe Koreans are something like 5,000% more successful than foreigners in the pro scene. No, that's not an exaggeration, that's really how much more successful they are and that's even with the fact that, contrary to the foreign scene, pretty much all the top Korean RTS talent is not even playing SC2. Foreigners do not compare to Koreans overall. There are maybe 5-10 foreigners who won't be laughably unfavoured against the top Koreans. Almost all foreign pros have shown themselves to be sub-Code A level; i.e. not even top 75 in Korea, even with their multitude of free Code A spots that they've squandered. The gap between the foreign and Korean scene is utterly huge, that's just a fact and four tournaments don't change that.
So why are Koreans so, so much better than everyone else? To rule out the practise house entirely is just silly. You provide three examples that argue your case that it isn't primarily the practise. One of them is in a Korean house, one of them lived in one for years and is moving back to Korea for the superior practise, and one of them. . .well, fair enough, you have one good example. Huk is known to play even more than the Koreans (when he can) and talks about the travel hurting him and is the most successful foreigner. How are you talking about him as evidence of your claim in this article? Idra has himself said he has gotten worse (comparatively) after leaving the Korean scene and is moving back with the simple reason being he wants to improve. Stephano, again, I admit is a fair example. However, he is such an exception that we can simply call him an anomaly and be done with it.
There's an argument to be made that Koreans play too much. You can argue that mentality is huge important. That is pretty obvious, I think. That doesn't change the fact that the Korean model is far, far more successful than any foreign model. Maybe the Korean model can be improved upon - play 8 hours a day instead of 12 or something - but it is still a large reason for their success. To say it's simply mentality is to go against the facts. That would rely on the idea that foreigners play much worse against Koreans or Korean play much better against foreigners. This is simply not the case if you watch Koreans vs. Koreans and foreigners vs. foreigners - the same gap in play that is demonstrated in Koreans vs. foreigners is utterly apparent when they're playing within their own circle.
It isn't that foreigners are simply mentally weaker, it's that they are almost all worse players in almost every facet of the game.
On November 15 2011 17:43 BrosephBrostar wrote: The idea that winning is the direct result of hard work is something that makes Starcraft seem like a legitimate sport. Claiming that you can win with mentality like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon only makes the game seem like a fraud. By winning these tournaments Idra et al. are killing esports.
And it's still not true in TONS of sports.
Is Usain Bolt really training that much more or trying that much harder then everyone else? No, he isn't. Is/was Michael Phelps just working harder to Swim the fastest? Don't be kidding. Is Messi the best Football player because he trains more? For sure not.
Talent and Mentaility are BIG and important things that often outdo raw work ethic.
I don't think any Olympic champion would agree that state of mind can make up for training and effort.
I don't think any would disagree. Why do people have "offdays" when not being ill and in theoretically perfect physical shape? Why is the best Skier that dominated the whole season suddenly failing at the most important event?
Sorry... "Hard Work" is important... But it's not everything, by far not...
Yeah, the best guys on average train as much as they should/can whiteout hurting themselves... Are they all training the best/smartest way of all the atlethes? Some probably do, others for sure don't but still win more or do way better than they "should".
Competition just doesn't work that way. Good state of mind can make a good athlete better, but it won't make someone who doesn't work hard a winner. This isn't a question of training efficiently, it's comparing people who train in a professional environment to people who practice by playing against amateurs for a few hours a day.
Where did i say that? All i said is that "working the hardest" won't make you a winner alone, not even nearly.
Working the hardest is not even necessarily a good thing if not done in a really smart way...
My point is that working hard is absolutely necessary to be a champion in any legitimate sport and suggesting otherwise like OP is makes SC2 look like a farce.
Amazing read; Very well thought out. This made me think about practice structure in a new way. As well as maybe check out that book that unslumped idra.
On November 15 2011 20:57 FuzzyJAM wrote: Yeah, I'm just going to have to totally disagree with this.
You provide an example of three players. Three. Comparing player numbers, I believe Koreans are something like 5,000% more successful than foreigners in the pro scene. No, that's not an exaggeration, that's really how much more successful they are and that's even with the fact that, contrary to the foreign scene, pretty much all the top Korean RTS talent is not even playing SC2. Foreigners do not compare to Koreans overall. There are maybe 5-10 foreigners who won't be laughably unfavoured against the top Koreans. Almost all foreign pros have shown themselves to be sub-Code A level; i.e. not even top 75 in Korea, even with their multitude of free Code A spots that they've squandered. The gap between the foreign and Korean scene is utterly huge, that's just a fact and four tournaments don't change that.
So why are Koreans so, so much better than everyone else? To rule out the practise house entirely is just silly. You provide three examples that argue your case that it isn't primarily the practise. One of them is in a Korean house, one of them lived in one for years and is moving back to Korea for the superior practise, and one of them. . .well, fair enough, you have one good example. Huk is known to play even more than the Koreans (when he can) and talks about the travel hurting him and is the most successful foreigner. How are you talking about him as evidence of your claim in this article? Idra has himself said he has gotten worse (comparatively) after leaving the Korean scene and is moving back with the simple reason being he wants to improve. Stephano, again, I admit is a fair example. However, he is such an exception that we can simply call him an anomaly and be done with it.
There's an argument to be made that Koreans play too much. You can argue that mentality is huge important. That is pretty obvious, I think. That doesn't change the fact that the Korean model is far, far more successful than any foreign model. Maybe the Korean model can be improved upon - play 8 hours a day instead of 12 or something - but it is still a large reason for their success. To say it's simply mentality is to go against the facts. That would rely on the idea that foreigners play much worse against Koreans or Korean play much better against foreigners. This is simply not the case if you watch Koreans vs. Koreans and foreigners vs. foreigners - the same gap in play that is demonstrated in Koreans vs. foreigners is utterly apparent when they're playing within their own circle.
It isn't that foreigners are simply mentally weaker, it's that they are almost all worse players in almost every facet of the game.
So, you want to refute the writer's 3 page, in-depth article with 3 paragraphs of what you call 'facts' with no relevant source or actual 'facts' to back it up, rounded off with a lame 'statement' you probably only concluded after being part of the SC scene for the last 6 months. Cool story mate.
I'll refute it in 3 sentences. How many players have made code S without experience in the Korean training model? Zero.
On November 15 2011 20:57 FuzzyJAM wrote: Yeah, I'm just going to have to totally disagree with this.
You provide an example of three players. Three. Comparing player numbers, I believe Koreans are something like 5,000% more successful than foreigners in the pro scene. No, that's not an exaggeration, that's really how much more successful they are and that's even with the fact that, contrary to the foreign scene, pretty much all the top Korean RTS talent is not even playing SC2. Foreigners do not compare to Koreans overall. There are maybe 5-10 foreigners who won't be laughably unfavoured against the top Koreans. Almost all foreign pros have shown themselves to be sub-Code A level; i.e. not even top 75 in Korea, even with their multitude of free Code A spots that they've squandered. The gap between the foreign and Korean scene is utterly huge, that's just a fact and four tournaments don't change that.
So why are Koreans so, so much better than everyone else? To rule out the practise house entirely is just silly. You provide three examples that argue your case that it isn't primarily the practise. One of them is in a Korean house, one of them lived in one for years and is moving back to Korea for the superior practise, and one of them. . .well, fair enough, you have one good example. Huk is known to play even more than the Koreans (when he can) and talks about the travel hurting him and is the most successful foreigner. How are you talking about him as evidence of your claim in this article? Idra has himself said he has gotten worse (comparatively) after leaving the Korean scene and is moving back with the simple reason being he wants to improve. Stephano, again, I admit is a fair example. However, he is such an exception that we can simply call him an anomaly and be done with it.
There's an argument to be made that Koreans play too much. You can argue that mentality is huge important. That is pretty obvious, I think. That doesn't change the fact that the Korean model is far, far more successful than any foreign model. Maybe the Korean model can be improved upon - play 8 hours a day instead of 12 or something - but it is still a large reason for their success. To say it's simply mentality is to go against the facts. That would rely on the idea that foreigners play much worse against Koreans or Korean play much better against foreigners. This is simply not the case if you watch Koreans vs. Koreans and foreigners vs. foreigners - the same gap in play that is demonstrated in Koreans vs. foreigners is utterly apparent when they're playing within their own circle.
It isn't that foreigners are simply mentally weaker, it's that they are almost all worse players in almost every facet of the game.
So, you want to refute the writer's 3 page, in-depth article with 3 paragraphs of what you call 'facts' with no relevant source or actual 'facts' to back it up, rounded off with a lame 'statement' you probably only concluded after being part of the SC scene for the last 6 months. Cool story mate.
I'm sorry for assuming people actually follow StarCraft II. If you like, I'll list some facts.
March: 4 foreign invites, 1 gets through Code A July: 1 foreign invites, 0 get through Code A August: 4 foreign invites, 0 get through Code A (also, one of the only two foreigners to earn their GSL spot without getting any advantages for being a foreigner is knocked to Code B) October: 4 foreign invites, 0 get through Code A November: 2 foreign invites, 0 get through Code A
So we've seen 15 foreigners get invited because of their performance in the foreign scene and one success. That one success was living in a Korean pro house, so I'm not sure how it's an example of a Korean pro house not being a huge advantage.
Would you like more facts? Or are you going to criticise me for not typing enough when your attempt to refute my post was to insult me and reply with two sentences?
I'm sorry, but you have to be utterly in denial to not realise that Koreans are vastly more successful in SCII than foreigners, which is only compounded by the fact that the best Korean RTS players aren't even playing yet and the total player base is far smaller than the foreigners.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
Or proper practice just really matters a lot.
So Stephano is some kind of practice wizard who knows how to train better than a dedicated coach? Where is this idea that Koreans aren't practicing properly coming from? Did someone with insider knowledge like Huk or Jinro mention it? Seriously if they mentioned it in an interview I'd like to know.
Post October = bad results with Koreans dominating except from HuK and Idra. Just look at yesterday code A.
Koreans will contiune to dominate with a limited handfull that can really keep up with the best. Stephano and all the rest wouldnt even make it to Code A
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
In the IPL he said, that he is not doing much else than starcraft. So if he really only trains 3 hours a day, it was a stupid decision to stop his studying at the university.
On November 15 2011 21:43 LeviathanDK wrote: Post October = bad results with Koreans dominating except from HuK and Idra. Just look at yesterday code A.
Koreans will contiune to dominate with a limited handfull that can really keep up with the best. Stephano and all the rest wouldnt even make it to Code A
Idra proved nothing with his win at the IEM Ghoungzhou. There was only a few very unkown korean players, who got knocked out in Code A early (Revival) or are not even in Code A (Puma). Even so, Puma is the practice partner or idra.
It was ironically too, that Stephano won against StC and Boxer at the IPL and only a week later he lost to both of them. In the interview StC said, that he uses weakness of the stephano style. And StC and Boxer are definitely not top korean terrans.
The very big upset from Idra, was his win against Bomber. But one have to say, that bomber uses on metalopolis some strange only marine style, which actually only works, when you are WAY BETTER than your opponent, which was not the case.
Even so, MLG Orlando seemed to be on of the weakest MLGs since koreans attended. The strongest was imo where all the korean Terras and DRG+CoCa attended.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Great article and I really loooooooooove the artwork ^^, but I wouldnt necessarily agree with everything, there were quite a few people inlcuding myself who always said the difference aint that big and that there are just a few Koreans who are way better (we all know who they are ) but other than that I've always been a firm believer of foreigners being able to win tournaments, been saying it for months and it was nice to see october turn out the way it did ^^
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
I am pretty sure that Phelps trains more than 5 hours a day, and that the days he doesn't do so it aren't because he doesn't need it, but because it would be counter-productive to his body recovery.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
You tell that to olympic weightlifters, who train over 10 hours a day at least 6 days a week. Even soccer players train 6-8 hours every session.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
You tell that to olympic weightlifters, who train over 10 hours a day at least 6 days a week. Even soccer players train 6-8 hours every session.
Soccer players do NOT train 6-8 hours. Training starts at 9-10 and ends at 3 with an hours lunch inbetween. The modern game of Soccer is based on doing several 100m and 50m sprints over and over and over again through the course of 90 minutes. If you were doing 8 hours a day as a Soccer player you would be pooped come Saturday.
On November 15 2011 22:34 Aserrin wrote: You tell that to olympic weightlifters, who train over 10 hours a day at least 6 days a week. Even soccer players train 6-8 hours every session.
Time invested isn't always useful. It's what you do with that time.
This argument seems like too dramatic an overall conclusion after just a month of foreigner success
Your argument seems logical correct to me and furthermore it just appeals to common sense, so i kinda gotta agree. But on the otherhand just looking at recent results isnt quite enough to draw up such a theory that you did. Time will tell us, which factors are truly enhancing or mitigating chances to succeed at top level international competition. I personally think, that the factors of confidence and the right mindset are largely unexplored in sc2, idra´s improved approach towards the game proves this best to me. But unquestionably the top Players of tomorrow will be those, that can combine a dedication of time with a "korean mindset" and very well structured training.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
You tell that to olympic weightlifters, who train over 10 hours a day at least 6 days a week. Even soccer players train 6-8 hours every session.
Soccer players do NOT train 6-8 hours. Training starts at 9-10 and ends at 3 with an hours lunch inbetween. The modern game of Soccer is based on doing several 100m and 50m sprints over and over and over again through the course of 90 minutes. If you were doing 8 hours a day as a Soccer player you would be pooped come Saturday.
Soccer training isn't just doing 100m and 50m sprints, give me a break.
There's lot of tactics training, reduced spaces, plays, free kicks, corner kicks among lots of other things like weight lifting or just plainjogging. I can't ask you to trust me, because you don't know me, but I've been to lots of soccer training sessions, participated in some, and saying a thing such as "Soccer is based on doing several 100m and 50m sprints over and over and over again" is laughable. This sport isn't called American Football or, you know, sprints.
Brilliant and well written article. I've thought about similar ideas before when following all of these players and the scenes. I hope these players continue on their paths to glory in November and then next year.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
You tell that to olympic weightlifters, who train over 10 hours a day at least 6 days a week. Even soccer players train 6-8 hours every session.
Lol, weightlifting... If you want to talk about sport and its legitimacy i would NEVER bring up weight lifting. The only people eating more drugs than these guys are people with cancer or aids...
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
You tell that to olympic weightlifters, who train over 10 hours a day at least 6 days a week. Even soccer players train 6-8 hours every session.
I don't think you're right, because there is a physical limit to the amount of training your body can receive, when there are none or almost none with SC2
Is it just me or someone else here doesn`t buy the idea that Stephano only plays 3-4 hours a day? I mean, I could understand the fact that he says this sort of thing to people, also the fact that we actually think it`s true, but come on. On IPL3 Interview, people asked him what does he usually do in his time besides SC2, and he said (joking): "I eat, sometimes... but most part is playing SC2".. Either he`s lying about the statement (which means he trains more) or he does something very strange that he won`t tell anyone.
I honestly think he has a smurf.
PS: The image of Stephano`s boob led me to the read the article!
On November 15 2011 22:51 Mahgoo wrote: Is it just me or someone else here doesn`t buy the idea that Stephano only plays 3-4 hours a day? I mean, I could understand the fact that he says this sort of thing to people, also the fact that we actually think it`s true, but come on. On IPL3 Interview, people asked him what does he usually do in his time besides SC2, and he said (joking): "I eat, sometimes... but most part is playing SC2".. Either he`s lying about the statement (which means he trains more) or he does something very strange that he won`t tell anyone.
I honestly think he has a smurf.
He plays 3-4 hours a day, he eats and he sleeps the rest of the time. Easy!
On November 15 2011 22:51 Mahgoo wrote: Is it just me or someone else here doesn`t buy the idea that Stephano only plays 3-4 hours a day? I mean, I could understand the fact that he says this sort of thing to people, also the fact that we actually think it`s true, but come on. On IPL3 Interview, people asked him what does he usually do in his time besides SC2, and he said (joking): "I eat, sometimes... but most part is playing SC2".. Either he`s lying about the statement (which means he trains more) or he does something very strange that he won`t tell anyone.
I honestly think he has a smurf.
He plays 3-4 hours a day, he eats and he sleeps the rest of the time. Easy!
See? That doesn`t make any sense from Stephano`s statement!
Fruitdealer mentioned in a previous interview that he also practices on average only 3 hours a day, but with intense focus. It's a shame his play dropped off since then, but his early dominance is nevertheless proof that less is often more.
That said this was one of the most fantastic write-ups I've seen yet. Lots of depth but to the point. Bravo.
I couldn't even read most of the article. That first painting was just too good. My life has no meaning now. I'll never see something as beautiful as that again.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
You tell that to olympic weightlifters, who train over 10 hours a day at least 6 days a week. Even soccer players train 6-8 hours every session.
I don't think you're right, because there is a physical limit to the amount of training your body can receive, when there are none or almost none with SC2
Body and mind are connected. Old school notions claim one should exercise more, but new school, science-backed training methods stress getting significantly more rest so one can recuperate properly.
Look to MMA, MVP, DRG, Nestea and 10 more Koreans. They play high level matches 3 days before Providence in Korea, fly to the US, need to play a SHITTON of games, and still people will put their chances above players who have been "chilling" in the US. It has to be said that the foreign contenders, also have all been traveling a ton themselves, or even come from Korea. IdrA is probably the only exception, and guess where he is going next year... Korea.
The other way around doesn't apply at all. All the foreigners going to Korea lose the first week. Every single player who enters code A the first time dies, horrible. All blame jetlag, needing to adapt, etc etc.
I am happy for Stephano, IdrA, HuK and others with recent Bo3 victories on US and EU ground. It is a change, but this article goes a bit too far, while it is still skeptical here and there.
And there are other points that I feel a bit untouched by this article, like the EG house. I don't really see the results, without doubt players like iNcontroL, Axslav, StrifeCro, Machine and DeMuslim have improved. But is it really due to the teamhouse? I see the EG teamhouse more like a place where they live together and have a great time. Which is awesome.
Koreans have been at the top for a few months, the top players over there reached the max of the learning curve way before any foreigners (excluding HuK, who is more korean than foreigner in sc2 terms anyway) and there's no question how much the Korean training regime has helped them establish their superiority.
However foreigners have had a few months to catch up since they play considerably less, but it was only a matter of time before they do, and this past October is only the start. Sooner or later we will have hundreds of players playing at the absolute top level and winning competitions will become pretty much a toss up between all of the competing players.
There is very little depth in SC2 especially compared to BW. There will never be any huge skill gap between the best players and the others anymore since there's just not enough variables to differentiate a player from another, and even if a player focuses hard on one particular aspect of the game for months it will still only be a little bit better than some others and just not worth investing that much into it, especially combined with the many random/luck elements in the game.
For those who like seeing foreigners win vs Koreans, It is only the beginning in my opinion.
I'm so glad that someone else thinks of Stephano as a girl. First time i saw him/her at Take TV's Home Cup I thought, "Wow a girl that can compete with the boys, awesome." The name can be misleading. If his name was "Brutus" I'm sure I would have never thought that he was a she.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
It's perfectly reasonable logic to call a game a fraud when one player can beat someone who trains twice as much just by having good "mentality."
The picture with Huk shaking hands with a Korean seems quite BM. In Korean you hold the hand you are not shaking with under the elbow of that you are shaking with. Having it in your pocket would be the SICKEST BM. :/
I think IdrA looks like he belongs in that era. He works that outfit so nicely. Anyways, this article is interesting because of the while debate over practice. It is strange, some people work themselves up from bronze to diamond over the course of thousands of games, others play one game a day, making every second count, making that one game count, and next thing you know, they have about a hundred games and is in masters league.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
It's perfectly reasonable logic to call a game a fraud when one player can beat someone who trains twice as much just by having good "mentality."
What if they're just better? My flatmate is just flat out better at games than me. We get a brand new game, and he'll just be better. Whether it's call of duty, chess, gears of war, starcraft, trackmania or forza, he's just better than me. Infuriating. Doesn't matter how much I practice, he's just better. His mind is more attuned to gaming, his reactions better, his multitasking more functinoal, whatever I don't know. But without practicing more he's better than me.
Similarly I remember a guy in my class at school, who, having never played golf before, after 45 minutes was hitting every shot 200 yards at the driving range. I can't do that shit and I've played for hours (not _masses_ of hours, but more than he had).
Really enjoyable read, I like the perspectives shown and the thought given to the different style of practicing for results. Also loving the graphics, the painting is just awesome (new desktop!) and the little paintings for each trainings style were perfect! Thanks for the mornings enjoyable coffee and wake-up entertainment
Great article, one of the best I've read here. And the art ... brilliant lol.
The reasoning and conclusions are solid. The final conclusion is self-evident.
In any sport at the highest levels: baseball. Tennis. Golf. Racing. Mountain climbing. etc etc .... thousands of champions and icons have given interviews and almost all of them say the same thing:
It is "mental game" that separates champions from the other players that have played for just as long, practiced just as much, have had the same advantages.
After a certain level - it's in the mind, and control of the mind and emotions is the key.
So that this is no different in Starcraft should not be a huge surprise.
Hi all, thanks for commenting. This is decidedly less controversial than I expected, and I'm not sure if that means I'm right, or that the awesome graphics work from Meko and Fishuu distracted everyone. Either way, all comments are appreciated. Also, the front image is not the only reference to a famous work of art in this piece. As of yet, nobody has picked up on the second reference!
I think FuzzyJAM brought up some good points that are fairly representative of the arguments that have been made. I think my point is more nuanced than he and others made out, so I'll try to make it clear. I don't think the Korean training method is a bad way to go, and I do think there's a good bit of anecdotal evidence that it's the most consistently good way to achieve results. But I think that for most of this year, the rhetoric has been that it is the only way forward, and my intention is to dispute this. Right now, there are other ways to succeed as a pro than just being in a Korean training house. It's true, IdrA told me he is looking forward to going back to Korea, and HuK credited the Korean ladder with a lot of his success. You'll never hear me argue that training on a worse server is better than training on a stronger one. But my point is that it can be done, you can win without being in Korea. I don't think many people have believed that until this month.
The timing of this article looks awkward, SaSe, NaNiwa, SeleCT, and HuK all falling out of the GSL is unfortunate. But it in no way disproves this theory. After all, all of them have had access to Korean training, and yet didn't win. That's just bad luck, the fact that they all played quite strong opponents, and also a reflection of external factors that hit foreigners especially hard, like SaSe getting sick in Manilla. Using overall GSL statistics of foreigners in Code A simply doesn't work in my view, I think foreigners going to Korea for Code A haven't planned it well, ThorZaIN played his Code A match less than 18 hours after a red-eye flight, for example. You can't win that way.
On November 15 2011 22:08 RotterdaM wrote: Great article and I really loooooooooove the artwork ^^, but I wouldnt necessarily agree with everything, there were quite a few people inlcuding myself who always said the difference aint that big and that there are just a few Koreans who are way better (we all know who they are ) but other than that I've always been a firm believer of foreigners being able to win tournaments, been saying it for months and it was nice to see october turn out the way it did ^^
Thanks for the comment, I know I've talked with MrBitter about this in the past, and he mentioned that you two shared this view. I do disagree with it though, I think the Korean scene has way more depth than the foreign one. A large part of that is related to mentality, and I think it's surely smaller than many people expect, but I think that the difference between the 20th best foreigner and the 20th best Korean is quite large.
One final response;
On November 16 2011 00:24 therockmanxx wrote: Good article but I dont like that you use the same banner as day9 use in an old article !!
Well done to you sir, I was wondering who the first person to notice this would be. That was actually the first frontpage article I read on TL. Double points if you remember what the Day9 article was about without checking!
Sadly the October Foreign New Hope will be followed by November: the Koreans Strike Back.
We're not going to see one foreigner do well at MLG Providence, not a single one. Sadly. Nestea will be the Korean that does worst out of the top invites.
On November 16 2011 00:58 Thrill wrote: Sadly the October Foreign New Hope will be followed by November: the Koreans Strike Back.
We're not going to see one foreigner do well at MLG Providence, not a single one. Sadly. Nestea will be the Korean that does worst out of the top invites.
Yeah, you mention Idra Stephano and Huk in the title, but you can't sleep on MaNa. This guy is good, and I won't be surprised if we hear more of him (even more than we do now) in the future.
Providence should be interesting. If someone can manage to take down Mvp/Nestea, I think we will settle this debate once and for all.
Great article, you and WaxAngel are both phenomenal writers, really enjoy it.
However, I want to be "critical" of this article. From a coach´s standpoint, the Korean model is simply better then any other we currently see in the starcraft scene. That is not a myth like you claim in this article. Many scientific articles have been written on training and how to maximize the amount of top pro´s in any sport.
A couple of factors weigh in, for how long you train, how often, with whom, where and under what kind of an instructor. Those are just a few examples. Of course, adding to that is the individual himself. I can have twins, training the exact same way, yet one will get better then the other, you can call it the natural factor. Within that, you have the players "need" for winning, you have his natural talent, you have his passion, and then you have his (some say) gender. And gender matters a lot, because in a competitive environment, men have an advantage, but that´s irrelevant for this article.
Back to training - In the short term of a year or two, the Korean model has already established it´s dominance. No foreigner can claim the success comparable to that of the top Koreans. The Korean training model gives us so many top top top players, compared to any other model. The Korean model, which is a copy of good sport related coaching models, get´s us top level players, the other coaching models, "bashing the NA server" and "not training so much but still a bit" have not shown us resaults even close to those given to us by the Korean model.
To name 2 players outside of the Korean model, that have in 1 month out of the last 12, bashed a couple of Koreans in a tournament and all of a sudden the Korean model isn´t superior to the other models, this is very faulty reasoning. Also, only 1-2 of those tourneys had the top tier Koreans in them, and when there were top tier Koreans, none of them were either NesTea or MVP, which reminds me of their trip to Blizzcon, in this revolutionary month, where MVP and NesTea absolutely roflstomped the top qualified players from the rest of the world, i´m not sure they even broke a sweat.
This article obviously was supposed to breath life into the hope of foreigners being able to dominate in the SC2 scene equally to Koreans, but that is a distant dream simply because the Korean model dominates that of any foreigner model currently employed. The Korean model is mirrored in any top sport training model, the guys playing football with their friends every day, don´t get as good as the guys who play football and/or do football related practice regimes all day with their professional club. However, 1-2 guys might have a real talent in the former group, and being able to play on par with the guys in the latter model, however, they will not reach the same hight as equally talented players who train all day, simply because their training methods are better.
When SC2 has been out for such a short while, we will have some foreigners who are able to come close to the Koreans, the Korean model hasn´t paid off fully, not even close. Right now, with much fewer players playing then play in the rest of the world, we can say out of the top 100 players, probably 60-70% or more of them are Koreans. The model doesn´t make up for individual skill/talent, but that get´s less and less relevant over time as the Korean model produces more good players. What i´m trying to say is, the Korean model produces a lot of really really good players, some of whom become elite simply because of natural talent, not everyone can become elite. We in the foreigner scene have just as many players with the talent to become elite, but our training models don´t get them there, they can like Stephano, become really good even though they don´t practice that much, but Stephano isn´t one to take down the GSL any time soon (sorry Stephano fans). However, had Stephano spent the last year in the Korean model, I am pretty sure NesTea wouldn´t have 90%< win ratio in ZvZ.
This is mirrored in the start of starcraft BW, where Koreans hadn´t gotten as untouchable. We have every reason to learn from that, over time the Korean model not only shapes the top 2-5 players. It will always start to add on one and one who get to that "elite tier" which isn´t reachable just by playing 3 hours a day, or bashing inferior players all day long. In 5 years time, if foreigners don´t start to do what EG did and start pro houses (rather in Europe since the overall quality of top EU players seems to outshine the NA ones pretty hard), the foreigner scene will fall behind rather quickly, and we´ll end up with the same situation as in BW, not a single foreigner who can claim he´s a top 30 player in the world. Let´s not let this October month or this article fool us, in the field of "quality practicing" the Korean model is much closer to how it´s supposed to be then the current foreigner training.
However, just to not only be critical, the part about mentality was great. It most often falls under the persons talents, and can contrary to popular belief be "coached" or taught to players. Hence the players with the mentality of them being champions, usually end up as champions. Good mentality is really important as we all know.. Good players with poor mentality don´t get far in any sport.
----
To add a little to the article, inspire the same sort of hope, I know for a fact that there is still time to make foreigners the top players in Starcraft. If the foreigner teams would get team houses in say, Europe, put up the same model as the Koreans have, the time it would take to surpass them would not be long. Why? Because the player pool in Europe, and therefor the naturally talented players pool of the foreigner servers is so much much much bigger then what Koreans have to play with. The quality of practice on the EU server would get much higher, giving the lower level players (mid/high masters now) a chance to play the worlds best on a regular basis, upping their own skill. This is why so many Koreans are so good, they are always playing the best players and therefor improving faster (playing against better players is a proven training method and considered to be one of the fastest training methods in sports ranging from football to chess). But we can´t do that in 5 years time, then we are too far behind. So I really hope the foreigner teams start to realize there is a lot of money in starcraft, and throwing up team houses and getting the best players in the world together, living and breathing starcraft, is actually going to pay off for them and the foreigner scene very fast.
Foreigners fighting!
/no flame please.
the rhetoric has been that it is the only way forward, and my intention is to dispute this. Right now, there are other ways to succeed as a pro than just being in a Korean training house. It's true, IdrA told me he is looking forward to going back to Korea, and HuK credited the Korean ladder with a lot of his success. You'll never hear me argue that training on a worse server is better than training on a stronger one. But my point is that it can be done, you can win without being in Korea. I don't think many people have believed that until this month.
Just have to answer that. Yes, the Korean model is the only one moving forward. Right now, because SC2 has been out for such a short while, we are destined to see some fluctuations, as in, some random very skilled foreigners getting some results in. But consistently the gap between foreigners and Koreans will start to increase, until as I said above, they are out of reach, even for the most talented foreigners. We will have some upsets now and then, but moving on, the Korean model or an improved version of it is the only way to go.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
It's perfectly reasonable logic to call a game a fraud when one player can beat someone who trains twice as much just by having good "mentality."
What if they're just better? My flatmate is just flat out better at games than me. We get a brand new game, and he'll just be better. Whether it's call of duty, chess, gears of war, starcraft, trackmania or forza, he's just better than me. Infuriating. Doesn't matter how much I practice, he's just better. His mind is more attuned to gaming, his reactions better, his multitasking more functinoal, whatever I don't know. But without practicing more he's better than me.
Similarly I remember a guy in my class at school, who, having never played golf before, after 45 minutes was hitting every shot 200 yards at the driving range. I can't do that shit and I've played for hours (not _masses_ of hours, but more than he had).
So then Stephano is some kind of savant who learns twice as much from every game compared to other pros? Or does Huk have a learning disability that makes it so that he has to work twice as hard to improve to the same degree? There's no such thing as "natural ability" when it comes to learned skills. It all comes down to how dedicated you are to improving.
Wasn't Day9's post something to do with Fantasy's Mech play vs Zerg?
Anyway, great article. I disagree with a few points (I think going to the EG house certainly improved Idra's play, and not just his mental strength) but overall, a very cool analysis. I'd love to see interviews with other foriegn high level players, such as Thorzain, or even better, Mana. He's still in school, but is capable of getting to the finals of almost any tournament he enters (but incapable of winning ). How he does it with his schedule I have no idea.
So then Stephano is some kind of savant who learns twice as much from every game compared to other pros? Or does Huk have a learning disability that makes it so that he has to work twice as hard to improve to the same degree? There's no such thing as "natural ability" when it comes to learned skills.
Natural ability certainly exists. You should read up on it, for example twins given the same training, they don´t get to the same skill level. Some people are just born for sports, they have the body, the mindset and everything to become good, becoming as good and/or even better then some other people who do nothing but practice. But eventually, if one practices 10 hours and the other 2 hours, the one who practices 10 hours will catch up and surpass the naturally talented one.
Your "competitive spirit", your mentality, your age, your gender even how you were raised up - these are all things that greatly affect your rate of improvement in competitive sports. These things don´t affect your play in your sport, but yet attribute to your "natural skill" in that sport. HuK doesn´t have any sort of learning disability, nor is Stephano any kind of savant, both are very naturally skilled players, but my guess is out of the two, Stephano scores higher in the "natural abilities" section then HuK, just a guess, cause his resaults recently seem to indicate he´s very talented and has the mentality of a champion.
On November 16 2011 01:11 n0btozz wrote: Great article, you and WaxAngel are both phenomenal writers, really enjoy it.
However, I want to be "critical" of this article. From a coach´s standpoint, the Korean model is simply better then any other we currently see in the starcraft scene. That is not a myth like you claim in this article. Many scientific articles have been written on training and how to maximize the amount of top pro´s in any sport.
A couple of factors weigh in, for how long you train, how often, with whom, where and under what kind of an instructor. Those are just a few examples. Of course, adding to that is the individual himself. I can have twins, training the exact same way, yet one will get better then the other, you can call it the natural factor. Within that, you have the players "need" for winning, you have his natural talent, you have his passion, and then you have his (some say) gender. And gender matters a lot, because in a competitive environment, men have an advantage, but that´s irrelevant for this article.
Back to training - In the short term of a year or two, the Korean model has already established it´s dominance. No foreigner can claim the success comparable to that of the top Koreans. The Korean training model gives us so many top top top players, compared to any other model. The Korean model, which is a copy of good sport related coaching models, get´s us top level players, the other coaching models, "bashing the NA server" and "not training so much but still a bit" have not shown us resaults even close to those given to us by the Korean model.
To name 2 players outside of the Korean model, that have in 1 month out of the last 12, bashed a couple of Koreans in a tournament and all of a sudden the Korean model isn´t superior to the other models, this is very faulty reasoning. Also, only 1-2 of those tourneys had the top tier Koreans in them, and when there were top tier Koreans, none of them were either NesTea or MVP, which reminds me of their trip to Blizzcon, in this revolutionary month, where MVP and NesTea absolutely roflstomped the top qualified players from the rest of the world, i´m not sure they even broke a sweat.
This article obviously was supposed to breath life into the hope of foreigners being able to dominate in the SC2 scene equally to Koreans, but that is a distant dream simply because the Korean model dominates that of any foreigner model currently employed. The Korean model is mirrored in any top sport training model, the guys playing football with their friends every day, don´t get as good as the guys who play football and/or do football related practice regimes all day with their professional club. However, 1-2 guys might have a real talent in the former group, and being able to play on par with the guys in the latter model, however, they will not reach the same hight as equally talented players who train all day, simply because their training methods are better.
When SC2 has been out for such a short while, we will have some foreigners who are able to come close to the Koreans, the Korean model hasn´t paid off fully, not even close. Right now, with much fewer players playing then play in the rest of the world, we can say out of the top 100 players, probably 60-70% or more of them are Koreans. The model doesn´t make up for individual skill/talent, but that get´s less and less relevant over time as the Korean model produces more good players. What i´m trying to say is, the Korean model produces a lot of really really good players, some of whom become elite simply because of natural talent, not everyone can become elite. We in the foreigner scene have just as many players with the talent to become elite, but our training models don´t get them there, they can like Stephano, become really good even though they don´t practice that much, but Stephano isn´t one to take down the GSL any time soon (sorry Stephano fans). However, had Stephano spent the last year in the Korean model, I am pretty sure NesTea wouldn´t have 90%< win ratio.
This is mirrored in the start of starcraft BW, where Koreans hadn´t gotten as untouchable. We have every reason to learn from that, over time the Korean model not only shapes the top 2-5 players. It will always start to add on one and one who get to that "elite tier" which isn´t reachable just by playing 3 hours a day, or bashing inferior players all day long. In 5 years time, if foreigners don´t start to do what EG did and start pro houses (rather in Europe since the overall quality of top EU players seems to outshine the NA ones pretty hard), the foreigner scene will fall behind rather quickly, and we´ll end up with the same situation as in BW, not a single foreigner who can claim he´s a top 30 player in the world. Let´s not let this October month or this article fool us, in the field of "quality practicing" the Korean model is much closer to how it´s supposed to be then the current foreigner training.
However, just to not only be critical, the part about mentality was great. It most often falls under the persons talents, and can contrary to popular belief be "coached" or taught to players. Hence the players with the mentality of them being champions, usually end up as champions. Good mentality is really important as we all know.. Good players with poor mentality don´t get far in any sport.
----
To add a little to the article, inspire the same sort of hope, I know for a fact that there is still time to make foreigners the top players in Starcraft. If the foreigner teams would get team houses in say, Europe, put up the same model as the Koreans have, the time it would take to surpass them would not be long. Why? Because the player pool in Europe, and therefor the naturally talented players pool of the foreigner servers is so much much much bigger then what Koreans have to play with. The quality of practice on the EU server would get much higher, giving the lower level players (mid/high masters now) a chance to play the worlds best on a regular basis, upping their own skill. This is why so many Koreans are so good, they are always playing the best players and therefor improving faster (playing against better players is a proven training method and considered to be one of the fastest training methods in sports ranging from football to chess). But we can´t do that in 5 years time, then we are too far behind. So I really hope the foreigner teams start to realize there is a lot of money in starcraft, and throwing up team houses and getting the best players in the world together, living and breathing starcraft, is actually going to pay off for them and the foreigner scene very fast.
Foreigners fighting!
/no flame please.
While i just skimmed parts of your post (sorry), I feel that you said more or less what I was about to write. Let me sum up my thoughts.
1) You don't have anywhere near statistical significance to say that foreigners are doing ok from these 3 tournaments. Out of the 12 months of sc2, with the foreign scene drawing talent from 7 billion people, korea from 50 millions, you find only one months where foreigners do well. That is a pretty clear indication about who has understood best how to train. It is a sign that foreigners CAN win, its not 0% probability, but not a sign that they win anywhere near as much as they should do if they'd train as efficiently as Koreans. Also you say that we shouldn't use foreigners bad results in code A since its harder for them compete just after traveling, yet you are fine with referring to tournaments where the Koreans have to travel?
2) You make a very good point about mentality, and specially at high level with all its meta game and (mis)information and scouting in every game, the psychological part is really important. Maybe getting a dedicated psychologist on each team is the way to go?
So please, in the future, present these articles as what they are: great motivational speeches for fans to cheer for our players. Not analysis of facts with indisputable conclusions. You don't have more facts behind your statements than any of the raging "KOREA >> ALL!!" or "FOREIGN POWAH!!" fanatics in the sc2 forum, you just formulate your statements infinitely better. In the end you are just fueling all the baseless claims in the sc2 forum rather than showing how you can be passionate about your player without trying to bend the truth.
Sorry for the criticism. :o) You asked for feedback, and here you got it. I should mention again that the article really woke up the foreigner-fan in me, and reminded me about my deep zerg feelings for Stephano. (no homo)
While an interesting article it doesn't change that I don't think Stephano alone disproves anything. Idra has a long history of hardcore playing, spent a lot of time in Korean and was BW pro. It is often joked (and for good reason) that maybe Huk should be considered a Korean and then there is Stephano.
Meko wrote: "It was clear after IPL3, and his subsequent ESWC triumph that either we'd been looking at the foreigner-Korean relationship wrong, or Stephano was one hell of a fluke. "
Personally I think Meko is missing the third (and imo the correct conclusion) that Stephano is just THAT much more talented then either Idra or Huk. Huk is a product of hard work, Idra of talent and experience while Stephano is wonder boy. And there we have what seems to be the biggest taboo in esports, talking about talent. So my conclusion is that Stephano is as good as he is despite how little he plays, despite that he is not on a serious team, despite that he has never been to korea and from where I am sitting I see the greatest sc 1/2 talent we have had outside of korea.
On November 16 2011 01:46 Krogan wrote: While an interesting article it doesn't change that I don't think Stephano alone disproves anything. Idra has a long history of hardcore playing, spent a lot of time in Korean and was BW pro. It is often joked (and for good reason) that maybe Huk should be considered a Korean and then there is Stephano.
Meko wrote: "It was clear after IPL3, and his subsequent ESWC triumph that either we'd been looking at the foreigner-Korean relationship wrong, or Stephano was one hell of a fluke. "
Personally I think Meko is missing the third (and imo the correct conclusion) that Stephano is just THAT much more talented then either Idra or Huk. Huk is a product of hard work, Idra of talent and experience while Stephano is wonder boy. And there we have what seems to be the biggest taboo in esports, talking about talent. So my conclusion is that Stephano is as good as he is despite how little he plays, despite that he is not on a serious team, despite that he has never been to korea and from where I am sitting I see the greatest sc 1/2 talent we have had outside of korea.
maybe that was what meko meant with a fluke? That normally the foreign training model does not produce very good players, but Stephano came out as a fluke. I dont know, I have no clue about the context, so sorry if I don't make any sense.
for me it has never been about "foreigner" of "Korean" gamers, it has been about the peak of possible play. if a foreigner can be the best player in the world ill root for him, until then ill be cheering for people who are.
I hate to disagree with one small part of such a nicely written article, but when I look at his mechanics I come to the conclusion they're rather poor.
His hotkey scheme is simple but doesn't allow for perfect play, and his multitasking is unimpressive. Ultimately, being able to build a tremendous amount of units as a Zerg depend primarily on drone, unit, and expansion timings, and it is in this area where Stephano excels. In particular, he seems to understand how to dominate a game a with low tier units without getting checkmated against a max army of higher tech units.
I will wait with overreacting on this until there will be some consistency in foreign wins against koreans. What we have here is just not enough to think that we can evenly compete. Mentioned players give some hope though.
On November 15 2011 21:24 monkh wrote: I'm right in thinking none of the SC2 talk shows talked about Stephano's practice schedule?
What is there to talk about? Either he's lying and he really practices more than 3 hours a day, or he's telling the truth and the game is a joke.
The article said 4 hours. And a sports where you can excel if you train 4 hours a day and are prodigious is a joke? Michael Phelps trains nearly 5 hours, 7 days a week. And we know what he achieved. Or maybe it's just that swimming is a joke? Or maybe chess is a joke? Because many top players also put up around 4 hours each and every day. Every day.
Do yourself a favour and don't stick to that train of thought. It's pretty disadvantageous in life, ya know.
Best regards, Fox
So then are you going to argue that Stephano is just so good that he gets twice as much out of practice as other players? Or that the Korean teams are wrong and have been wasting their time all these years? If that's the case I hope someone shows them the light soon so they can stop wasting their youth pointlessly trying to get good.
You bound the legitimacy of a sport/sc2 to the amount of training/day required to excel.
Thats retarded logic.
Thats all.
It's perfectly reasonable logic to call a game a fraud when one player can beat someone who trains twice as much just by having good "mentality."
What if they're just better? My flatmate is just flat out better at games than me. We get a brand new game, and he'll just be better. Whether it's call of duty, chess, gears of war, starcraft, trackmania or forza, he's just better than me. Infuriating. Doesn't matter how much I practice, he's just better. His mind is more attuned to gaming, his reactions better, his multitasking more functinoal, whatever I don't know. But without practicing more he's better than me.
Similarly I remember a guy in my class at school, who, having never played golf before, after 45 minutes was hitting every shot 200 yards at the driving range. I can't do that shit and I've played for hours (not _masses_ of hours, but more than he had).
The point isn't arguing about Stephano specifically. I don't think anyone doubts that Stephano is one of the most "talented" SC2 players in the world, including the current Korean SC2 scene. Note, I put talented in quotations because I think it's a nebulous and poorly defined word, but I'll just define it in this case as someone who can grasp the intricacies of real time strategy games faster than the average human being. Everyone is fine with Stephano being an outlier - an aberration in the mass myriad of progamers who just aren't as talented.
However, since the point this article tries to make is that because practicing less but having a "right mentality" seems to be working for a select couple of players (Idra and Stephano, specifically), some are making the inference that the entire whole of the foreigner scene is catching up as well because of this. If that's the case, then it sure seems like a mighty huge coincidence that all of a sudden, in late September, foreigners are just "getting it." There is no collective hive mind in the foreigner scene, which makes this all the more strange of a point to make.
This comes back to the original argument: if just "getting it" with a right mentality is enough, then what's so impressive about these feats? Idra is a good example: his mechanics, relative to almost all foreigners and even some Koreans, are excellent. But compared to the S-class BW players or even some BW A-teamers? They're a joke. His tactical awareness and sense of strategy? Even compared to some foreigners, he's not top notch in those areas. Yet, if just having a confident mental attitude can push him over the top in this game, while it couldn't in BW, then I have no qualms about saying that the competition is farcical due to the shallowness of the game.
Some people seem to have a short memory, but let's look at WCGs in the past for BW. I mean, everyone acknowledges the fact that in BW, Koreans were invincible, right? Ok, let's see:
Doggi and Gundam both lost twice to guys like Nazgul and Elky. But oh, you say, they weren't that good, and BW wasn't very established in 2001. Ok, fine.
Control lost to Fisheye in the groups. HOT lost to PJ. then in the brackets, gets 2-0'd by some Brazilian I don't even remember. Fisheye manages to take a game off Ogogo in the Finals, and Grrr... manages to beat Control for 3rd place. Okay, Grrr, although falling off by then, was still pretty damn good.
But aha, you say. Most of these guys still aren't that good, and many lucked out because the Korean WCG qualifiers was where the real competition happened, and just by the luck of the draw, we got some mediocre Koreans in the world finals - only Boxer, Yellow, Reach, Nal_ra, and a young Nada at the time were noteworthy. However...doesn't this strangely sound familiar to SC2, where only the top few Koreans are actually any good in the grand scheme of things? Let's keep going.
Androide beats Silent Control 2-0, and takes second after Foru. Sure, it was a big upset, but hey...this is BW in 2005, remember - where the Koreans are supposedly already invincible? So why the hell are foreigners still winning BoX's? Btw, Foru and Silent Control both dropped games to foreigners during the group stages as well.
This goes on and on throughout the years, up until around 2008'ish, when the current crop of Koreans, with their inhuman mechanics, finally became impossible to beat for even the best foreigners.
Sure, none of the foreigners ever won a gold in BW at WCG, but they took quite a few seconds, and beat quite a few Koreans throughout the years. The point here is that, even in BW, with its much higher mechanical demands, it was possible for foreigners to win YEARS after foreigner interest dropped and BW became a national sport in Korea. How? PURE VARIANCE. By nature, an RTS game with limited information introduces elements that aren't human-controlled. No human being is prescient - so why aren't we just seeing variance here? Why do we have to conjure up some convoluted reasoning to explain one month of "foreigner success"? (I wouldn't even call it success...more one like month of Idra and Stephano doing well).
@fishuu interesting but i disagree well written. with all due respect, be more efficient with your language. You could have cut 1/4 of the words without losing any meaning.
Might the future look different? We might have good reason to desperately wish it will. At the heart of 'balance' in starcraft is a belief that the better, harder working, smarter player will always win. In challenging the idea that practice is what matters most of all in Starcraft 2, we open up the argument that Starcraft 2 is simply not as balanced a game as we wish to believe. That players who have put in less time, in less rigorous conditions can win is a threat to the basic premise of Starcraft 2 competition. This argument seems like too dramatic an overall conclusion after just a month of foreigner success. But it might be that we all have a stake in rooting for Koreans in the future, if only because it'll mean that practice is slowly starting to make perfect.
This is the only part of the article that I agree with. If practice doesn't make perfect in this game as it does in BW, then I might as well as stop watching. I can only hope that HoTS and LoTV bring more depth, both physical and mental, to this game.
Practice NEVER makes perfect and never has. Practice makes permanent. How well you spend your time practicing will matter for how well you do, not just how long you practice.
On November 16 2011 02:11 Basher_ wrote: @fishuu interesting but i disagree well written. with all due respect, be more efficient with your language. You could have cut 1/4 of the words without losing any meaning.
Agreed, this is a problem I find with a lot of fishuu's writing, but to be fair, it's not his expertise.
Excellent writing, i must admit. Very deep, describes very well what the state of the game actually is. Ok, that came out as a cross reference, but it wasn't intended ^^
Keep this kind of threads up, they are what we nerds like to read
Might the future look different? We might have good reason to desperately wish it will. At the heart of 'balance' in starcraft is a belief that the better, harder working, smarter player will always win. In challenging the idea that practice is what matters most of all in Starcraft 2, we open up the argument that Starcraft 2 is simply not as balanced a game as we wish to believe. That players who have put in less time, in less rigorous conditions can win is a threat to the basic premise of Starcraft 2 competition. This argument seems like too dramatic an overall conclusion after just a month of foreigner success. But it might be that we all have a stake in rooting for Koreans in the future, if only because it'll mean that practice is slowly starting to make perfect.
This is the only part of the article that I agree with. If practice doesn't make perfect in this game as it does in BW, then I might as well as stop watching. I can only hope that HoTS and LoTV bring more depth, both physical and mental, to this game.
Practice NEVER makes perfect and never has. Practice makes permanent. How well you spend your time practicing will matter for how well you do, not just how long you practice.
Indirectly, an RTS game with sufficient amount of mechanical requirements will demand length of practice as a prerequisite of success. Of course, I was working under the impression that most practice habits are similar in efficiency - obviously they aren't, but that's an area that is extremely hard to quantify and measurem, and obviously, differs from human being to human being.
It's just like schooling. Mass schooling exists because society has to have a baseline to measure competency. Sure, the more education one has doesn't always directly equate to more competency in a specific subject matter, but in general, there is a strong correlation. In a perfect world, every single progamer should get individual attention based upon his/her own needs, but we're obviously not there yet. Thus, more practice (assuming relatively efficient means of doing so) are the best ways we have right now.
If you think in order to have a "non-fraud" game, skill only needs to be based on the amount of practice, you're really sad. Some people are just good. It's called talent, it's what makes sports and games interesting. Does that mean a very talented player doesn't need practice ? Of course not. But a talented player can probably beat a player with no talent who practices twice as much. I really don't care enough to go into an essay in that, but that's so painfully obvious that I don't understand how people can dismiss natural proficiency. In music for instance, some people are "talented" or even incredibly gifted, and some people will forever stay mediocre.
On November 15 2011 15:54 Puph wrote: No offense to whoever made the drawing, but I...don't understand why Stephano's face is on the body of a naked woman :S (edit) holding a gun
He's French and the French chick's holding the French flag during the French revolution. I sence a theme here. What's funny though is that the october revolution was when the communists took power in russia ^_^
It's this same mentality you're potraying in this article the one that makes us stagnate over time. That is, the constant need of wanting to classify things.
The Korean Model, The Foreign Teamhouse Model, The Lone Ranger Model, Foreigners, Koreans, mass-practice, smart-practice, self-confidence.
If you're at the top, you got yourself there, not a style.
So much Stephano hype... next comes Elfi and... well, I hope they can live up to it. I can see them losing fans for something that isn't their fault at all.
On November 16 2011 03:04 EsX_Raptor wrote: It's this same mentality you're potraying in this article the one that makes us stagnate over time. That is, the constant need of wanting to classify things.
The Korean Model, The Foreign Teamhouse Model, The Lone Ranger Model, Foreigners, Koreans, mass-practice, smart-practice, self-confidence.
If you're at the top, you got yourself there, not a style.
... Reading comprehension is not so good on TL.
The bolded is literally what the article is saying. All the classifications are done by the masses. He is saying there is not a set model (with the majority of people believing the Korean model is the one) that you have to follow to create a champion.
Instead, they have much more to do with an improved mentality. As his mechanics and strategies are relatively unchanged, what has given IdrA recent success is a different way of looking his games and his play.This is not news, IdrA has said this in interviews, and it has been echoed repeatedly by the EG faithful. But it is symptomatic of the cognitive dissonance on these issues that the significance of this has not been really examined
To be honest I think tier 3 Foreigners can keep with tier 2 Koreans...MVP , Bomber MmA I don't see how any foreigner can defeat them in strongest vs strongest match up.
It will be essential to see how these foreigners (and the established Koreans as well of course) stack up once Brood War pros reveal the extent of their skill in SC2. After all, the strongest test of mentality versus Korean practice would be against the legendary practice abilities of the top Brood War pros. I'm no Brood War historian, but my understanding is that the foreign presence at the very pinnacle of Brood War was only in its very beginning, and faded away once the Koreans established such rigorous team houses - so the test for foreigners is only beginning.
I always believed this, mentality is even more important than skill to have succes in SC, very good investigation, im wondering what will happen at MLG Provedence ^_^
On November 15 2011 15:54 Puph wrote: No offense to whoever made the drawing, but I...don't understand why Stephano's face is on the body of a naked woman :S (edit) holding a gun
Cause maybe he plays for the other team. Really pink? lol.
But on the other hand, I really think that all three could/have benefit(ed) from the Korean model. IdrA comes off a strong BW background and could really have been the best foreigner if he had the "eye of the tiger." Huk's mechanics grew from nothing as he didn't even come from a RTS background. And Stephano plays like Stephano, but if you give him a chance to play and saturate himself in a high quality environment to test his style more often, hell yes he will be beast.
This is a superbly written piece with really great art.
two penny thoughts that appeared in my brain while reading:
1. You do dip your cap a little to it in the piece but it bears repeating; this is a small sample. A single month does not a (French or Russian) revolution make.
2. In your glance at the longer term...
On November 15 2011 15:43 tree.hugger wrote: Might the future look different? We might have good reason to desperately wish it will. At the heart of 'balance' in starcraft is a belief that the better, harder working, smarter player will always win. In challenging the idea that practice is what matters most of all in Starcraft 2, we open up the argument that Starcraft 2 is simply not as balanced a game as we wish to believe. That players who have put in less time, in less rigorous conditions can win is a threat to the basic premise of Starcraft 2 competition. This argument seems like too dramatic an overall conclusion after just a month of foreigner success. But it might be that we all have a stake in rooting for Koreans in the future, if only because it'll mean that practice is slowly starting to make perfect.
You say that Starcraft 2, in it's present state, might be broken in such a way as to render 8 hour a day practice a non-optimal winning strategy for a professional Starcraft 2 player. And that that might be an undesirable thing. The only way I can follow that logic, and I may be missing something, is if I assume that this means that the game is reaching a "solved" state. That watching a game of SC2, if it stays balanced as it is for much longer, would end up being like watching tic tak toe.
What other factor might be at play that can render 4 hours of practise a day as good as 8 hours if it's not solvability? Arguably it might be something more difficult to calculate; the creative capacity of the individual playing the game. His or her ability to synthesise and analyse data and think of a response to the game state, a strategy, which will improve winning chances. I'm not sure it's obvious that this skill can only be improved by practising the game, perhaps it can be improved by what you call the “Koran Mindset” but that that mindset is more than simple confidence, but a cluster of winning attitudes which can be strengthened by discipline and reading and ? That “Mindset skill cap” might have much higher limits than what might be called “The mechanical skill cap”. That the promise of the title is true, that it really is a craft and not just 8>4 maths.
3. Bit OT, so not really worth a penny, I'd love to see tree.hugger interview and write about grubby, a westerner who conquered korea. Though it may not end up being relevant to this conversation... It might.
So then Stephano is some kind of savant who learns twice as much from every game compared to other pros? Or does Huk have a learning disability that makes it so that he has to work twice as hard to improve to the same degree? There's no such thing as "natural ability" when it comes to learned skills.
Natural ability certainly exists. You should read up on it, for example twins given the same training, they don´t get to the same skill level. Some people are just born for sports, they have the body, the mindset and everything to become good, becoming as good and/or even better then some other people who do nothing but practice. But eventually, if one practices 10 hours and the other 2 hours, the one who practices 10 hours will catch up and surpass the naturally talented one.
The twins example just shows that natural ability doesn't exist. If there's no genetic advantage the only difference is dedication to improving.
Had never really thought to compare the three distinct practice styles of these players. I feel like they all work well but in my opinion Stephano's style requires more talent to begin with as it is less of a guaranteed method than perhaps the other end of the spectrum which is Huk's method of training(Not saying Huk is bad, He is my favorite player). You can mass ladder and eventually you will become better put less practice more mindset IMO wont make you into a better player as much as consistent mass games.
I loved this article. Pleasure to read and the artwork is fantastic. One of the most interesting and intriguing things about our community is the diversity involved in the allegiances we all carry. Whether it be our race alliance or hoping that our home country wins or simply the unification that our scene pulls through and beats the Korean dominance there is always something to cheer for. Unless it's an all Korean TvT top 4 haha.
lol.. why was iloveoov's quote in here? It's not true. Mind games aren't more valuable than skill. You beat mind games with scouting. You scout with skill. Case closed doods.
it's probably been said before, but idras performance comes quite a little better than it actually is. . in guangzhou he was really lucky to make it out of the group. no koreans in that group and only 1 win. his mentality training book did not help anything at that point and usually he's out of the tournament with his results and no one will talk positive about him. only real impressive game was then against puma, his teammate, where he probably knows some leaks in his game, which he could benefit from. still great performance, but puma has still not fully shown that he is a consistest top of the top korean.
mlg orlando idra had a easy group. only top player was mkp, which he lost to. idra than almost got knocked by boxer cheesing him even though he had 2 wins advantage. then only really impressive result was against bomber. however, against mc nothing changed. he still could not overcome him, even though he had the mentality book, and mc is still not at the prime level he once was.
On November 16 2011 14:02 Kudoku wrote: lol.. why was iloveoov's quote in here? It's not true. Mind games aren't more valuable than skill. You beat mind games with scouting. You scout with skill. Case closed doods.
I don't want to be rude, and whereas it's a well written article, it's REALLY obvious that mindset is the key to success, see any famous athletes, whatever their sport, it's a combination of talent and mindset. Absolutely nothing new here.
The main flaw of your article is you don't explain this new phenomenon , while practicing less than their korean fellows they still win against them. For you it's only a concern of psychology. You truly think every other foreigners are sissies without any will ?
I of course think it's wrong. The fact Koreans used to train a lot in Brood War is because the game was far less user friendly than SC2 is : terrible path-finding, 12 units max per control group, no smart casting, slower pace, etc. Those flaws could only be counter balanced by countless hours of training, which is not necessary today.
In general, whatever the activity, only a good balance between practicing and thinking will provide the best results. It's what those 3 players do now, and that's why they win.
On November 16 2011 14:02 Kudoku wrote: lol.. why was iloveoov's quote in here? It's not true. Mind games aren't more valuable than skill. You beat mind games with scouting. You scout with skill. Case closed doods.
This is just one month. Anyone who follows pro sports can recall dozens of examples of professional sports teams posting excellent results during 30 days before completely fading out.
I will need to see a lot more before I am ready to believe that the Koreans' practice schedule does not improve their play, especially since the correlation between practice and results is super obvious in every other competitive activity.
I really have to question anyone who thinks it is wise to practice 8+ hours a day. Most scientific studies show terrible diminishing returns after 4 hours of intense practice in any field.
Honestly i don't think this month is a true foreign dominance now that i look at it but rather a lucky month. Huk won MLG based of pool play mostly and you have to consider he won pvp which is considered by everyone from the top korean to the low level NA pro to be luck based 90% if the 2 player are mechanically equal or close to equal ( see MC and HuK at IPL 3 ), the other 2 opponents of huk were MKP which did some gosu ( running rines up the ramp when huk had sentries ) moves and lost, was it due to him being tired or to him not being a "top korean" anymore its not up to me but its clearly not a huk over top korean victory.Then he defeated ThestC which is not a top korean in any way but rather someone who i just now advancing trough the ranks to become won... and the final was a pvp vs MC.... where Huk began 2-1... and MC tried to cannon rush.... yeah, that was not a victory over a top korean ether. Same with Idra, he beat exactly 1 top korean at mlg and that was Bomber which apparently is in a slump, he lost to both MKP and MC and managed to win 4-3 over Boxer "losing" 2-3 in his last series where boxer cheesed every game and he is known to chees every game vs better player in that kind of situation that he was in ( so Idra can play more chees prof vs him relaying on the fact that he is better overall ). Honestly il be amazed if there are more foreign ( or even if there is one foreign ) then koreans in top 6 of this MLG and il be mind blown if the final is not Nestea vs MVP.
How long the foreigner community is going to be in this cycle of eagerly waiting for the next few foreigner victories to try to justify not having the, proven successful and more efficient, Korean training model?
Every activity has its high productivity education, training, executing and creating new talent cycle, and the foreigner SC (1 and 2) community is consistently trying to find its way out of the, as of today, best one in the world, which the Koreans forged through many years of research, trial and error and the irrefutable statistics abysmally favoring them.
If the OP tries to make a point saying "there are alternatives to Korean model", then it looks only silly, because as much as it is obvious (you can almost always find different ways to be efficient), it also is obvious that it's too early to state such a thing. Where on Earth had these alternative models been proven? Is there enough statistical material to support it? Will these winning players be winning again in the future? Is the foreigner scene really consistently growing towards being as solid as Korea's?
Before any ad hominem argument arises, of course I feel good that the whole world now is making into SC2 history books, not only Korea, but I cannot agree with TeamLiquid's constantly, I dare say, puerile hope to have the foreigner community look like a real competitive, efficient, solid contender to Korea's model, specially when it is fully loaded with that scent of "less but more intelligent work" that we often see in movies, but not in real life, where all skill and proficiency academic studies state that success is a result of a life dedicated to practicing (everyone knows the famous 10 thousand hours "rule").
Obviously, I'm not labeling the foreigners as eternal failures. I'm saying the OP's view is too romantic, and as I've been seeing this often pop up on TL (I'd personally see it as a rather arrogant attitude, saying in the underlines that Koreans are only robot training people), I really think they should start thinking more rationally and start seeing the foreigner scene as what it is: a ever growing thing, right now with more commercial appeal than before, but not really a sport. Not an industry, as it is on Korea. Eventually, if everything goes in that direction, and October results gives more stamina to it, the whole world will be on the same level as Korea, but until there, there's a hell lot of work to be done (since the whole world scale is bigger than the micro-universe of Seoul).
On November 17 2011 12:02 cLutZ wrote: I really have to question anyone who thinks it is wise to practice 8+ hours a day. Most scientific studies show terrible diminishing returns after 4 hours of intense practice in any field.
why are all bw gosus players that train 8+ a day ? ur statement seems stupid. there are a lot of fields where the best of the best train more than 4 hours. maybe u just meant more then 4 hours straight without pausing.
On November 17 2011 12:02 cLutZ wrote: I really have to question anyone who thinks it is wise to practice 8+ hours a day. Most scientific studies show terrible diminishing returns after 4 hours of intense practice in any field.
why are all bw gosus players that train 8+ a day ? ur statement seems stupid. there are a lot of fields where the best of the best train more than 4 hours. maybe u just meant more then 4 hours straight without pausing.
Yeah, it's 4 hours without pausing. I take breaks from guitar practice every 30 minutes, for a couple of minutes only. This means i can practice at least 7 hours each day, and effectively.
There is always a law of diminishing returns when it comes to excellence. The higher you go, the harder it is to improve even slightly. This kind of article which pops up now and then seems more like propaganda than anything else, in a "Believe in what we are selling!" kind of way. It's absolutely hilarious to me that at the start of SC2 people were thinking "foreigners now have an even footing, in BW we were just late to the party, not our fault". I said it was rubbish, and that Koreans would overtake soon enough. Now people are trying to make businesses out of the idea, even while it fades away as quickly as it was imagined- all that's left is to try and sustain it on the occasional glimmer of hope.
And no article is going to make it otherwise. Though having said that, people seem to love being told what to think/given excuses/false hope/weird theories that less=more. Probably because many can apply it to their own lives and take belief that they don't have to work that hard (ie slogging for hours on end to achieve something truly remarkable), because here, someone is telling you that other people can do it because they're just smarter than all those who work harder than them.
No wonder good writers are sought after. It's them making the money, generating the hits for TL. It's certainly not the game, or the players...
On November 17 2011 12:02 cLutZ wrote: I really have to question anyone who thinks it is wise to practice 8+ hours a day. Most scientific studies show terrible diminishing returns after 4 hours of intense practice in any field.
Diminishing returns does not mean no returns. Even if they only get 1/4 of the return for the extra 4 hours, that'd still work out to 20% better than 4 hours.
So then Stephano is some kind of savant who learns twice as much from every game compared to other pros? Or does Huk have a learning disability that makes it so that he has to work twice as hard to improve to the same degree? There's no such thing as "natural ability" when it comes to learned skills.
Natural ability certainly exists. You should read up on it, for example twins given the same training, they don´t get to the same skill level. Some people are just born for sports, they have the body, the mindset and everything to become good, becoming as good and/or even better then some other people who do nothing but practice. But eventually, if one practices 10 hours and the other 2 hours, the one who practices 10 hours will catch up and surpass the naturally talented one.
The twins example just shows that natural ability doesn't exist. If there's no genetic advantage the only difference is dedication to improving.
So if my dedication is big enough i could be as good as Flash in BW, as good as Messi in soccer, as good as Michael Jordan in basketball ??? Are you really believing in what you said? In every sports there are thousands of dedicated people who won't be ever able to keep up with the mentioned players. And that is caused by natural talent.
So then Stephano is some kind of savant who learns twice as much from every game compared to other pros? Or does Huk have a learning disability that makes it so that he has to work twice as hard to improve to the same degree? There's no such thing as "natural ability" when it comes to learned skills.
Natural ability certainly exists. You should read up on it, for example twins given the same training, they don´t get to the same skill level. Some people are just born for sports, they have the body, the mindset and everything to become good, becoming as good and/or even better then some other people who do nothing but practice. But eventually, if one practices 10 hours and the other 2 hours, the one who practices 10 hours will catch up and surpass the naturally talented one.
The twins example just shows that natural ability doesn't exist. If there's no genetic advantage the only difference is dedication to improving.
So if my dedication is big enough i could be as good as Flash in BW, as good as Messi in soccer, as good as Michael Jordan in basketball ??? Are you really believing in what you said? In every sports there are thousands of dedicated people who won't be ever able to keep up with the mentioned players. And that is caused by natural talent.
The thing is that your dedication isn't enough. I remember hearing that Flash's teammates had to take his keyboard away at one point because he practiced so much his hands were bleeding. Can you honestly see yourself doing that? I'm willing to bet the answer for you and all of the rest of us that aren't champions is "no."
On November 17 2011 12:02 cLutZ wrote: I really have to question anyone who thinks it is wise to practice 8+ hours a day. Most scientific studies show terrible diminishing returns after 4 hours of intense practice in any field.
Diminishing returns does not mean no returns. Even if they only get 1/4 of the return for the extra 4 hours, that'd still work out to 20% better than 4 hours.
IE, more is better.
The 4 hours per day rule has become pretty widely accepted. In many medical programs, the traditionally long hours that Doctors face coming out of Med school are being replaced with new programs. For example read this: http://www.cmaj.ca/content/180/12/1272.full.pdf
Another number appears in studies across disciplines: 5 hours. From virtuoso musicians to elite athletes, top performers spend 4 to 6 hours daily in intensely focused, deliberate practice. Above this level, concentration and performance levels drop off and diminishing returns are received from time invested, a phenomenon known as “effort constraint.”
I mean, sure some people could practice more, but I really think the problem is not time invested, but time wasted. How many times a day does a pro do his standard opening? Does a pro ever screw up his 9-Pylon? As much as "playing games" is useful, its probably not a really good use of time. Dwight Howard doesn't play entire games to work on his free throws, why should a Toss play an entire game to work on his storm placement in a fluid game?
For those who do understand the picture, it's a photoshop of a famous French painting, the name escapes me, but it has to do with a French woman who represents freedom and hope leading men to victory in a revolution. Because of Stephano being French, he put his face in place of the womans, and put the faces of other western players as the revolutionary men, and the Koreans as the dead bodies, which were Europeans in the original.
So, instead of a French woman leading the French to freedom, it's Stephano leading the foreigners to victory over Koreans.
I'm taking an art class atm so this is all fresh for me
Awesome read, really not much more I can say or add to this. We can only hope that SC2 forms into the balanced game BW was and hope that it stays on top of the E-Sports scene.
As for Stephano's training method, I wouldn't doubt that some people can just get away with that method. Notable progamers who have been known to practice very infrequently includes himself, Fruitdealer and a not so motivated Savior during his prime (he admitted that he does not practice much). There are certain characteristics and strengths that allow a player to get by with minimal practice.
Its too early to say foreigners can compete against the tip top Koreans just yet. I'm not entirely convinced. Its too early to say, we'll have to wait until more matches are played to get better samples.
i'm sure this has been said, but the october revolution was in Russia, the revolution that this pic is from i believe is the July revolution in france, the October one has a lot of photos too, but that was in Russia, and technically it was in february O.o, all that crazy modern history aside, i like this post, i've really wanted to say this, but i'm not very pro at TL posts and highschool junior year is killing me lol. I also would get flamed because i don't have the background, but this is what i've seen. I think stephano could be elaborated on more considering that his hardcore training isn't crazy like that of Boxer's, but its very, very focused with the same build on his stream what seems like constantly. He's like a vortex and just warps you into his play.
It's a nicely written article, but I have to agree with some of the negative statements. It's a little presumptuous to make general statements after the results of just one month. Idra, Huk and Stephano are all great players, and what was interesting was how the article demonstrated that different players have different ways of getting as good as they are. Does this dispel the idea that there is not one model that is more effective than others (i.e. the Korean model)? No, because the sample size i.e. the time over which the sudden bout of decent foreigner (and please when are we going to stop using that term and refer to each other by the servers we play on?) results has been too small to come to any meaningful conclusions. That's not to say that this isn't the beginning of a trend, but it's a poor methodological practice to state that there is a trend on the basis of what may only look like the beginning of one. The past somewhat speaks for itself. Koreans have almost always beaten other Asian, NA and European players whenever they have gone head to head. To provide an analogy, water almost always boils at 100C. If one day it boiled at 99C, you would not jump the gun and state that this is how it will always be in the future, more likely to see it as an anomaly until it occurs more regularly. Give it a couple of more months and a couple of more tournaments and we'll start to see a better picture.
Before I get e-lynched; I really do hope that this is a sign that things are evening out in terms of skill across servers and that there are equally as effective alternative training models to the Korean one, but it's only a hope, and hope is not a strategy.
remember when people said that NaNiWa hadn't beaten any good Koreans yet? I giggling like a school girl at his epic defeat of Mvp and NesTea right now. Giggle giggle giggle
On November 17 2011 12:02 cLutZ wrote: I really have to question anyone who thinks it is wise to practice 8+ hours a day. Most scientific studies show terrible diminishing returns after 4 hours of intense practice in any field.
why are all bw gosus players that train 8+ a day ? ur statement seems stupid. there are a lot of fields where the best of the best train more than 4 hours. maybe u just meant more then 4 hours straight without pausing.
Yeah, it's 4 hours without pausing. I take breaks from guitar practice every 30 minutes, for a couple of minutes only. This means i can practice at least 7 hours each day, and effectively.
There is always a law of diminishing returns when it comes to excellence. The higher you go, the harder it is to improve even slightly. This kind of article which pops up now and then seems more like propaganda than anything else, in a "Believe in what we are selling!" kind of way. It's absolutely hilarious to me that at the start of SC2 people were thinking "foreigners now have an even footing, in BW we were just late to the party, not our fault". I said it was rubbish, and that Koreans would overtake soon enough. Now people are trying to make businesses out of the idea, even while it fades away as quickly as it was imagined- all that's left is to try and sustain it on the occasional glimmer of hope.
And no article is going to make it otherwise. Though having said that, people seem to love being told what to think/given excuses/false hope/weird theories that less=more. Probably because many can apply it to their own lives and take belief that they don't have to work that hard (ie slogging for hours on end to achieve something truly remarkable), because here, someone is telling you that other people can do it because they're just smarter than all those who work harder than them.
No wonder good writers are sought after. It's them making the money, generating the hits for TL. It's certainly not the game, or the players...
Perfectly said, and it also complements what I said earlier. This article is purely based on emotional reaction to some good results (to the foreigners) and tries to overextend it to a flawed sense of "epicness" of foreigner paying back with its less but smarter practice model. It didn't occur to me thou that it would be a commercial trick, to attract more hits, since I've seen this very same argument since broodwar a long time ago while TL was not near as important as today and it only sounded to me as the customary western arrogance over other cultures/countries, but it's a good point.
Also makes a good point noting that this could be actually just what people wanted to read at this point in time. Very opportunistic. And to judge from the number of posts actually talking only about the picture, not anything near about what the text tries to say, it's definitely valid point and valid to believe it worked well.
I've gota say this article is slightly over the top - very overdone writing style in my opinion. Its like hes trying to write an assignment.
Anyway, koreans are still quite a mile ahead overall. Yes, foreigners can take games here and there - same was a platinum can take games off a diamond, or a masters can take games off a grandmaster. Still doesn't mean that a master belongs in the grandmaster category.
The overall skill level of the best foreigners is still well below that of their korean counterparts. But hopefully it will narrow.
I don't agree with Idra being in these discussions. Sure, he won IEM Guangzhou but that competition had extremely lackluster players to say the least, it was by no means a major event.
starcraft 2 just in general needs less skill, not as much micro required compared to broodwar, which makes the skill cap much lower for the game in general. this is why stephano can perform so well (:
I think that the team house for Evil Geniuses is a great success they seem to be practicing a lot more than other pro's and are getting more into the game. As you can see with some of them taking a shot and going to Korea. Otherwise enjoyed reading it.
Great article, I was going to quit sc2 , due to my weak mentality, but now my moods up and I think I can play some more, and actually focus on focusing.. instead of bashing mechanical keyboard keys ....
IdrAs back and I couldn't be happier. I love IdrA and wil always love IdrA he is one of the best foreigners and certainly capable of beating koreans. A lot of people criticize IdrA but he beat hongun, bomber,boxer,huk. All these great players. There is no doubt in my mind that IdrA is code s level and might have a chance at winning gel maybe just once but maybe more. God bless IdrA and God bless Starcraft 2!!!
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Meko/manipulations/foreignerrevolution.jpg)
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HuK is the poster child for the Korean method of training. Renowned for a lack of strategic depth but a strong passion for the game prior to moving to Korea, HuK took to the oGs-TL house and the KR server like a fish to water. Despite not breaking through for the initial qualifier seasons of GSL, he continued to put in more practice hours than almost anyone on the team, refining his mechanics, and executing the pioneering strategies that came out of the oGs protoss line-up. Famously overconfident at Assembly Winter, when he made his 'top three control' statement, HuK was soon able to back up his somewhat cocky statements with results by advancing to Code S and staying there. However despite his success in Korea, it was his victory at Dreamhack Summer, where he easily dispatched July and narrowly defeated Moon twice, that was his coming out party. It was the first time since Dreamhack Winter where a representative from the foreign scene had beaten the Korean invites to win a major LAN event. ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/fishuu/idra.jpg)
IdrA was supposed to be the most successful foreigner. After having achieved the highest level of foreigner skill in Broodwar, he transitioned to Starcraft 2 and immediately saw his background pay off. But after achieving middle-tier results in a succession of GSL's, he moved back to the United States with the prospect of winning a lot of free money in the foreign scene. There was every reason to believe it would be a smart move; at the time, the foreign scene was booming, the Korean scene was — and still is — stagnating, and IdrA was the best player outside of Korea. But instead, the move largely backfired. An ever growing list of bizarre losses contributed to a sense of disappointment, and bolstered the idea that there was something special about Korean training. With the aim of getting IdrA and all of Evil Geniuses back in shape, the team management set up the west's largest pro-house in Arizona. ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/fishuu/stephano.jpg)
iloveoov
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