EPTFancy a Wager?
With online gambling still in legal limbo in the United States, two Americans who never gamble - tree.hugger and Waxangel - decided to celebrate the spirit of Las Vegas with a few friendly bets. Turns were taken with one individual offering certain odds on a wager, with the other deciding which side of the odds to take. On the line are millions of invaluable ESPORTS dollars (the most commonly accepted payment in the esports biz), and a considerable amount of pride.
Tree: Chance that Mill.Stephano shows up?
Wax: As opposed to?
Tree: EGStephano.RC
Wax: Give me something specific.
Tree: Chance Stephano makes it past WR4/LR5?
Wax: 2:1 (33%)
Tree: Nope. If everyone shows up, this is the toughest LAN in Sc2 history. No doubt about it. Stephano, usually a fixture for the top five in our pre-event PR's (and certainly never out of the top ten) finds himself at #17 for this event. But part of that is on Stephano's shoulders as well. He had a very poor MLG, an extremely good Lone Star Clash, and then another poor Dreamhack. His results are inconsistent; in the past, a poor Stephano performance usually meant top eight. Now it means getting booted in the groups. Last weekend, Stephano was smoked by RoX.KIS.fraer and Liquid`TaeJa. With his life on the line, the French Zerg was beaten by GLSnute in surprising fashion. Without knowing who the players were, you would've insisted that the Zerg engineering huge flanks and aggressively playing with roaches was Stephano, while the Zerg with the ham-fisted army control was his opponent. Yet the reverse was true. It was weird.
Stephano is still the best foreigner here. But I'm not sure if he still has his mojo, to be blunt. He certainly does not have the easiest bracket. A likely R2 opponent is Liquid`HerO. In R3, he should meet IMSeed. And Stephano isn't immune to losing to a player like MajOr either. Can Stephano make the round of the seeded players? In my bracket, I actually say no. Even though I like the odds Wax has given me, I'm going to trust my picks on this one.
# of foreigners in the top eight – Over/Under 0.5
Wax: Over. At IPL4, Stephano already managed to put a foreigner in the top six, and you could say that tournament had a similarly stacked line-up as IPL5. The significance of that achievement is somewhat offset by the fact that Stephano started off in the massively favorable group stages, but it was a good sign nonetheless. With Koreans actually outnumbering the foreigners at IPL5, it's sure to be tough. But with Snute and Xigua starting in winners round four (as regional qualifier winners), and the star quartet of Vortix, Stephano, Scarlett, and Nerchio all in contention, you have to think at least one of them will be able to make a good run to take some money back from the Koreans.
Both IPL5 finalists will be playing for their first championship – 15 to 1
Tree: Not taking. IPL4 was weird. In a tournament with players like NesTea, MC, MMA, MKP, jjakji, Polt, Leenock, Bomber, PartinG, TaeJa, HerO, Curious, and Creator (and I'm leaving some out) the final was aLive vs Squirtle. Didn't make sense at the time, and doesn't really make any sense now. Squirtle went on to have his epic GSL run, then has regressed to the mean since. aLive dropped out of Code A this season. IPL4's final was the peak or close to it for both players.
So will IPL5 produce a similarly bizarre final? Will the two finalists be players who have never won a championship in any major before?
First off, there's nothing inherent about IPL that ought to make it more likely that this kind of result should happen. While IPL4's structure was brain dead in many ways, the truth is, they were extremely unfortunate to have two poorly known Koreans make the finals. There's no structural bias at play here. That said, there are more players who qualify for this category than you might expect. Squirtle, for example, still hasn't won anything. Neither have any of the GSL semi-finalists, and so by the end of the weekend, three will still fall into that category. There are plenty of underrated Koreans who you could just imagine breaking out to make their first win. Make sure to remove sharp objects from the grasp of IPL5 staff when the realize they'll be showing a SymboL vs. ByuL finals.
Oh, but will it happen? No probably not. It's quite possible at least one of the finalists will be a wild card, and possible that a non-champion might win. But both players in the final being players of the aLive/Squirtle variety seems more unlikely than Wax is willing to admit.
KeSPA will pull a KeSPA – 9 to 1
Wax: I'll take those odds. So, as far we we can tell, STX_Innovation has been cleared to play in IPL5's regular tournament, and not just the Code S they are hosting. Huh, wasn't there supposed to be some sort of MLG-KeSPA exclusivity agreement in place? Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that a KeSPA player is playing in a non-MLG tournament, and the fact that it seems kosher so far. But this is KeSPA we're talking about, an organization that's more famous for its unfortunate decision making than anything else, so you just can't underestimate the possibility that something will go awry.
Team International will win at least one round in the GSL World Championship – 8 to 1
Wax: I'll take it! I'm going to start off by throwing the all-kill match out the window – the chance of winning that is so miniscule that it's not even worth considering. Even if the Korean players decide to mess around, you'd have trouble finding hope even with a microscope.
However, in the the 'Proleague' style match, where each player faces off against one member of the opposing team in team best of five, things have worked out so there is a relatively decent chance of victory. Through skill or luck, the line-ups have worked out to make a 3 : 2 victory a real possibility. Lucifron and NaNiwa are being tossed to the wolves, having to take on Seed and Life respectively. In return for their sacrifice, Scarlett gets to try her strong ZvZ against DRG, Nerchio gets a manageable opponent in a recently diminished Squirtle, and Stephano will get an opponent he has enjoyed success against in MC. Throw in the chance of either Lucifron or NaNiwa scoring a big upset, and 8 to 1 looks pretty reasonable.
It will be clear that four days is way too long for a major live event – 1 to 100
Wax: It's a foregone conclusion. Anyone who's tried to follow a tournament in hardcore fan mode will tell you that it takes a surprising amount of energy to do so. If you've been to any of MLG's three day events, you'll know that crowd energy peaks sometime during day two, and that the audience looks rather haggard by the end of day three. By packing IPL5, Code S Final Four, and the GSL World Championships into four days, IPL5 will be the most taxing event on the energy of esports fans since IPL4, a tournament most people remember more for day 2's GSTL final than day 3's actual IPL4 championship (aLive won, if you forgot). On top of that, this is the fourth straight weekend with a major event, and there's going to be residual fatigue from MLG, WCS, and DreamHack to contend with as well. If IPL can capture the audience's attention for four days and make sure all three tournaments get the attention they deserve, it would be a near miracle.
Protoss will be the race to complain the most after the tournament – 9 to 1
Tree: I think Wax is insane here. Absolutely no way that Protoss comes off looking worse in this tournament than Terran. Protoss is represented by players like Seed, HerO, Creator, Squirtle, and MC. Terran has Ryung, Bogus, Bomber, TaeJa, and YoDa. I think the edge is clearly in Protoss's favor. Is Terran 90% more likely to do better than Protoss here? No way.
But, as Wax pointed out, that wasn't the bet. The bet was about who would cry more, and here, I admit, he has a point. The history of Protoss tears is much longer than that for Terran. Perhaps Protoss players simply are more abused, or perhaps Terrans have the dignity to not complain so much after MVP won them a million titles. It could be that at IPL5 that the majority of complaints come from Protoss's side simply because no Terrans make it far enough to be abused by Zerg on a big enough stage. So while I think Protoss ought to outperform Terran here, I see the slightest opening for Wax to weasel his way out of admitting he lost this bet.
MKP will regret going to WCG instead of IPL - 1 to 100
Wax: MKP will sleep easy with his decision. It's easy to take a quick glance at the two tournaments and deride MKP for picking WCG's easy money over a chance at hard earned glory at IPL5. However, things aren't that simple.
WCG – the laughing-stock it may have become internationally – still holds a fairly high level of prestige in Korea. Winning WCG is like a rite of passage for the great StarCraft gamers of the time, with players like MVP, Flash, and Boxer having won the championship for Korea in the past. And in symbolic terms, it represents a tradition of Korean StarCraft dominance that's been unbroken since 2001, from the days where there weren't dozens of international tournaments where Koreans could crush the competition.
As long as PartinG doesn't defeat him in the finals and start mocking him for being a Kong, I'm sure MKP will be perfectly fine with his decision.
Innovation (aka Bogus) wins Code S – 51/20
Tree: I love Bogus. Long before the current Bogus train got going, I had claimed my seat in the first car. Although I can't wait for EffOrt to eventually become the Sc2 bonjwa, I'm quite happy to see Bogus mowing down the opposition. Will he win Code S? Hell yeah.
Wax decided to be dull, and just gave me the odds from international betting sites on Bogus. They've put him at about the 25% implied odds you'd expect if all semi-finalists were evenly matched. This is fair, Bogus is the best of all of them. But 28% doesn't take into account important factors like (1) Bogus's glasses, and (2) Bogus's giant nose, and (3) Bogus's never ending arsenal of ridiculous timing attacks. These factors alone make it likely that Bogus will win Code S, becoming the first elephant to take that title. His biggest test is HyuN in the semis. The winner of that will roll to victory in the final. And that player will be Bogus.
The same player will both IPL5 and Code S – 25 to 1
Wax: Not gonna bite. I don't think this is prohibitively hard or impossible for the right player at the right time - for instance, I feel like Life's wave of momentum in October was so strong, that he could have taken his MLG/GSL dual crown even if they had been held on overlapping days. However, as good as they might be, I'm not convinced that any of the current GSL semi-finalists are looking anywhere near Life-like.
The closing ceremony for IPL5 won't be awkward – 3 to 1
Tree: Here I bet against history; past and recent. I'm going to say that IPL is going to, against all odds, stage a final ceremony that is not tremendously awkward. Of course, even if IPL hires Danny Boyle to choreograph the thing, it could still go disastrously wrong when a poor, young, glasses-wearing Korean who has never won anything before gets handed the check and doesn't know what to do. But I believe, I have to believe, that sooner or later someone will hand somebody a trophy, good music will play, the player will smile, raise the trophy, be embraced by the audience, balloons will fall, confetti will blow up, the player will give an emotional speech, and yes we can, yes we can, yes we can!
Oh who am I kidding, I'm going to lose this bet.
