EPT
On February 28 2009 04:37 Letmelose wrote:
Domination at "bonjwa level" isn't cherry picking some cute facts about your favourite player and arguing for his "bonjwahood". It's pretty much being the best at everything. Winning more titles than your rivals, being the best player of your team and the entire scene by some distance, having better winning percentages - the usual.
Like fusionsdf mentioned, I think people on this site have varying opinions on what a bonjwa is, whereas people on Korean communities more or less came to the conclusion that it's about complete domination over fellow progamers for a certain length of time more than anything else. Of course, since the phrase has no concrete definitition, maybe this is the beauty (or horror) of the whole thing. In my opinion, Bisu has already succeeded in being a protoss legend, but his relative superiority compared to his rivals is simply way too putrid to call him a bonjwa.
Domination at "bonjwa level" isn't cherry picking some cute facts about your favourite player and arguing for his "bonjwahood". It's pretty much being the best at everything. Winning more titles than your rivals, being the best player of your team and the entire scene by some distance, having better winning percentages - the usual.
Like fusionsdf mentioned, I think people on this site have varying opinions on what a bonjwa is, whereas people on Korean communities more or less came to the conclusion that it's about complete domination over fellow progamers for a certain length of time more than anything else. Of course, since the phrase has no concrete definitition, maybe this is the beauty (or horror) of the whole thing. In my opinion, Bisu has already succeeded in being a protoss legend, but his relative superiority compared to his rivals is simply way too putrid to call him a bonjwa.
I very much agree with this. Bonjwa isn't about some pattern or percentages. It's not about which and how many leagues a player wins and what his winning percentage are (although you can obviously not be a bonjwa without winning titles and a 50% win ratio). Those may be interesting to look at and the similarity of former bonjwas in those aspects may be noteworthy, but in the end it's not what made them bonjwas.
What made them bonjwas was their absolute dominance in playstyle. Sure, no player will ever win all his games, but against the bonjwa you always play the uphill battle. When your favourite player has to play the bonjwa you expect him to lose (you can't believe the frustration I felt after every match oov had to play against Savior -.-) and when he wins you're surprised and happy (anyone remember how Savior was expected to utterly destroy Bisu in MSL finals? lol). You are in constant fear of your player having to face the bonjwa. There is a decent amount of players who maybe wouldn't be the favourite to beat Bisu in a Bo5 right now, but who would have a fair chance. I dare you to give me a list of players who would have had a fair chance to beat oov or Savior in a Bo5 in their respective prime and then compare the scope of that list to a list of players who would have a fair chance to beat Bisu in a Bo5 right now.
Is Bisu a bonjwa? To me he is not and I don't think he should be to anyone. Will he ever be? Probably not. Will any other player ever be? Probably not either, not for the foreseeable future anyway.
On the other hand - is Bisu the best player at the moment? Maybe (probably actually). But even if he is, it's only by a very slight margin, players like Jaedong and Flash are at least very close behind. That wasn't the case when NaDa, iloveoov and Savior truly reigned. It was them being clearly far ahead of the rest, them at #1 and then a lot of void.
That being said I'm sick and tired of this whole fucking stupid bonjwa thing being repeatedly discussed over and over again. I don't remember in which thread I saw this and who said it (was today though, I think), but the mere fact that this is discussed so much clearly (more than anything else) hints towards Bisu not being a bonjwa, because when iloveoov or Savior were bonjwas no one even considered to discuss it - it was taken for granted by everyone who had any idea at all about the pro scene.
