Power Rank 02/01/2011 - Page 14

winning a Starleague must absolutely count for something

On February 09 2011 21:50 Tianx wrote:
Bisu 3-0'd Savior for his first MSL gold when he was full on bonjwa mode and still (deservedly) only got 2nd.

On February 10 2011 01:33 Zaxro wrote:

The difference is that Savior had just beaten Nada in the OSL finals and got dual finals that season, as well as getting to MSL finals 5 seasons in a row. Flash however didn't even get past the group stages so his individual league acomplishments this season are almost nil, so he has to be judged solely on WL and history, where Savior had other things in his favor.

Now for the record I'm not saying fantasy should definitely have been in front of Flash (I personally would have put him at #1, but I really value individual league performance and others don't). Each of the top 5 had a major flaw recently that makes it hard to put them at #1.

Flash: No individual leagues. Still has some legacy for getting every final last year and performed nearly perfectly in WL (which I don't think is quite as impressive if you aren't in an individual but still, he was fucking incredible)

Fantasy: Mediocre in WL, no MSL. Winning the OSL finals 3-0ing the best PvTer of all time counts for a shit-load. If he had beaten Stork in WL the next day I think his case for #1 would be better, but since he lost it makes his strength look like it relies on a lot of preparation.

Stork: Got Knocked out of both individuals 3-0. Still his WL performance was great (10-1). Had he not bounced back and beaten Bisu and Fantasy in WL he should definitely have been #5, but that made it look like he just had problems in the sets vs Zero/Fanta and he bounced back. Had those two Bo5s been close (3-2 in both) I think he should have been #1, much like Savior in your example, but double 3-0 is really bad and I can't justifiably put him above fantasy.

Bisu: No Individual leagues. His individual league performance was about equal to Flash's (got further in one, less far in the other) and he lost to Stork and Flash in WL. Losing to Flash and Stork, who both also have near perfect WL performances makes it tough for me to put Bisu ahead of either, despite having more WL wins.

Jaedong: Has been looking mortal. No other way to put it really. His WL performance has been ok, but he still hasn't beaten anyone with an S class XvZ in PL this season (except maybe Hydra, but his super ZvZ started after his loss to JD) and his play in general has looked weaker than it did in 2010. He is out of OSL, and he barely beat Snow (to be fair Snow played fucking incredible that series but still, we kinda expect JD to Stomp every Protoss who is not Stork/BIsu without any trouble). Still he is the favorite to win MSL so that has to count for something

So looking at all that Flash is a very good choice for #1 (and I say that as a guy who 4 of his top 5 favorite players are Stork/Fantasy/JD/Bisu), but by no means is it a sure thing, at least imo the top 5 could have been in a fair number of completely different orders and still be completely justifiable.

Also I think Flamewheel's 6-10 is basically perfect, exactly the order I would have put them (maybe I would put Violet over Bogus, but I <3 Violet so that may just be fanboyism).

On February 10 2011 05:39 StylishVODs wrote:
You also have to take into account that what Flash did badly all happened in december. We're trying to rank power here and Flash's january was almost perfect.

If you want to compare flash to savior, savior still got #1 when he was 0-3'd but that was the month he lost the games, the month flash lost he got #5.

Overall I don't think the cases are even comparable. A bonjwa losing to another top player 0-3 in a final or a bonwja losing to some random players early on that isn't even on the PR.

On February 10 2011 20:39 Tianx wrote:
Zero's results will never make any sort of sense.

On February 10 2011 13:56 oneofthem wrote:
i think the power ranking would do well to provide insights that the regular fan cannot get just by looking at stats. this means information kind of akin to scouting in sports, where you dive deeper into games, below the mere win loss as numbers, but treat the games as displays of skill (or fail) and project that skill. you are scouting for the powerful players, and perhaps the underappreciated ones.

this is especially true when we consider the small sample size that we are dealing with here. a player getting a few lucky wins here or there doesn't speak that much to the skill exhibited. it is fine to rely only on simple stats if they are all we have, but we have the actual games, so it's okay to take in more detailed information.

obviously, to make this concept work would require a lot of work, and im not demanding volunteer writers putting in this much time following promising players. to a certain extent, the scouting scale is already incorporated into the pr anyway, it just has some lag. when a player of obvious skill promise shows results, he's going to get more credit for those results than some guy who obviously had some fluke wins. however, the trick is to actively recognize that scouting analysis is rather valuable when properly done.

the previous discussion on flash's place then should be rather simple to resolve. when you watch a batch of recent flash games, do they show a level of skill that's matched by any other player? the answer is no.

On February 11 2011 00:08 Mortality wrote:
Again, this goes back to the problem of qualitative analysis. How do you -- impartially -- judge one player as better than another? Of course we can talk about quality of games and often times get a lot of meaning out of it, but we have to be careful with "I feel like player X has more skill than player Y." We should try to avoid that really, unless of course our opinion is supported by results.

On July 02 2010 01:13 Mortality wrote:
Power Rank is not about statistics alone. If you want statistics, go open up TLPD.

On February 10 2011 20:50 Holgerius wrote:

The guy is a mystery.