On January 12 2012 14:09 GhostFall wrote: Inca is seriously underestimated.
Did people forget he's OGS PvP sniper?
He will flatten oz. If Oz beats curious and Inca wins against bomber, he's almost guaranteed first place. Any combination of games where Inca goes against Oz, gives him a good chance to advance.
I think Oz has an edge over InCa in PvP. While they both have approximately 80% win rates, most of Oz's games have come in the last six months while InCa's wins were from a long time ago with different maps and patches.
This group doesn't get any of the hype groups B and C got :/
Yeah, it's a shame. This group should be pretty awesome. It has 3 strong players of each race, plus Inca for some lulzy DT action. Can't really go wrong.
I kind of want Inca to make it out of the group just to see everyone on TL rage lol. Preferably if he does it with DTs and every one else in the group is caught unawares every single time.
This group doesn't get any of the hype groups B and C got :/
Agree, beside group B is really hard to predict, group C is so obvious that MVP and Nestea would make it out no doubt. This group is the hardest one to call imo. All the players are dark horses and so talent. Don't count Inca out yet, he's bad in PvZ, but his PvT is pretty good and PvP is his best MU. I think he had a very high chance to make it out in the group first.
As an InCa lover, I'm confident that he won't stand a chance against Bomber, but will probably beat Oz if they meet. Bomber's been on a tear in TvP recently as he pretty much just macros up a huge bio-ball, forces the Protoss to get a third (or fall behind) and then rolls through the army before the mass of Collosi and High Templars. InCa loves playing HTs in PvT and will probably die before he get into late-game situations like he wants to.
Go Bomber and Curious! Both of them have had so much hype behind them and so I'm hoping this this Code S they can both finally shine and prove the hype to be true.
Two of the GSL's rising stars face off in the opening match of the night, and I expect a contest much closer than these players’ head-to-head history would suggest. Curious defeated Oz 4-0 in the finals of Code A October, while Oz beat Curious during the FXO vs Startale GSTL match, complete with multiple manner nexus. Both results are somewhat dated at this point, but Curious’ PvZ dominance has shown few signs of fading, as he is 19-2 in his last 21 games in the matchup, a streak which has carried him to the highest current ELO rating versus Protoss in Korea. Oz, on the other hand, has only managed to go 2-6 in the matchup since losing the Code A finals to Curious, including his 2-0 loss to Line in the KSL the previous night (however, Oz may not have felt free to use his best builds in those games, knowing that Curious might try to use them to scout him) and also including his 2-0 loss to Leenock at MLG Providence.
Thus, while I don’t expect the sort of drubbing we saw in October, these players’ recent histories in the matchup definitely favor Curious. The opening map, Daybreak, has proven extremely balanced thus far in the PvZ matchup, with Zerg holding a 50.6% win rate against Protoss including both Korean and International games, and Protoss having a 53.3% win rate over Zerg in Korea alone. Oz is 5-8 on Daybreak overall, with a 1-2 record against Zerg on the map: his two losses being to Curious himself and to Line in their recent KSL series. Curious, on the other hand, holds a 4-3 record on the map, winning his only ZvP on the map by defeating Oz in the deciding game of the Code A October finals. As these players have played so few games on Daybreak in this matchup, and as the map is extremely balanced in the matchup overall, it is difficult to glean any advantage for either player as a result of this map being up first. Less difficult is predicting the map’s importance, however: in this loser-picks-map format, whoever loses Daybreak will have to play on their opponent’s map choice in a potential deciding third game.
“The Dark Knight” returns to Code S with little fanfare and low expectations, while his first opponent tonight, Startale’s Bomber has been dealing with high expectations since before he even qualified for Code A, but as of late his results have generally failed to meet them: he followed up his quick 0-2 exit from Code S in November with an equally uninspiring trip to MLG Providence, where he failed to win a single series. These two players met once before: during a ZOTAC team league match almost a year ago to this date. Bomber won, but a solitary, year-old Bo1 says little. More telling, perhaps, are these players’ overall strengths in the matchup: Bomber boasts a nearly 70% win percentage against Protoss (over 80% counting standard leagues only!) and has the highest TvP ELO rating in Korea, whereas InCa’s PvT has generally been as middling as his 52% win rate would suggest. At first glance, it’s quite a disparity.
That said, a word of caution is in order with regard’s to Bomber’s statistical mastery of TvP: those stats are largely a product of his incredible dominance in the bygone era of early 2011. Unlike Curious’ ZvP ELO, which is driven by a recent winning streak, Bomber’s TvP ELO is largely a product of his going 18-2 versus Protoss (in Korea) from January through July of 2011. Since then, Bomber is only 11-9 in the matchup (in Korea): still a respectable mark, to be sure, but it’s a far cry from the standard of dominance that one might infer through a cursory glance at Bomber’s TLPD entry. Even if Bomber’s TvP has fallen off, however, it still appears good enough to make him a solid favorite versus InCa. His recent losses against Protoss have been to strong macro PvT players such as Oz, Creator, and MC. InCa’s strengths lie elsewhere: he has excellent micro and crisply executed builds, but his strategies are generally aimed at crippling his opponent before the late game rather than positioning himself to take advantage of protoss’ strengths there. If InCa is very well prepared, he might be able to take a map. But I don’t see Bomber forgetting his ebay twice.
Curious vs Bomber* *If earlier picks prove accurate.
Should Bomber and Curious both emerge victorious in their first matches, they would present an intriguing pairing in the winner’s match. Both players have had mixed results in the matchup recently. Curious dominated Sjow and GuMiho in Code A October, then bombed out of Code S with losses to MarineKingand aLive. He beat Poltand MVPin the Arena of Legends before falling to GanZi. He also won a very competitive match against TheStC in November’s Code A bracket and has had uneven results in KSL action. Similarly, Bomber earned recent victories over BboongBboong, Monster, Terious, and NesTea, while falling to CoCa, DongRaeGu, and LosirA. Bomber also notably fell 2-1 to IdrAat MLG Orlando. Bomber does hold a 4-0 advantage in head-to-head competition, but with the most recent game having been in March 2011, those games all greatly predate Curious’ rise to prominence.
All signs, therefore, would point to a closely contested series that’s almost 50/50 on paper. The starting map for match 3 is Antiga Shipyard, and while the map stats suggest that this map is generally quite balanced in the TvZ matchup, I would have to say that it favors Bomber. In the first three groups of Code S so far this season, a losing player has selected the map Antiga Shipyard six times: five times, they were Terran (twice TvZ), and the other game was a ZvZ. Bomber himself selected the map Antiga Shipyard for his ace match showdown with NesTea during the semifinals of the KSL 2012 Opening Ceremonies. Map statistics are based on somewhat small sample of games, some of which are doubtless already dated by the standards of today’s metagame, and there’s apparently a sense among Korean progamers right now that if you’re a Terran player, you want to be playing on Antiga Shipyard. That’s good enough for me to give the slight advantage to Bomber based on the map. Bomber may also hold some small intangible advantage from having more big stage experience than Curious, who is a player known to have struggled with nerves at times in his career.
Protoss versus protoss doesn’t typically generate much excitement, but if these two players should meet all protoss players should be paying attention, because you don’t often get to see the #1 and #2 rated PvP players in Korea in terms of ELO face often. Both InCa and Oz are beasts in this matchup; they have a combined 41-9 record in the matchup in Korea. Oz is on an 11 game winning streak versus Protoss. InCa hasn’t lost a best of three or more series against Protoss since 2010. I almost expect that if these guys play we’ll get nothing but draws, because neither of them loses in this matchup.
Although it seems blasphemous to try and impeach these guys’ PvP, some counterpoints are available. The vast majority of InCa’s recorded games are from the four gate era (though, in fairness to him, he wasn’t as dependent on 4-gating as most players were in the matchup at that time), whereas Oz has a proven track record in modern PvP. On the other hand, Oz’s record is impressive, but most of his opponents themselves have rather dismal PvP. The only scalp Oz has collected that’s really worth boasting about belongs to JYP. The bottom line is that this one’s another pick’em. In situations like this, you have to consider that this is the GSL Code S, and InCa dropping out 0-2 would just make too much damn sense to actually happen.
Curious vs InCa* *If earlier picks prove accurate.
If this is the deciding match, as I’ve predicted, then it’s safe to say it’s an anticlimactic one. Curious’ ZvP dominance is, as documented above, quite extensive, and while InCa has improved from the days of being 2-14 versus Zerg and going DT into lose every game against NesTea in the worst GSL finals of them all, he’s still pretty bad in the matchup. The starting map is Crossfire, and thus somewhat Zerg-favored to boot. What else needs to be said? Oh yeah…
Oz’s group draw actually makes Idra look lucky (no pun intended): his opponents in this group have the #1 ZvP ELO in Korea, the #1 TvP ELO in Korea, and the #1 PvP ELO in Korea. So he gets to prepare for all three matchups… against the best player in Korea at each matchup (at least, as measured by ELO). Sheesh.
On January 12 2012 14:09 GhostFall wrote: Inca is seriously underestimated.
Did people forget he's OGS PvP sniper?
He will flatten oz. If Oz beats curious and Inca wins against bomber, he's almost guaranteed first place. Any combination of games where Inca goes against Oz, gives him a good chance to advance.
I think Oz has an edge over InCa in PvP. While they both have approximately 80% win rates, most of Oz's games have come in the last six months while InCa's wins were from a long time ago with different maps and patches.
PvP hasn't changed much ahahaha, i don't think we can say anything. as long as inca is still playing this game
EPT
