On April 06 2012 03:12 kratos-23 wrote: as a reminder stephano has beaten mkp and mma too. it's ridiculous when he wins vs a korean it's because the games were played online or the koreans were jet lagged but when he loses it's because he is overhyped and bad wtf realy.
The MMA game was literally a meaningless game. It was as meaningless as the Naniwa probe rush game.
see lol that is EXACTLY what i mean. thanks for supporting my argument. also stephanos game vs jjakji were meaningless for him i guess. see what i did here? xD
No, the Jjakji game was a big deal. The MMA game was meaningless, that's why he didn't turn up. Just like his game vs MMA in the IPL Qualifier was meaningless (both players had qualified already, no money or seeding was on the line) only both players decided to play.
He practices about 1/3 as much as a typical Korean and plays against far, far worse competition and yet performs on a Code S level according to me (and Polt, Nestea, MVP, etc.). This is the mark of someone extremely special. There are a couple of "genius" level players in Korea but it's more difficult to detect where talent ends and hard work begins when you're practicing 12-14 hours a day.
Edit: I should have said "practices" instead of "plays" above.
Are Fruitdealer and Tester geniuses too? They never practiced either and we Code S/A for a long time. Fruitdealer came 2nd at IEM having played LoL for months on pure talent alone.
Yes, if he's able to be the best (or among the best) in the world at something without practicing (when so many others are pracitcing so much harder to get similar results) I'm fully comfortable calling Fruitdealer a genius (by which I mean a truly extraordinary talent). I'm not familiar with Tester. I'm pretty sure he practiced at least some though since Fruitdealer was #1 on the Korean ladder for a while. In any event, I'm not saying that Stephano is the only genius in Starcraft. His results, given his practice environment are truly mind boggling.
You have a very generous definition of genius. Flash is a genius, players who get quite good (but nothing extraordinary) without practicing quite as hard (although 3 hours is wrong, he practices 6 hours on average according to himself) as others are not geniuses.
Anyone who thinks JYP and Hero have the best PvZ in the world is an idiot. I don't care about the Stephano drama, but some of these distortions by his fans are grasping at straws.
I'm not surprised that you have such a low opinion of me. Most of the time I keep my posts short and acerbic because frankly, who the hell wants to read a 1800 word post in the first place? But since you're very insistent on insulting me I guess I should show that I am more than a nobody in this particular field of expertise.
On April 06 2012 02:55 The_Darkness wrote: 1. Zenio is a top tier zerg. He's in code S and there are only 7 or 8 zegs in Code S total at the moment. ZvZ is one of his better match ups and he lost 2-0 to Stephano. Zenio actually has a higher Elo than DRG in the match up (in Korea) and is #3 overall.
The Code S/Code A/Code B distinction is a poor way to separate talent at the highest level of competition. All it does to tell you the location of every Korean progamer along the GSL spectrum at any particular point in time. It doesn't answer questions such as "Who would win the majority of games in a Bo100, Virus or YuGiOh?" and "Who has the more constant ZvZ dominance, Nestea or Dongraegu?" Any claims about who is better than who depends on GSL ranking as one shred of evidence.
I would have considered Zenio a top-tier zerg if we were having a discussion during GSL July, when he was in the middle of a great ZvT run. Unfortunately his ZvT record fell off a cliff after his loss to TOP. Add that he never managed to have a consistently long period of ZvP dominance over lesser known players, and he ranks where I rank him now: a upper Code A/lower Code S player who is too inconsistent to be a reliable threat.
I'll delve into the dangers of relying on Elo as an "objective statistic" but I'll suffice to point the two major flaws that inflate Zenio's ranking: he did not play a single ZvZ match from April 2011 to December 2011, and he did not face off against worthwhile competition during his career. Both can be attributed to the fact that players with a great handle on the PvP/ZvZ matchup are hard to come by in the competitive scene, so the quality of ZvZ opponents is erratic.
The only player he faced pre-April 2011 who was legitimately good at ZvZ was Nestea (lost every single game). The only players he faced post-December 2011 who were legitimately great ZvZ players were Losira (won a Bo1), Shine (lost a Bo3), and BboongBboong (won a Bo3 against a first-time Code A player). So over a year and a half Zenio has only played 4 opponents who could consistently challenge him in the matchup. His Elo rating is skewed because of that.
On April 06 2012 02:55 The_Darkness wrote: 2. Your opinions as to who is the best or worse in a match up are pretty meaningless (as mine are), among other reasons, because you're a nobody and you appear to be a bit of a dope (and I'm not saying that just because we don't agree on this issue but rather because of an apparent complete inability to argue your points effectively, based on your posts in this forum and others). Objectively, JYP and Hero are better against Z than either MC or Parting, e.g., based on their Korean Elos. Along with Genius and Squirtle, JYP is definitely top 3 and I would say Hero is number 4 although there is room for debate here.
Now we run into the problem of the Elo rating system.
The first thing is that an Elo ranking is not a proper statistic i.e. it is not presentable as a fact. When a basketball players gets 15 rebounds in a game he gets 15 rebounds, it’s not an interpretation of what he did on the court. Instead Elo is a competitive system that uses wins and losses to serve as a statistical estimation of a player’s skill level. It assumes that skill level is an inherent property that changes slowly (if at all) over a period of time, which would be reflected by the system. Remember that Elo does not directly rank players against each other, but the flat numbers indicate the projected probability of x beating y over a series of z matches.
For the most part the TL system does its job. You’d be hard pressed to deny that Stephano ranks among the top players of the international scene or that Dongraegu is the best zerg in Korea. However, the ideal implication of a Elo ranking system would be among a large pool of players who would play each other x number of times under controlled circumstances. The controlled environment means that deviations due to factors like sickness, uninterest, mental fatigue, etc. can be eliminated. The controlled number of games means that statistical deviations due to individual matchups, more games played than other players, etc. can be eliminated. Real-world application of Elo usually compensates for the lack of perfect conditions with enough PlayervPlayer matches to smooth out deviations. Unfortunately none of these apply to the Starcraft scene, so we have the following problems with TL’s use of the Elo system.
Selective pairing itself is not a problem in SC2 competitive play beyond the GSL group stages. However, it is a major issue when you consider that the median and mean skill level of players between the competitive scenes can be vast. There are two obvious situations which the concept affects Elo ratings negatively: when high-level Korean players play in international tournaments and high-level players constantly play against inferior competition. This can artificially inflate their rankings even taking the K-factor into consideration.
Players can overcome the K-factor with high-volume participation in weekly cups and other online tournaments. LiveZerg is currently #2 on international TLPD because of this; this does not mean that he is overall a better player than HuK, Naniwa, and Nerchio.
Alternatively, a player with a low TLPD ranking can quickly get a high TLPD ranking due to more exposure in tournaments. This is what happened to Hero’s ranking after he became a member of Team Liquid. When he was an oGs member very few of his games were recorded in international TLPD and most of them were losses against top Korean players, so his ranking was low. When he started going to Dreamhack Winter and such under the TL banner, his ranking shot into the stratosphere since the system incorrectly tried to reflect his “rapidly increasing skill”. But there was no such thing. Hero was just facing competition which was supposed to be superior according to TLPD, but not in reality.
Korean TLPD is absolutely unreliable as an indicator of skill rank. It is one of the poorest applications of the Elo system to any consistent pool of players because of the way the Korean scene works. There are very few tournaments outside of the GSL that are recorded by TLPD, two players rarely face each other more than two-three times a year, and players often participate in overlapping tournaments. This makes for a lot of upsets (due to dedicating focus to one tournament instead of another) and a lot of wild fluctuations (due to the small number of games played).
Certain events are excluded when calculating Elo ranking. Furthermore the matches included in TLPD are only measured up to a certain point in the tournament. The exclusion of the Iron Squid qualifiers from TLPD greatly affects Life’s Elo ranking in the foreign scene, particularly his vT ranking. Even if they were included they would probably only uses the matches from the Ro8 to the final.
As far as I am aware, the TLPD system does not include equations to deflate an Elo ranking over a long period of “inactivity” (when no games in the matchup are recorded and included in the calculations). This creates problems where a player’s Elo ranking stays the same despite getting better/worse at the matchup over the period. See the Zenio situation.
The K-factor determines how much a player drops/rises in Elo ranking in relation to his opponent. A low K-factor will not reflect changes in skill level sufficiently, and a high K-factor will overestimate the change in skill. The existence/nonexistence of staggered K-factors in TLPD is also an important factor in Elo fluctuations.
If we go purely by Elo rankings, then Squirtle is the best PvZ player in Korea. A closer look at his PvZ record shows that the majority of his games were played in the ESV Korean Weekly and KSL against zergs who were Code A/Code B at the time of the games. Similarly, JYP jumped to the #2 PvZ spot by playing Code A zergs and losing to Dongraegu. Reliance on TLPD to judge players offers some funny-ass situations. If we go by your logic Soulman is better than Hero in PvZ, Seal is better in ZvZ than Nestea, and MC is worse in PvZ than the retired cOre(whose last significant victory in the matchup was against Leenock in August 2011).
On April 06 2012 02:55 The_Darkness wrote: 3. GSL should hire you to determine who is Code A caliber. I'm writing an unsolicited letter to GSL on your behalf as soon as I'm done posting this.
I think I would do a very good job at it, but the idea destroys the spirit of competition. What’s the point of a tournament without upsets?
On April 06 2012 02:55 The_Darkness wrote: 4. DRG beat Nestea at the GSL and the unofficial crown of King Zerg in zvz passed to him. He has a ridiculous zvz record, but I'm OK with disputing this point; he's not clearly the best in the way that Nestea was before he fell off a bit. Moreover as noted above, his Elo is actually below Zenio's; DRG is definitely top 5 though.
When BboongBboong cleanly beat Nestea in the Team Ace Invitational, everyone was quick to dismiss it. When Leenock beat Nestea in the Blizzard Cup group stages everyone praised Leenock but did not bother to compare matchups. But when Dongraegu beats him in a very close 2-1, suddenly Dongraegu is the “best ZvZ player in Korea”. At the very least Stephano has volume on his side with a recorded 181 ZvZ games in TLPD over a year and a half. Nestea has only 62 games and his international results are rather unimpressive.
I think DRG is better than Zenio in ZvZ at this point in time.
On April 06 2012 02:55 The_Darkness wrote: 5. My figures are selective but more than sufficient to show how ridiculous many of the statements made in this forum about the level of Stephano's play are. Elo is as objective as it gets in terms of measuring how good you are at the moment on a weighted average basis. You've already lost this argument to the extent you think Stephano is not at least Code S quality. (If you don't think he is, you also would find yourself in disagreement with Nestea, Polt, MVP, MC, etc. on the caliber of his play, but again those are just opinions; facts are facts and his Elo score speaks for itself.)
And you naturally projected that resentment on me, as you would like to believe that I believe that Stephano is unworthy of Code S? I don't care about comparing players unless it leads to winning money on bets, and I care even less about creating tiers of skill level.
The fact is “Code S/Code A/Code B level” are just approximations of what GSL level people think the players will consistently reach. Since Stephano has never participated in the GSL we do not know how he will fare under the system.
Elo is hardly an objective measurement of a player’s skill level relative to his peers. I think I already explained this one.
On April 06 2012 02:55 The_Darkness wrote: 6. Polt also called Stephano a genius (so I'm not totally alone here) and I think that's a good word to describe someone who puts in so little time and effort and yet achieves so much. He admits to not even watching replays of his losses. How is this guy so good? A: Genius.
Stephano is supremely talented. I would not call him a genius.
TL;DR Stop relying on TLPD to judge players. It’s an extremely flawed system that should only be used as pragmatic shorthand for player ranking within a scene. It falls apart under any real analysis. Also calm the fuck down, I’m not Aemilia.
gema restricted the replays in germany....cant watch. them on youtube. Anyone got some different external links? srsly....that gema association is getting on my nerves. Are they even aloud to shut down those vids, which even blizzard itself allows?
What I dislike about these arguments where haters try to put down Stephano's achievements, is that they are extremely disrespectful of both Stephano as a player AND all those players that he has beaten. In their rush to denigrate Stephano, some people basically resort to implying or explictly stating that various players are rubbish or no good because Stephano managed to beat them. It is just disrespecting these players. A prime example is above we've seen posters above bash Zenio, Real, Puma, JYP and Hero simply because Stephano beat them! Such statements also disrespects all those players that have lost to the likes of Real, Puma, JYP and Hero etc.
Stephano's record of wins/losses are on the record and unalterable. Just cos you dislike/like the player or disapprove of his no-show in this event does not mean that his record of wins/losses should be somehow 'ret-conned' by pretending his opponents were sh1t, or jet-lagged, playing while driving or whatever.
I did not like it when Naniwa probe-rushed at Blizzard Cup. This event did not mean I suddenly attempted to ret-con Naniwa's previous record of impressive results against great players. That would be absurd. Obviously not everyone follows such reasoning...
The amount of player-bashing that goes on in these threads is really quite disappointing. Many foreign pro-gamers read and post in TL and they must find it so disillusioning to see basically everyone who is not one of the 8 players who has won a GSL as being regarded as simply rubbish by some posters! Pro-gamers must have to develop thicker skin than an Ultralisk with Chitinous Plating!!
On April 06 2012 08:46 revel8 wrote: What I dislike about these arguments where haters try to put down Stephano's achievements, is that they are extremely disrespectful of both Stephano as a player AND all those players that he has beaten. In their rush to denigrate Stephano, some people basically resort to implying or explictly stating that various players are rubbish or no good because Stephano managed to beat them. It is just disrespecting these players. A prime example is above we've seen posters above bash Zenio, Real, Puma, JYP and Hero simply because Stephano beat them! Such statements also disrespects all those players that have lost to the likes of Real, Puma, JYP and Hero etc.
Stephano's record of wins/losses are on the record and unalterable. Just cos you dislike/like the player or disapprove of his no-show in this event does not mean that his record of wins/losses should be somehow 'ret-conned' by pretending his opponents were sh1t, or jet-lagged, playing while driving or whatever.
I did not like it when Naniwa probe-rushed at Blizzard Cup. This event did not mean I suddenly attempted to ret-con Naniwa's previous record of impressive results against great players. That would be absurd. Obviously not everyone follows such reasoning...
These posts are not meant to put down Stephano. They are meant to put down the people stating that he is Code S level and make him out to be the best player in the world when he beats a Korean. Do people praise White-Ra when he beats MC or MMA? Yes. Do they say he is the best Protoss? Only the blatant fanboys.
On April 06 2012 08:46 revel8 wrote: What I dislike about these arguments where haters try to put down Stephano's achievements, is that they are extremely disrespectful of both Stephano as a player AND all those players that he has beaten. In their rush to denigrate Stephano, some people basically resort to implying or explictly stating that various players are rubbish or no good because Stephano managed to beat them. It is just disrespecting these players. A prime example is above we've seen posters above bash Zenio, Real, Puma, JYP and Hero simply because Stephano beat them! Such statements also disrespects all those players that have lost to the likes of Real, Puma, JYP and Hero etc.
Stephano's record of wins/losses are on the record and unalterable. Just cos you dislike/like the player or disapprove of his no-show in this event does not mean that his record of wins/losses should be somehow 'ret-conned' by pretending his opponents were sh1t, or jet-lagged, playing while driving or whatever.
I did not like it when Naniwa probe-rushed at Blizzard Cup. This event did not mean I suddenly attempted to ret-con Naniwa's previous record of impressive results against great players. That would be absurd. Obviously not everyone follows such reasoning...
These posts are not meant to put down Stephano. They are meant to put down the people stating that he is Code S level and make him out to be the best player in the world when he beats a Korean. Do people praise White-Ra when he beats MC or MMA? Yes. Do they say he is the best Protoss? Only the blatant fanboys.
Regardless of their intent, they end up bashing numerous players. In a place where pro-gamers participate and lurk. If you want to help de-incentivise players by bashing their achievements and encouraging them to give up and do something else instead then keep calling players rubbish and belittling their wins and achievements. As Artosis would say, that is killing eSports.
I prefer to try and encourage players and credit them for their wins. Maybe just maybe positive feedback will help more pro-gamers stick with it and also encourage more players to aspire to be pro-gamers.
People are going to get carried away and spout hyperbole. That is going to occur, and it might be annoying. However I don't feel that denigrating the skill and achievements of players is the right way to combat overzealous fans. If someone says Player X is almost as good a footballer as Messi, the correct response is not to say that Messi can play football but every other footballer is sh1t and does not have any ability!
When Polt says Stephano is Code S and a genius, is he being polite? Is he being a lying bastard? Is he a deluded fanboy? Is he speaking from a position of being familiar with Code S GSL opponents as well as Stephano's play?
When InControl says Stephano is the perfect Zerg, is he talking shite? Is he just attempting to wind up Idra? Is he secretly in love with men who moisturize? Is he just a blatant fanboy too?
I am no pro-gamer. I will never play Stephano or Code S players. Yet some of those who have are praising Stephano. Maybe they are wrong about Stephano. My understanding of the game is significantly less than the likes of InControl and Polt. Are you stating that they are wrong and you right? Are you claiming to know more about Stephano's level than Polt and InControl? Maybe you do. Maybe you are the future bonjwa of SC2 who will teach us all about SC2?
If you don't like Stephano then fair enough, however if you disrespect all his opponents and dismiss his achievements then just think about those pro-gamers who might read your comments. Are you encouraging them in their efforts, if you basically are claiming that the things that Stephano (arguably the most successful foreign player so far) has achieved are worthy of nothing more than a sneer.
And yes it was a bad thing to do, for Stephano to not show up for his match against MMA. That does not help the SC2 scene at all. Bash him for that, but don't dismiss his achievements or his opponents because of it.
On April 05 2012 18:43 samurai80 wrote: I made a corrected version : + Show Spoiler +
vs Life 1-2 LOST vs Jjakji 0-2 LOST vs Inori 1-2 LOST vs Polt 1-2 LOST vs Polt 3-1 WON vs Polt 2-1 WON vs aLive 0-2 LOST vs Polt 0-2 LOST vs Zenio 2-0 WON vs Polt 1-4 LOST vs Puma 3-0 WON vs TypeReaL 2-0 WON vs Inori 2-0 WON vs HyuN 2-0 WON vs Violet 3-2 WIN vs Polt 3-2 WON vs MC 0-2 LOST vs MarineKing 0-2 LOST vs Sound 0-2 LOST
Some of those games are featuring Koreans playing on the EU server in the middle of the night. They are worthless.
Like some of the losses where played on NA server in the middle of the night for Stephano.
If you want to find excuse to koreans to loose to Stephano, you'll have to take into consideration the excuses of Stephano to loose to korean. If you don't your arguments won't be objective, thus worthless.
Except all the games I suggested using were played at LAN events, with the exception of Iron Squid. Which was prerecorded (therefore I assume a reasonable time for both players) and on NA.
On April 05 2012 19:00 samurai80 wrote:
On April 05 2012 18:52 Aemilia wrote:
On April 05 2012 18:43 samurai80 wrote: I made a corrected version : + Show Spoiler +
vs Life 1-2 LOST vs Jjakji 0-2 LOST vs Inori 1-2 LOST vs Polt 1-2 LOST vs Polt 3-1 WON vs Polt 2-1 WON vs aLive 0-2 LOST vs Polt 0-2 LOST vs Zenio 2-0 WON vs Polt 1-4 LOST vs Puma 3-0 WON vs TypeReaL 2-0 WON vs Inori 2-0 WON vs HyuN 2-0 WON vs Violet 3-2 WIN vs Polt 3-2 WON vs MC 0-2 LOST vs MarineKing 0-2 LOST vs Sound 0-2 LOST
Some of those games are featuring Koreans playing on the EU server in the middle of the night. They are worthless.
I don't think they are worthless. If you had a lot of offline games played by Stephano against koreans, I might have agreed with you, but you have too few games to tell about a winrate. Also many of the games I added (those with the best players) were played during NASL qualifier online on the NA server. The disadvantage is for both players.
No, they're worthless. If anybody should realise that small tournament matches don't mean anything it's Stephano fans.
He's played 32 games to Koreans this year that are worthwhile (i.e LAN games + Iron Squid) and won 12. That's a 37% win rate. Which is awful.
Your figures are selective to support your argument and thus highly suspect. You include games played in IronSquid because Stephano lost them but then ignore other games played cross-server because Stephano actually won them. You ignore the wins this year against Hyun and Violet and Zenio and Polt and dismiss them as meaningless because they were cross server but then include the losses to Polt, Jjakji and Life even though these are cross server too. That's massaging the figures to support your argument and is intellectually dishonest. You cannot simply ignore the data that weakens your argument.
If you wish to look at his record in 2012 against Koreans and discuss this, then you need to either look at LAN only results, or include all cross-server games too. You cannot choose LAN only results and then add in a sub-set of the cross-server results and simply ignore the other cross-server results. You've arbitrarily decided which games are worthwhile and which should be ignored and that is so subjective it is meaningless.
It could be argued the most important games Stephano has played this year against Koreans were Assembly Final and the Lone Star Clash against Polt. Both were LANs and thousands of dollars were at stake for the outcome of those specific.
Personally I think Stephano's record against Koreans should include games from 2011. Stephano played some notable opponents in various Tournaments, and played on Korean Ladder and in Blizzard Cup. Stephano did have a disappointing MLG, but will face some tough opponents in IPL4 and is lined up to play in the IGN Fight Club, probably against MC.
While Stephano's no-show is very disappointing behaviour and clearly unprofessional, I don't think attempting to distort his record of past wins/losses serves as a reasonable response.
There's no reason to ignore Stephano's wins against Koreans, but many of those wins are not impressive in the slightest. Hyun is terribad at ZvZ and Inori's PvZ is his worst matchup (Inori has never been able to crack 55% win rate in international competition either, which is kinda pathetic).
There's no reason to include Stephano's games in 2011 unless you want to prove that there is some kind of trend going on. Zenio's ZvP is not nearly as bad as his 2011 record would indicate.
Stephano's beaten Zenio, Puma and Polt and stomped a bunch of other midtier Koreans (Phoenix, typereal, etc.) this year. Why are those wins "not impressive in the slightest"? Stephano had the highest Elo of anyone in International events at one point a couple weeks ago. He had a 90% win rate after 100 games on the EU server. At the one Korean event he went to he beat the best zvz'er in the world and possibly the best vZ Protoss player in the world. In 2011 he had the second best win rate on the KR server among Zergs (which we'll disregard since it happened last year). Less than two weeks ago, he 4-0'd JYP in practice, who some believe also has the best vZ among P in the world. His play this year has generally been outstanding notwithstanding a couple hiccups. Further if you want to discount his online wins you should discount his online losses as well. Moreover, if there's anyone who doesn't care about online tournaments unless there's at least a couple grand on the line, it's Stephano. Nonetheless he generally cleans up. If you look at the his body of work in 2012, you can only conclude that he's performing at an extraordinarily high level even though he still generally only practices on ladder (and not even on the Korean ladder), often practices 3 hours a day (unless he's streaming) and lately is barely playing at all. He's immature, mildly inconsistent against good Koreans but, all considered, the guy is a genius at SC2, and I'm not being hyperbolic here.
Phoenix and TypeReal are not middle-tier, they are extreme low-tier. They are not Code A worthy players and I wouldn't favor them in a ESV Korean Weekly either.
The Zenio win is nice, but you have to give me more than a ZvZ victory to convince me that Stephano can match against the top Korean players (which Zenio is not).
Puma's TvZ is frankly crappy when compared to his contemporaries. His Korean TLPD speaks for itself.
Stephano was able to beat Polt after studying his playstyle, and Polt was equally as stubborn for sticking to the same few builds. Stephano would be hard-pressed to pull the same trick on a player like MarineKing, who is far more flexible with build orders.
Dongraegu is not the best ZvZ player in the world. He has not proven that in any capacity.
Hero is not the best PvZ player in the world and never was.
JYP does not have the best PvZ in the world. He has not proven that in any capacity. I imagine the people who believe that have scant evidence to prove it.
Yes, you are being hyperbolic.
1. Zenio is a top tier zerg. He's in code S and there are only 7 or 8 zegs in Code S total at the moment. ZvZ is one of his better match ups and he lost 2-0 to Stephano. Zenio actually has a higher Elo than DRG in the match up (in Korea) and is #3 overall. 2. Your opinions as to who is the best or worse in a match up are pretty meaningless (as mine are), among other reasons, because you're a nobody and you appear to be a bit of a dope (and I'm not saying that just because we don't agree on this issue but rather because of an apparent complete inability to argue your points effectively, based on your posts in this forum and others). Objectively, JYP and Hero are better against Z than either MC or Parting, e.g., based on their Korean Elos. Along with Genius and Squirtle, JYP is definitely top 3 and I would say Hero is number 4 although there is room for debate here. 3. GSL should hire you to determine who is Code A caliber. I'm writing an unsolicited letter to GSL on your behalf as soon as I'm done posting this. 4. DRG beat Nestea at the GSL and the unofficial crown of King Zerg in zvz passed to him. He has a ridiculous zvz record, but I'm OK with disputing this point; he's not clearly the best in the way that Nestea was before he fell off a bit. Moreover as noted above, his Elo is actually below Zenio's; DRG is definitely top 5 though. 5. My figures are selective but more than sufficient to show how ridiculous many of the statements made in this forum about the level of Stephano's play are. Elo is as objective as it gets in terms of measuring how good you are at the moment on a weighted average basis. You've already lost this argument to the extent you think Stephano is not at least Code S quality. (If you don't think he is, you also would find yourself in disagreement with Nestea, Polt, MVP, MC, etc. on the caliber of his play, but again those are just opinions; facts are facts and his Elo score speaks for itself.) 6. Polt also called Stephano a genius (so I'm not totally alone here) and I think that's a good word to describe someone who puts in so little time and effort and yet achieves so much. He admits to not even watching replays of his losses. How is this guy so good? A: Genius.
It's simply not an effective way to rank player and you know it's not but you don't care as long as it suits you. According to ELO rank, Livezerg is the second best foreigner. Hell, it's just as ridiculous as saying Hero and JYP have the best PvZ so why not? MC hasn't had a game vs Zerg on Korean TLPD in like 3 months, exactly why its ridiculous to say JYP and Hero are "objectively" better than MC and Parting at PvZ at the moment based on ELO, even though MC effortlessly stomps the zergs that Hero loses to(Nerchio stephano violet etc) which is why it's a ridiculous way to rank players matchups.
Maybe ELO/online tournaments are not the best ways to measure the caliber of a player. But I'm not sure looking at a part of Stepahno vs koreans results in 2012, and there are not that many, is the best way neither. So I really agree with The_Darkness about the objectivity of some statements here.
My opinion is that we don't know well enough how much Stephano is able to beat code S caliber player consistently. As mentionned above we do have some clues to believe he is still able to do it, and there is not as many arguments to tell the contrary imo, so that what Aemilia says is way too pessimistic towards Stephano imo.
I wish the Blizzard Cup group stage was not BO1... It was almost played in 2012, and being one of the rare case where Stephano was facing top tiers koreans offline, it still have relatively good relevance imo.
On April 06 2012 04:23 zefreak wrote: Anyone who thinks JYP and Hero have the best PvZ in the world is an idiot. I don't care about the Stephano drama, but some of these distortions by his fans are grasping at straws.
This is not the point here. The point is at least they don't have a bad PvZ which makes Stephano wins against them not as irrelevant as some are trying to convince us (yet I don't exactly agree in the case of JYP cos it was practice).
What about having a look at the articles from the best TL.net writers ? The Power Rank article done for IPL4 here is giving good clues about how players skills are. Obviously,i n no way it is something exact, but many of the arguments are relevant imo.
On April 06 2012 20:30 samurai80 wrote: What about having a look at the articles from the best TL.net writers ? The Power Rank article done for IPL4 here is giving good clues about how players skills are. Obviously,i n no way it is something exact, but many of the arguments are relevant imo.
I already disagree with most of the rankings, and I can provide equally solid arguments to back up my assertions.
EPT
