[NASL SSD] mouzCCMorroW vs EGIdrA - Page 14

On May 02 2012 04:24 keindo wrote:


Let's break this down into individual steps:

Fact: In 2012 IdrA has lost to almost every. single. timing push by anyone who's a contender. He loses often to timing pushes by people who aren't even close to contenders.

Fact: Some of those games are micro slip-ups, but many of those are simply "oh crap there's 20 hellions that I didn't scout and I've only made zerglings" games.

Please review the VODs if you disagree with those two facts.

Based on that, there's only two possibilities:
1) IdrA is unable to learn to scout / react.
2) IdrA is unwilling to learn to scout / react.

If you think he has a good attitude and he's trying his best, then fine. If that's the case, then it's possible IdrA reached his skill or intelligence max late 2011 and will never be a contender.

Personally, I think it's the second case. What's my evidence? Obviously I'm not Professor Xavier and can't read minds (I even said that in my post) so anyone can disagree all day long and nobody can be 100% sure. But the evidence I gave was 1) watching ladder games and him quitting when it gets out of his comfort zone, 2) 2x rage-pooling after aLive, and 3) I've only watched IdrA comment on 4-5 pro games this year. If he says he was blind countered in 2 of them, that's a problem.

But more to the point, when have you EVER seen e.g. a coach of a professional NBA team say their opponent got lucky 3s, or some football coach saying their opponent got a lucky bounce? It's ALWAYS "we should have closed out more" or things like that. Because the moment you blame your opponent for going mass hellions blind, you stop thinking about how to scout better for the NEXT time someone goes mass hellions.



Please do take a couple minutes to really take things I said under consideration. I feel like you're just saying I'm wrong because that's your gut reaction. Because if you read the aLive thread, it's 100% fact that a lot of IdrA fans blame his losses on luck or blind counters. I mean, the posts are right there!

On May 02 2012 05:05 mTwTT1 wrote:
idra was forced into burning 1k just to save his image, wp by naniwa

On May 02 2012 01:04 scatmango2 wrote:
Lol. Why is Idra even relevant to the SC2 community. I feel so bad for EG. None of their players garner the right to be on a pro team.

On May 02 2012 06:55 CeriseCherries wrote:


o.o I think you should take some of your own advice...
hmmm lets look at some more recent matches such as the most recent page of TLPD (/lazy)...
in all matches
Losses: Alicia, Hero, Jjaki, Byun, MMA, Bomber, Polt, JYP, DRG,
Wins: Domorin, Cruncher, Min, MVP (whose wrsts are exploding and online granted but MVP still isnt a slacker), Inori, Jinro, Thorzain

Ok. Which guy who idra lost to in the last month and half isn't a contender? Alicia probs least strong, but damn scary still... So he really lost vs. EVERY SINGLE TIMING PUSH, or is that hyperbole?

Granted he had a HORRIBLE losing stream earlier this year, you should really watch his games. like his stream which is on now and will be for several more hours! He's moved from muta-ling to infestor-ling vs terran, his vP has looked better and better and if he gets a few more weeks to smooth things out he can win, i mean he often wins games and then throws it, but thats a lot better than getting roflstomped. he's experimenting with banelings vP...

and how much of IdrA's ladder games do you actually watch? i'm questioning that a little, not because I think you are lying or mis-citing facts, but rather perhaps you have a different view of the streams I watch as often as they are on and watch the vods of when they are not... and listen to more interviews because when he's actually seriously discussing the games, he knows why he lost... saying "fuckign protoss" doesn't mean he doesn't know that scouting more is important

and the shit he pulls with showmatches is explainable, perhaps not defendable, but has reasoning, however maddening it is. that should be changed, agreed, but its not a point that correlates with if he is trying to improve

honestly, the tl;dr is take the middle road... I agree that IdrA hasn't been playing his best, and isn't the best there is. However when you go out and say that he loses to every single timing push and in short he has not improved and does not want to improve, all the while citing VODs and the stream which you may or may not have actually watched (or have only watched the infamous ones and gotten a skewed perspective), I think that you are far against IdrA as "fanboys" are rabid for him

On May 02 2012 01:04 scatmango2 wrote:
Lol. Why is Idra even relevant to the SC2 community. I feel so bad for EG. None of their players garner the right to be on a pro team.

On May 02 2012 07:46 keindo wrote:


Thanks for the discussion. I fully admit that I haven't been following IdrA as closely in the past 2-3 weeks, which is why my argument was couched in 2012 as a whole. I was thinking of lost games versus non-contenders, not lost series; it bothers me that his wins are mostly 2-1 (including against e.g. CrunCher and Domorin) while his losses are mostly 0-2 (which is shown in my original point). However, you are correct that it's a relatively minor point and not a strong argument.

For the games that I have watched, you and I have seem to have two pretty different impressions. Yes he's sort of switched to infestor ling instead of muta ling, but that hasn't really addressed the concerns. IdrA has always had excellent macro and his strict build order timings are probably better than Stephano's (whose time between injects is decent, but a longer than you would expect for a player of his level), but fundamentally Zerg is a reactive race. There's several games I watched this month where IdrA seems to have something in mind that e.g. doesn't consist of banelings, and then fails to produce them due to lack of scouting or a lack of reaction to an opponent going for an early timing.

Please note that when I say lack of scouting, I don't mean he didn't send a drone out and doesn't note what a watchtower is. Any tier 1 or 2 player can do that relatively consistently. What I mean is scouting at the top level of play, which includes deducing things that aren't seen. When watching the top tier players stream, I frequently wonder "why are they doing that?"--only to find out that they were absolutely right. When watching IdrA stream, my thought process is "oh that's reasonable"--only to get surprised when IdrA is surprised. IdrA makes a lot of assumptions which would be reasonable against a NA GM player, but which don't pan out when facing a tier 1 player. The tier 1 knows what they've revealed and the common assumptions that go along with that, and then adds a twist.

That's the difference in scouting. And yes, I'm sure when IdrA watches it later he can deduce the chain of logic. But that's different from real-time decision-making, and Korean players take advantage of it seemingly every time. If I were coaching IdrA (and I'm not remotely qualified to, but this is a hypothetical), I think it might be a good idea for him to watch a lot of first-person views of people playing against e.g. MKP or aLive or someone who's good at early aggression. Pause it every once in a while and ask him what he thinks the other player is doing. Have him write it down, and then figure out if there's a disparity, and if so, how that came about.

Those are my thoughts. But if you've been watching his streams more carefully in the past 2-3 weeks, then I'll take your word for his improvement and look forward to better results soon!

On May 02 2012 05:05 mTwTT1 wrote:
idra was forced into burning 1k just to save his image, wp by naniwa

On May 02 2012 02:05 Chunhyang wrote:
I hope Idra gets swept again.

He needs to change something in the way he plays his game, 'coz whatever it is right now, Idrastyle ain't working out for him.

On May 03 2012 18:55 mrtomjones wrote:
Man... all the trashtalk.. I thought the game must have happened already. You guys really have so much energy to burn that you sit here and flame someone who is still a very solid player? He is likely to get back on his feet too. He has sucked so far this year as far as his results go and I'm sure he would admit it but some of the things people say are either trolly or crazy.

On May 03 2012 19:00 Youtakenocandle wrote:


Yeah man, Idra doesn't deserve all the hate, he is so mature and polite himself.