[GSL] World Championship Day 2 2012 - Page 228

On December 04 2012 06:21 Mariosatr wrote:

So foreigners are better than Koreans and Stephano is downright terrible? I think not.

Anyhow, glad to see Stephano destroying everyone. To be fair, a 5-1 record this entire GSL WC isn't bad at all.

On December 04 2012 01:29 chosenkerrigan wrote:


To be fair those are not the best Koreans in the world except for Life. MC/Seed/Squirtle are not even top 10 Koreans. DRG might be barely top 10.

On December 04 2012 07:55 ViktorSC wrote:

You are right. WHO IS? and who are the best on the world side? Would anyone mind listing them?

On December 04 2012 07:57 FilthyMcDirt wrote:
Stephano performed well. However, he is not on the tier of Korean players.

If you look past the simple facts of who won or lost and pay attention carefully to how it was done, it is very easy to understand how Stephano went 5-1 in WCS. Analysis follows:

Round 1: Stephano vs MC. Stephano goes for the extremely old and bad strategy of hydra push off creep minus nydus. MC has the game in the bag until he misrallies the very first double colossus spawn off his fresh double robo. Lol, if you've ever played toss in PvZ against a hydra push, losing 2 of your first 3 colossus is basically an auto loss as there is no other unit that can deal with large numbers of hydra.

G1: Stephano vs Life. Standard ZvZ, Life elects to go for a very low-drone count nydus rush, Stephano defends, and wins. Not to take anything away from Stephano (he played great), Life basically threw this game away. He made a huge gamble for more or less no reason (it is doubtful he fears Stephano's late game).

G2: Stephano vs MC. MC goes for a fast 3rd off light gates + robo, Stephano goes for a 51 drone roach/ling all-in, arguably for too long. Stephano's gamble pays off, he wins. A major part of the gamble working was how MC sloppily let 2 early game stalkers die to lings as speed upgraded (standard to avoid this, crippling mistake in the context of a roach/ling all-in).

G3: Stephano vs Seed. Seed makes a really herp-derp move here and lets the lings in despite having the adequate wall for Stephano's bad fast 6 ling rush. Stephano plays well and takes this advantage and rides it the entire game leading to an easy entrance into the late game and Brofestor Brolord A-moves to victory.

G4: Stephano vs DRG. Stephano's best win of the day, seriously. This is the only victory I would consider legitimate on Stephano's behalf - there were no unnecessary gambles taken, and he won by superior multi-tasking (small hitsquad of roaches constantly countering DRG's 3rd).

G5: Stephano vs Squirtle. Squirtle goes for a stargate opening, robo + few gates into slow 3rd. No gambles taken, no bonehead mistakes, and Stephano's midgame timing gets crushed, basically auto-loses after that.

=====

Of Stephano's 5 victories, we can count: 2 games due to literally rookie mistakes (these things don't even happen on regular masters league NA) - letting early lings in (when you dont even have an expansion) and misrallied colossus.

2 more victories due to a Stephano gamble paying off, and a Korean gamble not paying off. If you know anything about odds and assume at this level that a all-in-esque gamble has a 50/50 chance of working out, Stephano got superior variance (aka luck) in both games, by defending a gamble and also having his own gamble pay off. (I am aware the odds are not actually 50/50).

And one legitimate victory vs DRG.

Stephano is a great player. He is probably fit to play in Code A. However, it's pretty obvious that he is not comfortable playing a straight-up game vs any Korean pro. This suggests a lack of consistency, as if he actually was in a Korean league they would know how he plays (midgame-heavy) and crush him easily. In this particular context I'm sure that the Koreans didn't even know/care who Stephano is.

Great player? Yes. Better than the Koreans? Not based off this showing, unless you're the kind of player who cheeses/all-in's another player, refuses rematch, and declares oneself the better player. That's essentially what you're doing for Stephano, and that's the reason MC typed "want to play more games..." because he knew (and you should too, as an educated audience member) that MC had shitty luck in the first game (misrally) and a build order loss in the 2nd. Blame MC's lack of scouting if you want, but no one does a 51 drone roach-ling all-in in Korea. You can't even call it strategic genius on Stephano's part as he went all-in before seeing any signs of MC going for a fast, soft 3rd. It's an easily solvable all-in. It's just like the 2-base roach/ling all-in that went out of style years ago.

On December 04 2012 08:45 Inzan1ty wrote:
Team Zerg consisting of Leenock, Life, DRG, Sniper, HyuN would be enough to take down Foreigners 5-0 in both encounters.

On December 04 2012 08:45 Inzan1ty wrote:
Team Zerg consisting of Leenock, Life, DRG, Sniper, HyuN would be enough to take down Foreigners 5-0 in both encounters.

On December 04 2012 07:57 FilthyMcDirt wrote:
Stephano performed well. However, he is not on the tier of Korean players.

If you look past the simple facts of who won or lost and pay attention carefully to how it was done, it is very easy to understand how Stephano went 5-1 in WCS. Analysis follows:

Round 1: Stephano vs MC. Stephano goes for the extremely old and bad strategy of hydra push off creep minus nydus. MC has the game in the bag until he misrallies the very first double colossus spawn off his fresh double robo. Lol, if you've ever played toss in PvZ against a hydra push, losing 2 of your first 3 colossus is basically an auto loss as there is no other unit that can deal with large numbers of hydra.

G1: Stephano vs Life. Standard ZvZ, Life elects to go for a very low-drone count nydus rush, Stephano defends, and wins. Not to take anything away from Stephano (he played great), Life basically threw this game away. He made a huge gamble for more or less no reason (it is doubtful he fears Stephano's late game).

G2: Stephano vs MC. MC goes for a fast 3rd off light gates + robo, Stephano goes for a 51 drone roach/ling all-in, arguably for too long. Stephano's gamble pays off, he wins. A major part of the gamble working was how MC sloppily let 2 early game stalkers die to lings as speed upgraded (standard to avoid this, crippling mistake in the context of a roach/ling all-in).

G3: Stephano vs Seed. Seed makes a really herp-derp move here and lets the lings in despite having the adequate wall for Stephano's bad fast 6 ling rush. Stephano plays well and takes this advantage and rides it the entire game leading to an easy entrance into the late game and Brofestor Brolord A-moves to victory.

G4: Stephano vs DRG. Stephano's best win of the day, seriously. This is the only victory I would consider legitimate on Stephano's behalf - there were no unnecessary gambles taken, and he won by superior multi-tasking (small hitsquad of roaches constantly countering DRG's 3rd).

G5: Stephano vs Squirtle. Squirtle goes for a stargate opening, robo + few gates into slow 3rd. No gambles taken, no bonehead mistakes, and Stephano's midgame timing gets crushed, basically auto-loses after that.

=====

Of Stephano's 5 victories, we can count: 2 games due to literally rookie mistakes (these things don't even happen on regular masters league NA) - letting early lings in (when you dont even have an expansion) and misrallied colossus.

2 more victories due to a Stephano gamble paying off, and a Korean gamble not paying off. If you know anything about odds and assume at this level that a all-in-esque gamble has a 50/50 chance of working out, Stephano got superior variance (aka luck) in both games, by defending a gamble and also having his own gamble pay off. (I am aware the odds are not actually 50/50).

And one legitimate victory vs DRG.

Stephano is a great player. He is probably fit to play in Code A. However, it's pretty obvious that he is not comfortable playing a straight-up game vs any Korean pro. This suggests a lack of consistency, as if he actually was in a Korean league they would know how he plays (midgame-heavy) and crush him easily. In this particular context I'm sure that the Koreans didn't even know/care who Stephano is.

Great player? Yes. Better than the Koreans? Not based off this showing, unless you're the kind of player who cheeses/all-in's another player, refuses rematch, and declares oneself the better player. That's essentially what you're doing for Stephano, and that's the reason MC typed "want to play more games..." because he knew (and you should too, as an educated audience member) that MC had shitty luck in the first game (misrally) and a build order loss in the 2nd. Blame MC's lack of scouting if you want, but no one does a 51 drone roach-ling all-in in Korea. You can't even call it strategic genius on Stephano's part as he went all-in before seeing any signs of MC going for a fast, soft 3rd. It's an easily solvable all-in. It's just like the 2-base roach/ling all-in that went out of style years ago.

On December 04 2012 07:57 FilthyMcDirt wrote:
Stephano performed well. However, he is not on the tier of Korean players.

If you look past the simple facts of who won or lost and pay attention carefully to how it was done, it is very easy to understand how Stephano went 5-1 in WCS. Analysis follows:

Round 1: Stephano vs MC. Stephano goes for the extremely old and bad strategy of hydra push off creep minus nydus. MC has the game in the bag until he misrallies the very first double colossus spawn off his fresh double robo. Lol, if you've ever played toss in PvZ against a hydra push, losing 2 of your first 3 colossus is basically an auto loss as there is no other unit that can deal with large numbers of hydra.

G1: Stephano vs Life. Standard ZvZ, Life elects to go for a very low-drone count nydus rush, Stephano defends, and wins. Not to take anything away from Stephano (he played great), Life basically threw this game away. He made a huge gamble for more or less no reason (it is doubtful he fears Stephano's late game).

G2: Stephano vs MC. MC goes for a fast 3rd off light gates + robo, Stephano goes for a 51 drone roach/ling all-in, arguably for too long. Stephano's gamble pays off, he wins. A major part of the gamble working was how MC sloppily let 2 early game stalkers die to lings as speed upgraded (standard to avoid this, crippling mistake in the context of a roach/ling all-in).

G3: Stephano vs Seed. Seed makes a really herp-derp move here and lets the lings in despite having the adequate wall for Stephano's bad fast 6 ling rush. Stephano plays well and takes this advantage and rides it the entire game leading to an easy entrance into the late game and Brofestor Brolord A-moves to victory.

G4: Stephano vs DRG. Stephano's best win of the day, seriously. This is the only victory I would consider legitimate on Stephano's behalf - there were no unnecessary gambles taken, and he won by superior multi-tasking (small hitsquad of roaches constantly countering DRG's 3rd).

G5: Stephano vs Squirtle. Squirtle goes for a stargate opening, robo + few gates into slow 3rd. No gambles taken, no bonehead mistakes, and Stephano's midgame timing gets crushed, basically auto-loses after that.

=====

Of Stephano's 5 victories, we can count: 2 games due to literally rookie mistakes (these things don't even happen on regular masters league NA) - letting early lings in (when you dont even have an expansion) and misrallied colossus.

2 more victories due to a Stephano gamble paying off, and a Korean gamble not paying off. If you know anything about odds and assume at this level that a all-in-esque gamble has a 50/50 chance of working out, Stephano got superior variance (aka luck) in both games, by defending a gamble and also having his own gamble pay off. (I am aware the odds are not actually 50/50).

And one legitimate victory vs DRG.

Stephano is a great player. He is probably fit to play in Code A. However, it's pretty obvious that he is not comfortable playing a straight-up game vs any Korean pro. This suggests a lack of consistency, as if he actually was in a Korean league they would know how he plays (midgame-heavy) and crush him easily. In this particular context I'm sure that the Koreans didn't even know/care who Stephano is.

Great player? Yes. Better than the Koreans? Not based off this showing, unless you're the kind of player who cheeses/all-in's another player, refuses rematch, and declares oneself the better player. That's essentially what you're doing for Stephano, and that's the reason MC typed "want to play more games..." because he knew (and you should too, as an educated audience member) that MC had shitty luck in the first game (misrally) and a build order loss in the 2nd. Blame MC's lack of scouting if you want, but no one does a 51 drone roach-ling all-in in Korea. You can't even call it strategic genius on Stephano's part as he went all-in before seeing any signs of MC going for a fast, soft 3rd. It's an easily solvable all-in. It's just like the 2-base roach/ling all-in that went out of style years ago.

On December 04 2012 09:20 m0ck wrote:

You're so clueless that you don't really deserve an answer, but since you're clearly not the only one who don't understand much of this game, or know much about the history of SC2, here goes:

No one is saying that he is better than "the Koreans", they are saying that he is as good as they are, which he has proven again and again during the last year and a half. Still, there are a lot of people who are heavily invested in the "Korea = supreme race" from the BW days and who get their panties in a knot whenever Stephano proves to be able to go toe-to-toe with the best of the best. These matches didn't have to prove anything, but they confirmed what we already know.

Let's start with your rather bad summation of the games, one by one:

1a. Stephano trolled and rolled MC with counter-attacks and hydras (like he did Ganzi in upper-bracket semi-final of LSC2) in a game of no importance. Plenty of trash-talk and plenty of fun.

1b. After some initial aggression the game stabilized and developed with stephano slightly ahead on the drone-count. Life went for a roach-timing at 160 supply (both at 60ish drones), but were held off and stephano took the faster fourth and hive. Life reacted with nydus-attacks (which are very common on metropolis, to avoid the chokes) in the main, which stephano deflected, and on the fifth (to assault the fourth of stephano), which Stephano held while counter-attacking the third and fourth of life, killing drones and the fourth.

Stephano used spines, infestors and hydras to kill off the attack on his fourth and continued harassing and denying the third and fourth of life with burrowed infestors. Infinitely behind, Life decided to turtle and mass infestors while stephano teched to BLs and a-moved.

If you think that game was a "nydus rush", well, you need to watch the game again.

2. Round two of the trash talk, with stephano taking an early advantage as he managed to save two queens against zealot+2 stalker harass and kill them off with minimal ling-loss. I don't know what drove Stephano's decision to be aggressive rather than the much safer "turtle-to-BLs"(but considering that he pioneered the style every other zerg is using, maybe he knows something we don't - he certainly knows MC), but with a smooth surround he took out the force of MC and then continued his attack "too long" because MC wouldn't leave a lost game between friends.

3. Seed started with a decisive bo-advantage (early pool vs gateway-expand and probe-scout), but made a mistake and the game was even as stephano's lings killed the zealot and 1 probe. Stephano went speed and a late expand, allowing him to deny the expand of Seed three times with nifty ling-moves, and from there wen't spire behind spines. The mutas did decent damage and kept Seed at home, which allowed Stephano to take a third and tech to infestors. Seed was preparing for a push against muta-ling, with archons and storm, but continued harass from stephano and creep-spread to just outside the protoss bases made a timing impossible, and once the fourth base and roaches appeared, the game was over.

The first zealot-mistake meant that the game wasn't a simple bo-loss, but expand denial and spire-harass built the advantage that earned stephano the game.

4. Evenish game throughout, with DRG taking a mid-game advantage after pressure from Stephano (as a response to having to cancel his third) didn't do damage and three infestors of DRG lived with ~1 hp each. DRG wen't for an attack at 200 supply, but Stephano counter-attacked on DRGs third while out-micro'ing DRG in a battle in the middle. That gained Stephano a massive advantage and he could simply apply pressure until DRG had to gg.

5. Squirtle hid his phoenix in an unscoutable position and made a successful assault against Stephano, who looked to be preparing for an immortal-timing and was without blind spores. Squirtle was prepared for a counter-attack, and the appearance of a void-ray made stephano tech to hydras, probably still anticipating a two base timing. Squirtle went for a third, and stephano had taken enough damage that his attempt at a surround on the forces of squirtle proved ineffective and from there the game was over.

Squirtle took a risk with hidden phoenix, it payed of and his build lured stephano into building useless hydras against a push that never came. Once colossi were out, it was game over.


The matches were quite a bit more complicated than what you let on, with the suggestion of wins through "easy mistakes/big gambles/throws" being miss-characterizations. Where Stephano was able to defend against aggression, his opponents didn't manage to. To call the games coin-flips is simply wrong.

What is right, is that every decision made in the SC2 is based on probability and risk. You don't seem to understand that risk-taking is an integral part of playing SC2 (even though Stephano prefers playing safe and take advantage of his speed, decision-making and multi-tasking, as stated in a recent interview), and so think that games based on taking risks somehow count for less. But being too predictable is death, and taking big risks are far more common in the Korean scene than in the foreign.


*There is no doubt that Stephano has had a weak period of play in the last month, traveling to a new continent every week since the end of october. But to suggest that he somehow needs to prove himself is ignoring that he won his first tournament a year and a half ago and has continued winning since, earning the fourth most money of any SC2 pro. If anything, it is the newcomer life who needs to prove that he isn't just a one month thing.

Stephano's impact on the meta-game is unrivaled, as is his ability to be the best among the people he practices with over a period of a year and a half. No Korean has managed that, the big players have all had a time where they shined and a time where they slumped. Stephano may finally have gotten into a slump himself, but that doesn't take anything away from the impact he has had on the game so far. And when your slump means taking out four GSL-champions in a row, you're not doing too bad, are you?

On December 04 2012 07:55 ViktorSC wrote:

You are right. WHO IS? and who are the best on the world side? Would anyone mind listing them?

Stephano is the foreigner version of Bomber. Can be amazing time to time, but I really wouldn't bet on him winning the most prestigious tournaments nowadays. Mid-Code S level at best.

On December 04 2012 09:07 Inzan1ty wrote:


Take out DRG and replace with Rain or Creator.

On December 04 2012 09:50 Otolia wrote:

Had EG not sent him to Korea he would have probably do better than just win LSC 2 this month. Because he had no tournaments in October, he didn't trained as hard as he could have.

Also for giggles a little comparison of Stephano's and Bomber's results : Stephano vs. Bomber. Bomber's last tournament win was MLG Raleigh in 2011. He didn't won anything in between September 2011 and now. Whereas Stephano managed to 7 tournaments, that's more than MC - though MC placed high in more tournaments.

Stephano was the most successful player in the foreign scene this year koreans included. It doesn't say anything about his level and naysayer like you will continue to deny reality in order to feel better about themselves, but results are evident.