Why are Starcraft 2 tournaments so unpredictable? - Page 16

Contrast this with a sport like tennis (since I think this is something people on both sides of the Atlantic would be familiar with). In the past 4 major tournaments (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open), there have only been 5 different players who took the top 4 spots on all tournaments.

On February 04 2012 14:52 MrCon wrote:
So MVP lost once to a player he should have won to and suddenly he loses "lots of games". The fact that you then compare to flash who has the same winrate as MVP is pretty funny, they both lose as often as the other.

On February 02 2012 23:33 Grumbels wrote:
The average tennis match has like 200-300 points needed to win. Starcraft 2 has often Bo3 or even Bo1. If we switched to Bo7-Bo9 for all matches we would see the better players winning a lot more.
(of course, this is implausible because of scheduling and such)

On February 04 2012 11:23 Sawamura wrote:


Flash is undefeated in this year Sk proleague, I don't see him losing in a long term at all since there is not many games to play this year and only one starleague to practice . Flash has all the time in the world to prepare his games .

On February 04 2012 14:18 MrCon wrote:
This thread is like one of the most depressing thread I've ever read on TL.
And I don't even talk about Idra, as Idra needs to brainwash his fanbase to keep it by making his fanbase think it's the game that sucks and not him, so I kind of understand him, it's a business move.
But in this thread we managed to say that the winrates are invalid, that the fact that 8 of 12 GSL were won by 3 same players is invalid, that the liquidbets proves that a lot of people can predict things is invalid (yes, the thread title is "Why are Starcraft 2 tournaments so unpredictable?", which is totally false and only a reaction of MVP losing in the ro16, so the fact that people can predict results is fucking relevant).

This is like discussing religion (again).

On February 04 2012 04:38 Primadog wrote:


Using liquibet as a proxy, SC2 has approached BW in predictability, so there's no case in "SC2 is worse than BW because it's too predictable/not predictable enough."

One curious parallel is this 70~75% prediction ceiling matches closely with hitrate of traditional sports oddmakers.


Stern, H.S. 1997. How accurately can sports outcomes be predicted? Chance 10(No. 4):19.

In the current issue of Chance, statistician Hal S. Stern of Iowa State University in Ames takes a look at what sort of simple information may be helpful for identifying winning teams, though not necessarily for making bets that beat the spread (or odds). "The question of primary interest is what proportion of game outcomes could be correctly predicted by an intelligent observer," Stern says.

Stern focuses mainly on U.S. professional sports, though his analysis can be easily applied to other sports, as long as the right sorts of data are available.

One simple prediction rule is to pick the team that is playing at home. "This rule ought not to predict very well, because it completely ignores the relative ability of the teams that are competing," Stern remarks.

Nonetheless, the evidence supports the existence of a home-field advantage (see table), especially in basketball. Moreover, the home-field advantage for college sports appears to be slightly larger than for professional sports, Stern says.

Additional analysis indicates that playing on one's home field rather than at a neutral site is worth about 3 points in football, 4.5 points in basketball, and 0.25 run in baseball.

Oddsmakers employed by sports betting establishments make a living by forecasting the outcomes of games, though their goal is not so much to make accurate predictions as to set the odds (point spread). When they succeed, the proceeds from losing bets pay off the winning bets, with a small percentage going to the betting establishment.

Oddsmakers' predictions generally prove to be a superior guide for identifying winning teams. Inbaseball, however, the oddsmakers do only slightly better than the rule of always picking the home team. Oddsmakers do somewhat better at predicting basketball and football outcomes. College games tend to be more predictable than professional contests in the same sport.

It's also possible to apply simple statistical techniques (such as the method of least squares) to the win-loss records or margins of victory of the participating teams in previous games. In effect, the methods provide an estimate of the ability of each team.

In football, Stern's rudimentary statistical approach does nearly as well as the experts and considerably better than the strategy of always picking the home team, particularly when scores are used. A similar pattern occurs in the other sports.

"Baseball appears to be the most random sport," Stern concludes. "The best prediction approaches are just a bit better than using coin flips to predict."

In basketball and football, prediction accuracy can reach 75 percent, but that still leaves plenty of uncertainty. "One might argue that if things were any more predictable than that, it would be difficult to convince people to pay for the privilege of watching the games!" Stern notes.

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc98/1_17_98/mathland.htm

On February 04 2012 11:23 Sawamura wrote:


Flash is undefeated in this year Sk proleague, I don't see him losing in a long term at all since there is not many games to play this year and only one starleague to practice . Flash has all the time in the world to prepare his games .

On February 04 2012 23:51 Rassy wrote:
The fact that people score 75% on liquibet on average says nothing as there are manny matches where one of the sides is a clear favorit.
Compare it when predicting football matches for the fa cup
Its not hard to predict manchester will win the first 4 rounds against teams from 1st and 2nd divission, and it will be easy to score 75% just by betting manchester will always win all thoose rounds.
i think if you would look at only the liquibets made for the final and semi finals that they will be alot closer to 50% (if not then i am completly wrong with this idea)

Quote:it's very similar to poker. if you're a good player you will be the top dog in most scenarios, but long term there will be many situations where you lose, due to simple statistics.

yes this is a good comparison i think, variance in starcraft seems to be rather high wich indicates "luck" plays quiet a big role in the outcome of the game (luck with scouting, build order wins etc)
This does not say annything about the skill seiling btw, the skill ceiling can be incredible high while still allowing for a huge random factor in the outcome of the game.
I also think that the difference between the best a player plays and the worst a player plays is quiet high.
If you look at chess, the worldchampion will seldomly play at masters lvl.
With starcraft there seems to be alot more variance in how well a player plays and regulary you see good pros play realy terrible games