• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 15:23
CEST 21:23
KST 04:23
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Summer's End6Serral wins HomeStory Cup 2915Serral wins Maestros of the Game 243ByuL, and the Limitations of Standard Play3Team Liquid Map Contest #22: Results and Winners7
Community News
GSTL Returns in 2026!43Weekly Cups (Aug 3-9): Protoss get shut out7RSL goes to London! 2026 Offline Finals Nov 21-2212Weekly Cups (July 27-Aug 2): SHIN's big week0SC4ALL II: Brood War - $2500 - Dec 5-611
StarCraft 2
General
GSTL Returns in 2026! Balance hotfix patch 5.0.16b (July 16) SC4ALL: II Talent Announcement! Protoss AoE skill expression Weekly Cups (Aug 3-9): Protoss get shut out
Tourneys
PIG STY FESTIVAL 8.0! (13 - 23 August) WardiTV Mondays 2026 KungFu Cup Announcement Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament 2026 GSTL Announcement
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
Nexus Wars 2021 GUIDE [M] (2) Industrial Park
External Content
The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 539 Thunder Dome Mutation # 538 Media Blackout Mutation # 537 Hostile Territory
Brood War
General
SC4ALL II: Brood War Player Announcement 3/4 - soO Rush's Odyssey Controversy [ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Summer's End BW General Discussion StarCraft 64 is coming to Philly at SC4ALL II
Tourneys
[ASL22] Ro24 Group A Small VOD Thread 2.0 CSLAN 4 is Coming! ASL Season 22 LIVESTREAM with English Commentary
Strategy
Odyssey Mineral Stack Saturation Fighting Spirit mining rates Any training maps people recommend? Simple Questions, Simple Answers
Other Games
General Games
General RTS Discussion Thread Nintendo Switch Thread Anyone here play Quakeworld back in the day? Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread EVE Corporation
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
[TL LoL EUW IHs] Teemo shall perish TSM pausing esports and CLG Dead
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Power Rank TL Mafia Community Thread NeO.D_StephenKing vs This Guy From 1 Million Dance
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Artificial Intelligence Thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread The Letting Off Steam Thread
Fan Clubs
MarineLorD Fan Club The ShoWTimE Fan Club The herO Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! Anime Discussion Thread Series you have seen recently...
Sports
MLB/Baseball 2023 Football (Soccer) Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 NBA General Discussion Formula 1 Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread Simple Questions Simple Answers FPS when play League Of Legend on laptop
TL Community
The Automated Ban List Northern Ireland Global Starcraft
Blogs
LOCKPICKING NOOB
LUCKY_NOOB
Chinese Gen Z: Between Dream…
TrAiDoS
Cathedral Of CS And NY pizza a…
FuDDx
Please support my new stand…
Peanutsc
Hello guys!
LIN1s
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 7256 users

Analysis of Koreans vs non-Koreans at major events - Page 4

Forum Index > SC2 General
Post a Reply
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next All
Qwerty85
Profile Joined June 2012
Croatia5536 Posts
September 08 2012 14:25 GMT
#61
Cool stuff, I always love me some stats

I would also like to know how specific matchups look like. For example how do "foreign" terrans measure up to Koreans in TvT, TvZ, TvP etc.
nemonic
Profile Joined November 2011
132 Posts
September 08 2012 14:26 GMT
#62
Funny how many people don't understand the message of the stats, which is that the winrate for foreigners are decreasing more or less constantly, not that Korean Pros are generally better at the game. Some people seem to be quite sensitive about that fact

I think one thing that we can take away from the stats is that it's mostly the better practice environment that makes Koreans better that the (lazy) foreigners. Practice is something that pays off in the long run (talent is not for example) which is exactly what we see here.
zanga
Profile Joined September 2011
659 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-08 14:40:56
September 08 2012 14:36 GMT
#63
By the way... I wish there were some way to measure how close a game were between two opponents. Obviously this is not very easy. I suppose it would need to have viewers response, some sort of polling involved.. I imagine after each game people vote for example 1 to 5 (1 very close game) or 5 (huge win, no chance), and perhaps also have it depend on the shorter the game were, or if more risky play was involved that number would have less impact on the whole data... Hmmmmmmm...

It's certainly possible to implement something like it..

However an interesting source of data for "if non-koreans are ganing on koreans" is the map win rate! Losing 1-2 instead of 0-2 is always a step in the right direction. The data "seems to be showing" that this has seen no increase in the last year however .

<3 Data and numbers <3
(:
rgbAndraxxus
Profile Joined August 2012
32 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-08 14:38:41
September 08 2012 14:36 GMT
#64
Thanks for the work you put into this. ^_^

Well that should be a pretty good indication that the Koreans are mostly losing to foreigners that had access to their game style while they did not see all that much a specific foreigners style, of course there are some foreigners they might be interested in but usually they consider that a foreigner is easier to win against than a Korean.
With good reason one might say considering past results

Except for a few foreigners that can keep up with the Koreans we see a lot of dominance in almost every tournament, and there is a higher chance of that increasing in the future, either that or some sort of separation where we would have only a few Koreans so that they don't take top 8 each time, somehow I just don't see that many non-Koreans improving fast in the near future mostly due to the practice hours they constantly put in the game.
Only when you are able to see the qualities of your enemy, will you have what it takes to see your flaws.
Spidinko
Profile Joined May 2010
Slovakia1174 Posts
September 08 2012 14:40 GMT
#65
These stats aren't very representative. If you pick top foreigners vs the rest of the foreigners you might get a similar results.
As has been said, there are many bad foreign players in many of those tournaments.

If you want to get more accurate results, you'd need to select pro foreigners and compare them to koreans.
For instance, compare matches of topX foreigners from TLPD against koreans.

Koreans have the statistical advantage that they don't have bad players competing against foreigners. Something that is not true for us.
Kahlgar
Profile Joined June 2011
411 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-08 14:50:09
September 08 2012 14:42 GMT
#66
If you want statistical data to be useful, you actually need to try and find situations that reflect the balance between Koreans and foreigners accurately.

Just taking every major events with online/offline games, regardless of how strong the foreigner field was (lolMLG), how good the Koreans were (invited vs qualified) and just blindly discarding every non major events (while some of them are a lot more telling than some major ones) is not going to give any meaningful results.

That's not to mention the influence of matchups, mappools, balance issues at various times or the simple fact that the sample size is still very limited (tho it's getting bigger/more reliable over time so that's something).
johnny123
Profile Joined February 2012
521 Posts
September 08 2012 14:45 GMT
#67
On September 08 2012 23:40 Spidinko wrote:
These stats aren't very representative. If you pick top foreigners vs the rest of the foreigners you might get a similar results.
As has been said, there are many bad foreign players in many of those tournaments.

If you want to get more accurate results, you'd need to select pro foreigners and compare them to koreans.
For instance, compare matches of topX foreigners from TLPD against koreans.

Koreans have the statistical advantage that they don't have bad players competing against foreigners. Something that is not true for us.





quoted just for you



On September 07 2012 11:29 red4ce wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 07 2012 10:06 Hazuc wrote:
They should compare the top 32 koreans with the top 32 foreigners instead. There are many bad foreigners in foreign events while the bad koreans do not participate in those tournaments.


From the original website:

Show nested quote +
Early competition rounds with more than 64 players were not counted as skill level between players is often too disparate to make useful comparisons.


So bad foreigners were already filtered out from the calculations. Besides code B and code A level Koreans participate in foreign tournaments and more than hold their own. Guys like Revival, Sound, First, Sleep, Inori, Hyun, Hack, etc are all code A or B yet have made deep runs in foreign tournaments. I daresay the gap between Korean 33-64 and foreigner 33-64 is even greater than the gap between Korean 1-32 and foreigner 1-32.

Favorite players,Stephano/MVP/Nestea/Gumiho/Life/Jaedong/MMA
Aulisemia
Profile Joined August 2011
United States123 Posts
September 08 2012 14:57 GMT
#68
On September 07 2012 09:59 Fionn wrote:
So you're telling me that Koreans, those folk from Asia, are better than everyone else?

Shit. Just. Got. Serious.


There's value in gathering analytical data for the purpose of studying a theory to come to some conclusion about the validity of the idea. It's called the scientific method, no need to be a douche about it.

Really nice work, as someone said below there seems to be this idea that the gap between foreigners and Koreans is closing - obviously that isn't the case at all.
The ponciest ponce that ever ponced past a poncing palour.
Anomi
Profile Joined October 2011
Sweden149 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-08 15:27:06
September 08 2012 15:19 GMT
#69
U should instead of using Korean vs foreigners switch it to compare full time foreigners players vs full time Korean player. I am not really surprised about the difference seeing that most of the sc2 pros in the foreigner countries aren't full time gamers. There should be a difference after 2 years if u compare a person that solely focus on sc2 to someone that goes to school and play sc2 in the free time. I don’t believe Koreans players are better that foreigner becuse they are Koreans per say. The thing is they have a better infrastructure and support for sc2 players to go full time compared to Europe and north America.

The foreigner seen have developed allot over these years and going full time playing sc2 is allot better now. I believe that in 2 years there won’t be a big difference between full time sc2 Korean pros and foreigners since the global structure that have been created if form of leuges and teams will eventually make it so foreigners can go full time. This is also why that the stuff for instance EG is doing is really good. They have created a team that can support players going game full time.

Facts to note: Korea have about 200 active players according to liqudpedia(not counting kespa players). Europe is around 150 i believe and North america less i believe. That is allot of sc2 players for 1 country. Sweden have a about 30 active players.
CosmicSpiral
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
United States15275 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-08 16:07:20
September 08 2012 16:07 GMT
#70
On September 07 2012 15:13 Greggle wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 07 2012 10:14 CosmicSpiral wrote:
On September 07 2012 10:06 Hazuc wrote:
They should compare the top 32 koreans with the top 32 foreigners instead. There are many bad foreigners in foreign events while the bad koreans do not participate in those tournaments.


No one knows who the top 32 Koreans are.


Code S is a damn good representation of the top 32 Koreans. Code S is so competitive at this point that really only the absolute best at any given time make it there with very few exceptions.


No. It shows the top 32 players who succeed in preparing for individual matches.
WriterWovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
Shinespark
Profile Joined June 2011
Chile843 Posts
September 08 2012 16:25 GMT
#71
I'd like you not to count Stephano and see what the foreigner vs korean win rate REALLY looks like.
"I, for one, welcome our new Korean overlords."
revel8
Profile Joined January 2012
United Kingdom3022 Posts
September 08 2012 16:28 GMT
#72
Isn't it still Q3 of 2012 until the end of September? How can you have stats for Q3 out when the quarter is still not finished. Surely the correct thing to do to preserve accuracy of stats is to wait until the end of this month and then incorporate September's data into Q3. If you don't do that then you are distorting the whole point of showing whether there is a trend or not of Foreigner's closing the gap after Q2 2012.

In September we have IEM Gangzhou, DreamHack Valencia, Code S Season 4 etc. You are just ignoring the data from these coming tournaments which should all be included as part of Q3 2012 data. Either use data or don't. However don't present innaccurate data as it is misleading.
MyNameIsAlex
Profile Joined March 2011
Greece827 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-08 16:28:53
September 08 2012 16:28 GMT
#73
Seeing that you filtered out the first rounds of tournamnts, in order to filter out the :"very bad" foreigners, I would suggest something different:

Create a list of full time foreigners and only have these guys' games as your sample.

Reason is

a) You compare apples to oranges when you include games of semi-pros vs full time koreans that payed to travel to the tournament place to fight for the prize.*


b) Even more at some tournaments many decent (but nowhere near fulltime pro) make a lucky run to the playoffs and then get stomped. This has happened quite a few times in the past. And your filter is gonna let them through.

*: In Korea the quantity of full time pros are many times more than the rest of the world. While we have many decent semi pros, we lack in the amount of top tier players (Stephano, Nerchio, Mana, NaNi etc. etc.).


This is hard to do, since you can't remember who was full time in '10 or in '11, but it will give a better representation of the current situation imo.


Musicus
Profile Joined August 2011
Germany23579 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-08 16:39:15
September 08 2012 16:33 GMT
#74
On September 09 2012 01:28 MyNameIsAlex wrote:
Seeing that you filtered out the first rounds of tournamnts, in order to filter out the :"very bad" foreigners, I would suggest something different:

Create a list of full time foreigners and only have these guys' games as your sample.

Reason is

a) You compare apples to oranges when you include games of semi-pros vs full time koreans that payed to travel to the tournament place to fight for the prize.*


b) Even more at some tournaments many decent (but nowhere near fulltime pro) make a lucky run to the playoffs and then get stomped. This has happened quite a few times in the past. And your filter is gonna let them through.

*: In Korea the quantity of full time pros are many times more than the rest of the world. While we have many decent semi pros, we lack in the amount of top tier players (Stephano, Nerchio, Mana, NaNi etc. etc.).


This is hard to do, since you can't remember who was full time in '10 or in '11, but it will give a better representation of the current situation imo.




But if you only use full time foreigner pros, top foreigners like nerchio (or mana until recently) who are not playing full time won't be counted as well, among foreigners full time does not equal top foreigner. Suppy and illusion are examples for NA.

Edit: Just realised the same is true for Koreans like Polt, so yeah it's really hard to make a cut.
Maru and Serral are probably top 5.
TheDougler
Profile Joined April 2010
Canada8318 Posts
September 08 2012 16:34 GMT
#75
On September 07 2012 10:07 xrapture wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 07 2012 09:59 Fionn wrote:
So you're telling me that Koreans, those folk from Asia, are better than everyone else?

Shit. Just. Got. Serious.


You'd be surprised of the amount of people that think the "gap" is closing. It's getting bigger and bigger. Take any player on a Korean team and he's as good or better than the best of the best foreigners (still makes me sick that the recent power rankings had Nerchio and Stephano both as top 10 in the world ><)


Stephano is top ten. Just look at every tournament he has entered in the last two years.
I root for Euro Zergs, NA Protoss* and Korean Terrans. (Any North American who has beat a Korean Pro as Protoss counts as NA Toss)
TsGBruzze
Profile Blog Joined April 2012
Sweden1190 Posts
September 08 2012 16:35 GMT
#76
nice stats
''you got to yolo things up to win''
Demonhunter04
Profile Joined July 2011
1530 Posts
September 08 2012 16:40 GMT
#77
On September 07 2012 10:27 TAMinator wrote:
The only thing I find interesting is why foreigner had a big increase in win rate @ 2012 Q2. Everything else is to be expected


At a glance that can probably be attributed to the queen range buff and circumstances where foreign zergs beat korean terrans/protosses more often than the reverse.
"If you don't drop sweat today, you will drop tears tomorrow" - SlayerSMMA
revel8
Profile Joined January 2012
United Kingdom3022 Posts
September 08 2012 16:54 GMT
#78
On September 09 2012 01:40 Demonhunter04 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 07 2012 10:27 TAMinator wrote:
The only thing I find interesting is why foreigner had a big increase in win rate @ 2012 Q2. Everything else is to be expected


At a glance that can probably be attributed to the queen range buff and circumstances where foreign zergs beat korean terrans/protosses more often than the reverse.


No, it is just that Q2 2012 had an increase in foreigner win rate. We are still in Q3 2012 so it is too soon to know whether there is a genuine trend or it is just a blip. The OP has jumped the gun in presenting the data for Q3 when it is incomplete and thus a potential distortion.
theJob
Profile Joined October 2010
272 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-08 18:46:20
September 08 2012 16:56 GMT
#79
There seem to be alot of people here proclaiming that the trend of foreigners’ winratio is negatively related to time. After a quick glance I’m inclined to agree, however if we are to indulge ourselves with using a technical term like “trend” then I feel like a more thorough analysis is due.

If one were to fit an OLS regression on the material it is obvious that the trend is negative. A linear regression tells us that the relationship between the win percentage of foreigners versus Korean players is declining with roughly 1,6 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2.

+ Show Spoiler +

[image loading]


[image loading]


However after investigating the histogram further it should become obvious that if we want to fit the most accurately representative trend line to the data we have to step away from a linear relation between the two variables. When running a quadratic OLS regression we get much better results than the linear one. There is a statistically significant relation on a 99% significance level and the R^2 value is as high as 0,90. By looking at the scatterplot where the quadratic trendline is fitted I’d have to echo esfiworlds statement that foreigners winpercentage was declining rapidly in the beginning but that it has settled or staring to rise even.

+ Show Spoiler +

[image loading]


[image loading]


So if we are to use a technical term like “trend”, then the data from esfiworld shows that foreigners performance as of late is improving.
Winners train. Loosers complain.
Spidinko
Profile Joined May 2010
Slovakia1174 Posts
September 08 2012 16:57 GMT
#80
On September 08 2012 23:45 johnny123 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 08 2012 23:40 Spidinko wrote:
These stats aren't very representative. If you pick top foreigners vs the rest of the foreigners you might get a similar results.
As has been said, there are many bad foreign players in many of those tournaments.

If you want to get more accurate results, you'd need to select pro foreigners and compare them to koreans.
For instance, compare matches of topX foreigners from TLPD against koreans.

Koreans have the statistical advantage that they don't have bad players competing against foreigners. Something that is not true for us.





quoted just for you



Show nested quote +
On September 07 2012 11:29 red4ce wrote:
On September 07 2012 10:06 Hazuc wrote:
They should compare the top 32 koreans with the top 32 foreigners instead. There are many bad foreigners in foreign events while the bad koreans do not participate in those tournaments.


From the original website:

Early competition rounds with more than 64 players were not counted as skill level between players is often too disparate to make useful comparisons.


So bad foreigners were already filtered out from the calculations. Besides code B and code A level Koreans participate in foreign tournaments and more than hold their own. Guys like Revival, Sound, First, Sleep, Inori, Hyun, Hack, etc are all code A or B yet have made deep runs in foreign tournaments. I daresay the gap between Korean 33-64 and foreigner 33-64 is even greater than the gap between Korean 1-32 and foreigner 1-32.


I stand corrected.

However, I'm still curious how the statistics would look like if you only considered top notch foreigners.
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
The Patches Monday
16:15
#3
RotterdaM1171
TaKeTV 475
TKL 426
IndyStarCraft 316
SteadfastSC211
ZombieGrub141
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
RotterdaM 1120
ByuN 563
TKL 426
IndyStarCraft 316
SteadfastSC 207
ZombieGrub130
UpATreeSC 80
JuggernautJason34
RushiSC 23
EnDerr 2
StarCraft: Brood War
Calm 3082
Shuttle 727
BeSt 607
Soma 303
Soulkey 203
Dewaltoss 112
ggaemo 96
Mini 59
Terrorterran 23
Dota 2
XaKoH 673
Counter-Strike
pashabiceps909
zeus212
edward63
Super Smash Bros
C9.Mang0401
Heroes of the Storm
Liquid`Hasu416
Other Games
Grubby3370
Liquid`RaSZi1745
FrodaN1568
Beastyqt714
ceh9670
ToD255
uThermal155
ArmadaUGS136
Livibee91
Trikslyr49
BRAT_OK 21
MindelVK9
[ Show 15 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• kabyraGe 193
• Reevou 7
• Adnapsc2 3
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• Migwel
StarCraft: Brood War
• HerbMon 27
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• TFBlade1190
Other Games
• imaqtpie1350
• Shiphtur350
Upcoming Events
Afreeca Starleague
14h 37m
Sharp vs Shinee
Action vs Shine
GSL
15h 37m
PiGosaur Cup
1d 4h
Replay Cast
1d 13h
Afreeca Starleague
1d 14h
BeSt vs Paralyze
Jaedong vs Speed
Kung Fu Cup
1d 15h
Replay Cast
2 days
The PondCast
2 days
KCM Race Survival
2 days
Replay Cast
3 days
[ Show More ]
PiG Sty Festival
3 days
CranKy Ducklings
4 days
PiG Sty Festival
4 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
5 days
PiG Sty Festival
5 days
The Patches Monday
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

CSLAN 4
CranK Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League
Eternal Conflict S2 Finale

Ongoing

KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 3
K-JUNGMAN
ASL Season 22
Super Anchor Qualifying S3
RSL Revival: Season 6
PiG Sty Festival 8.0
META DYMY #4
Esports World Cup 2026
Esports World Cup 2026: LCQ
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
XSE Pro League 2026
IEM Cologne Major 2026

Upcoming

CSL Season 22: Qualifier 1
Escore Tournament S3: W8
CSL Season 22: Qualifier 2
CSL 2026 AUTUMN (S22)
Acropolis #5
Acropolis #5 - TRS
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
HSC XXX
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Offline Finals
Big Dog Cup 2026 Div 1
Stake Ranked Episode 5
PGL Masters Bucharest 2026
Thunderpick World Champ. '26
ESL Pro League Season 24
Stake Ranked Episode 4
1win Private Club #1
Logitech G Connect 2026
SL StarSeries Fall 2026
FISSURE Playground #5
BLAST Open Fall 2026
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.