• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EST 13:36
CET 19:36
KST 03:36
  • 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
RSL Season 3 - Playoffs Preview0RSL Season 3 - RO16 Groups C & D Preview0RSL Season 3 - RO16 Groups A & B Preview2TL.net Map Contest #21: Winners12Intel X Team Liquid Seoul event: Showmatches and Meet the Pros10
Community News
BGE Stara Zagora 2026 announced6[BSL21] Ro.16 Group Stage (C->B->A->D)4Weekly Cups (Nov 17-23): Solar, MaxPax, Clem win3RSL Season 3: RO16 results & RO8 bracket13Weekly Cups (Nov 10-16): Reynor, Solar lead Zerg surge2
StarCraft 2
General
BGE Stara Zagora 2026 announced SC: Evo Complete - Ranked Ladder OPEN ALPHA When will we find out if there are more tournament Weekly Cups (Nov 17-23): Solar, MaxPax, Clem win Weekly Cups (Nov 10-16): Reynor, Solar lead Zerg surge
Tourneys
Constellation Cup - Main Event - Stellar Fest Tenacious Turtle Tussle [Alpha Pro Series] Nice vs Cure RSL Revival: Season 3 $5,000+ WardiTV 2025 Championship
Strategy
Custom Maps
Map Editor closed ?
External Content
Mutation # 501 Price of Progress Mutation # 500 Fright night Mutation # 499 Chilling Adaptation Mutation # 498 Wheel of Misfortune|Cradle of Death
Brood War
General
Which season is the best in ASL? A cwal.gg Extension - Easily keep track of anyone BW General Discussion soO on: FanTaSy's Potential Return to StarCraft BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues Small VOD Thread 2.0 [BSL21] RO16 Tie Breaker - Group B - Sun 21:00 CET [BSL21] GosuLeague T1 Ro16 - Tue & Thu 22:00 CET
Strategy
Game Theory for Starcraft How to stay on top of macro? Current Meta PvZ map balance
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread The Perfect Game Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Beyond All Reason Should offensive tower rushing be viable in RTS games?
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
Mafia Game Mode Feedback/Ideas TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Artificial Intelligence Thread YouTube Thread
Fan Clubs
White-Ra Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
[Manga] One Piece Movie Discussion! Anime Discussion Thread
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion NBA General Discussion MLB/Baseball 2023 TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
Where to ask questions and add stream? The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Esports Earnings: Bigger Pri…
TrAiDoS
Thanks for the RSL
Hildegard
Saturation point
Uldridge
DnB/metal remix FFO Mick Go…
ImbaTosS
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 2249 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
Germany23576 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
Canada8306 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
LAN Event
18:00
LANified! 37: Groundswell
Discussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
mouzHeroMarine 667
White-Ra 158
Livibee 97
Lowko96
SteadfastSC 88
UpATreeSC 80
Codebar 20
Railgan 13
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 16271
Calm 3850
Rain 2415
Shuttle 912
BeSt 169
Hyun 169
Dewaltoss 147
firebathero 142
Mong 14
IntoTheRainbow 10
Dota 2
Gorgc6125
singsing2745
capcasts25
League of Legends
rGuardiaN10
Counter-Strike
byalli3699
Other Games
FrodaN3053
B2W.Neo1675
Beastyqt570
XaKoH 495
crisheroes377
RotterdaM258
DeMusliM252
KnowMe182
Hui .173
ArmadaUGS125
Mew2King87
C9.Mang071
Trikslyr47
MindelVK11
Organizations
Dota 2
PGL Dota 2 - Main Stream147
Other Games
BasetradeTV108
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 17 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• poizon28 15
• Kozan
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• sooper7s
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Migwel
• IndyKCrew
StarCraft: Brood War
• FirePhoenix7
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
• BSLYoutube
Dota 2
• Ler111
League of Legends
• TFBlade1454
Other Games
• imaqtpie551
• Shiphtur382
• WagamamaTV348
Upcoming Events
Replay Cast
4h 24m
Replay Cast
14h 24m
WardiTV Korean Royale
17h 24m
OSC
22h 24m
Sparkling Tuna Cup
1d 15h
WardiTV Korean Royale
1d 17h
Replay Cast
2 days
Wardi Open
2 days
Monday Night Weeklies
2 days
StarCraft2.fi
2 days
[ Show More ]
Replay Cast
3 days
Wardi Open
3 days
StarCraft2.fi
3 days
Wardi Open
4 days
StarCraft2.fi
4 days
Replay Cast
5 days
The PondCast
5 days
Replay Cast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

SOOP Univ League 2025
RSL Revival: Season 3
Eternal Conflict S1

Ongoing

C-Race Season 1
IPSL Winter 2025-26
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 4
YSL S2
BSL Season 21
CSCL: Masked Kings S3
Slon Tour Season 2
META Madness #9
SL Budapest Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 8
BLAST Rivals Fall 2025
IEM Chengdu 2025
PGL Masters Bucharest 2025
Thunderpick World Champ.
CS Asia Championships 2025
ESL Pro League S22
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2

Upcoming

BSL 21 Non-Korean Championship
Acropolis #4
IPSL Spring 2026
Bellum Gens Elite Stara Zagora 2026
HSC XXVIII
RSL Offline Finals
WardiTV 2025
PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026
IEM Kraków 2026
BLAST Bounty Winter 2026
BLAST Bounty Winter 2026: Closed Qualifier
eXTREMESLAND 2025
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 © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.