Also in the full article is an embedded Google spreadsheet that shows that calculations I did for every event if anyone wants to do any data digging for themselves.
Criteria: - Calculated based on Team Liquid listed “Premiere Events” and “Major Events” with a prize pool of at least $10,000, at least 16 competitors - Forfeited rounds are not calculated - Early competition rounds with more than 64 players were not counted as skill level between players is often too disparate to make useful comparisons.
Please note that this analysis is not trying to draw some big conclusion but rather provide some hard data about a commonly discussed topic in the hopes of having a more informed conversation. Welcome to any input on how I could have done this little project better.
In conclusion: Koreans own white dudes. Will they keep owing white dudes in the future? Some people say that HotS then LotV will help balancing the winrates (something to do with resetting the metagame) but, I'm not holding my breath tbh.
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.
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 ><)
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.
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
Good work. Overall results are just as expected, but nice to know the numbers.
Personally, I could care less about the nationality of the players as long as they bring good starcraft games, but some people do care, so your research is very helpful.
I think that the more interesting conclusion is that non-Korean win rates against Koreans are overall declining. In other words, the skill gap between Koreans and non-Koreans is increasing.
From this, we might be able to draw conclusions on things that have been speculated on before. Namely, that the Korean method of training/practice or their mindset towards practice is simply superior. Given an equal period of time, Koreans seem to be improving faster than their foreign counterparts.
Thanks a bunch. For some reason the idea that Koreans were almost BW level untouchable in 2011 exists amongst certain members of the TL community. Probably selective memory only focusing on last year's MLG Columbus, Anaheim and Raleigh.
Two suggestions: 1) Include error bars. It is very easy and should show what are actually trends, and what are just fluctuations. You will get errors of a few percent I think, so "33.4%" is maybe a bit too ambitious way to write it, and just "33%" is probably enough.
2) To try to estimate the "well it's the best koreans vs scrub foreigners" argument above, you can plot round of 16,8,4 and finals separately. If indeed it is an important effect you will see koreans having better winrates in the earlier rounds. Beware of low statistics though, specially at the later rounds. Probably better to do this for all data, rather than quarter by quarter.
On September 07 2012 10:55 Brett wrote: Yeah guys, no shit the results showed us what we already knew. But no need to be smart asses about it; it's still nice of this guy to share his work.
I do not think any of us meant any disrespect. It was just the obvious joke, and it was delivered quite well.
I love stats, so I really appreciate this compilation. Does not change the fact that it was always going to be very predictable. So we can appreciate and jest at the same time.
Obviously, we all knew that Koreans generally win against foreigners. What was more interesting to me, though, was seeing that the general trend is toward foreigners winning even less now than they used to. Many might think that foreigners were at least somewhat narrowing the skill gap, especially with a slew of pretty good foreigner performances relatively recently (Nerchio, Stephano, Mana, Naniwa, Thorzain, Vortix, etc.)
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
do you know how big code s is? plus i would say the top foreigners are at most foreign events
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
do you know how big code s is?
truth is there are hundreds of Code A Koreans are just as good as their Code S counter parts, and when you add in the KeSPA players, well there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best".
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.
On September 07 2012 11:29 red4ce wrote: 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.
Yeah, that's what I keep reading as well. I wonder if there is a good way to measure that?
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.
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.
Agree. It is close to something like basketball in the US. The top Spanish top can be competitive with the top US team at Olympics. But if you take the 3rd string US team and pit that against the 3rd string Spanish team, the results would be even more one sided.
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
Then one must explain why Crank, Revival, asd, Sleep, Sting, Inori, Monster, etc. have done so well at foreign tournaments.
On September 07 2012 11:29 red4ce wrote: 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.
Yeah, that's what I keep reading as well. I wonder if there is a good way to measure that?
It'd take a lot more dedication than I think anyone would be willing to put in. You'd have to go through the match records of all the major tournaments and cross reference each Korean player with what their standing in the GSL or their Elo ranking at the time was, and even then it'd be a flawed comparison.
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
Then one must explain why Crank, Revival, asd, Sleep, Sting, Inori, Monster, etc. have done so well at foreign tournaments.
None of them won any yet I don't think. I'm sure that if you picked 4 of them and sent them to an MLG or a dreamhack without any other koreans, they wouldn't necessarily blow away the competition (especially at dreamhack)
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
Then one must explain why Crank, Revival, asd, Sleep, Sting, Inori, Monster, etc. have done so well at foreign tournaments.
None of them won any yet I don't think. I'm sure that if you picked 4 of them and sent them to an MLG or a dreamhack without any other koreans, they wouldn't necessarily blow away the competition (especially at dreamhack)
...they already have blown away the competition. That's why I chose them specifically as examples. The only reason they lose is because they run into top foreigners or they play other Koreans. But these mid-tier Koreans do not usually lose against mid-tier foreigners, which should severely dent the "top Koreans skew the statistics" argument.
The number of games with foreigners vs koreans has also increased, undoubtedly.
A larger pool of foreigners is facing a larger pool of koreans. That doesn't mean the elite of each (S-class koreans and foreigners) haven't gotten closer in skill over past two years. (Of course, it doesn't confirm or deny this).
Drawing too many conclusions from just this data may be misleading.
(Including the number of games F v K over the past two years would be nice for context, if that information is already tabulated.)
Lots of people here didn't seem to grasp the graphs. They show that things have gotten substantially worse for foreigners as the game has evolved. Aside from a weird spike in Q2 2012 (I'd be curious to know what happened there,) foreigners have been on a steady decline.
Must be that infamous S. Korean practice regimen slowly widening the gap as their extra practice keeps paying off. Wonder if this will reset at all when HotS lands.
On September 07 2012 10:54 blade55555 wrote: Interesting to see how it was almost 50% in beginning and only dropped every Q except for 2012 and then dropped to 20%
In 2010 more or less only IdrA and Jinro were playing Koreans so those stats aren't as good as the others.
On September 07 2012 10:54 blade55555 wrote: Interesting to see how it was almost 50% in beginning and only dropped every Q except for 2012 and then dropped to 20%
Alot of the early results from 2010 or so were mostly from online play, where Koreans are at a disadvantage in terms of ping. When they started coming in bigger and bigger groups to local events such as MLG, it became very evident that the big talk about how EU/NA closed the gap was nothing but a load of garbage.
Also, the two first time periods are based on less than 25 wins each, so with that few games I am not sure we can make any conclusions at all. Error bars will be almost as large as the difference to the other time periods. The other time periods are around 50 wins (or more), so a bit smaller error bars, but those values are also much more stable. So be a bit careful in the interpretations.
The only thing I find interesting is why foreigner had a big increase in win rate @ 2012 Q2. Everything else is to be expected
That is a very good question. Looking at the Q2 events which everyone can do on the article, there isn't a particular event that stood out. Non-Koreans just did better at most all of the Q2 events. Like a 34% match win rate in MLG Spring Championship vs. a 22% match win rate at MLG Summer Championship. GSL also went pretty well for non-Koreans v. Koreans with a 5-5 record from this period.
As a percentage of the total there is a lot more non-Korean Zergs so Q2 could also be impacted by strong Zergs across the board (Korean or not) after the Queen patch. And that effect has declined as Zergs have come back down to a more balanced performance range. That is just a theory.
Its not because they were born better, its because they spent less time complaining and more time practicing correctly. They are in an enviroment where the competition is tougher so of course they will be better. Who do the foreigners have to practice with? NA and EU ladder heroes.
The only thing I find interesting is why foreigner had a big increase in win rate @ 2012 Q2. Everything else is to be expected
That is a very good question. Looking at the Q2 events which everyone can do on the article, there isn't a particular event that stood out. Non-Koreans just did better at most all of the Q2 events. Like a 34% match win rate in MLG Spring Championship vs. a 22% match win rate at MLG Summer Championship. GSL also went pretty well for non-Koreans v. Koreans with a 5-5 record from this period.
As a percentage of the total there is a lot more non-Korean Zergs so Q2 could also be impacted by strong Zergs across the board (Korean or not) after the Queen patch. And that effect has declined as Zergs have come back down to a more balanced performance range. That is just a theory.
Try adding error bars, that single quarter doesn't necessarily mean anything more than chance.
On September 07 2012 10:03 Al Bundy wrote: In conclusion: Koreans own white dudes. Will they keep owing white dudes in the future? Some people say that HotS then LotV will help balancing the winrates (something to do with resetting the metagame) but, I'm not holding my breath tbh.
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
The graphs are not meant to show the percentage, rather the trend. The trend is definitely legit.
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.
It's the quantity of quality. For every top-tier foreigner (late 2010/early 2011 Jinro, mid 2011 to early 2012 Huk, Stephano, etc), there are probably more than 50 Koreans at a similar level.
SC2 is volatile as hell, which is why even the best players cannot win every tournament. But when you see it as Korea vs the World, the deck is always in favor of Korea because they have more top level players. Guys like Stephano can hold with perhaps even the best of the Koreans, but not all the time.
Let's use Stephano and MLG as an example: Say Stephano has a 10% chance of winning MLG. That's great, but there are few foreigners who can perform at his level, and fewer who can do so consistently (if any, and hell, even Stephano isn't totally consistent either. There are times when he flops).
But there are likely 10 or so Koreans nowadays at MLGs that have a similar chance of winning as Stephano. Even if one of them is eliminated, another Korean takes up the banner and races for the finals, and should he fall, yet another Korean can go for the gold, and so on.
TL;DR We have Code S level foreigners and players that can compete with the best. It's just that in terms of good players, Korea has us beat big-time in quantity.
For the first 12 months, foreigners had a chance. But then their general laziness and sloth got in the way and outside of a few genuinely talented people the rest stagnated while Koreans produced more and more talent.
On September 07 2012 15:46 Sub40APM wrote: For the first 12 months, foreigners had a chance. But then their general laziness and sloth got in the way and outside of a few genuinely talented people the rest stagnated while Koreans produced more and more talent.
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.
exactly what i was thinking, if they count mlg qualifier bracket they will have lots of matches vs master- mid gm US server Free wins before they even get to the best foreigneer players. While its only those koreans that actually think its worth investing time and money that come to fight the foreigneers.
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.
exactly what i was thinking, if they count mlg qualifier bracket they will have lots of matches vs master- mid gm US server Free wins before they even get to the best foreigneer players. While its only those koreans that actually think its worth investing time and money that come to fight the foreigneers.
You haven't really read the op, except to look at the shiny pictures, have you?
To all the people saying that only good Koreans fly abroad and play in foreign tournaments . . . . look at any big foreign tournament with heavy Korean participation and you can find tons and tons and tons of Koreans that would never dream of touching Code S. And yet they are more than capable enough of stomping through foreigners in online qualifiers.
On September 07 2012 15:46 Sub40APM wrote: For the first 12 months, foreigners had a chance. But then their general laziness and sloth got in the way and outside of a few genuinely talented people the rest stagnated while Koreans produced more and more talent.
Or, one could say the foreigners only stood a chance because the game was not figured out yet for the most part ... The same will be expected of hots, the koreans/foreigners might perform similar at the start, but 5 or so months after its release expect the gap to start widening alot. And with kespa in the scene now, Its only now going to get really fierce.
I love data, number crunching and graphs . We all knew that Korea still holds the leading edge of SC2, but numbers are always good to observe for a closer look.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An actual trend that is clear in the data is that the sample sizes are increasing. This means that Foreigners are playing against Koreans a lot more often in 2012 than last year. In 2010 there were only ~130 matches between Foreigners and Koreans (in tournaments that meet the criteria of the study). In 2012 we have reached more than 800 games between Foreigners and Koreans in Q2 2012, largely as a result of the growth of tournaments in the Foreign scene and the Korean players travelling abroad to participate in these tournaments.
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.
On September 09 2012 01:59 Holgerius wrote: Still infinitely much better than in the BW days.
But that's because foreigner interest was quite low. It's kinda similiar, when BW was 1/2base mostly and SC2 was 1/2 base mostly foreigners stood a chance, now it's quite bad.
And how exactly do you compare winrates in BW? You can only kinda count 2000-2003 and during that period foreigners did good..
On September 08 2012 23:26 .syd. wrote: 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.
Map winrates are more or less constant since Q2 2011. If the match winrates go down, this only means longer series are played in tournaments.
Edit: It would also be interesstin to see EU vs Korea, NA vs Korea, NA vs EU.
On September 09 2012 01:56 theJob wrote: 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 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2.
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.
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.
I am not wrong s data cant be used for anything statistical at all. The op decided to exclude observations. Even if he thinks that there are less top players playing below top 16 its still an opinion and should not effect the sample size. We all know for instance that stephano have played polt in the pool play. IPL hade a pol play that was really Korean heavy . Allot of observation have been excluded so doing a osl of any sort is out of the question (not saying your analyse is wrong but the data u are using is not good).
There allot more issues with the data itself that i don't feel like rambling up. To keep it short each tournaments win ratio is repented by diffrent variabels effecting the outcome. They are not the same so i belive u cant add them up.
On September 09 2012 01:56 theJob wrote: 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 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2.
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.
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.
I am not wrong s data cant be used for anything statistical at all. The op decided to exclude observations. Even if he thinks that there are less top players playing below top 16 its still an opinion and should not effect the sample size. We all know for instance that stephano have played polt in the pool play. IPL hade a pol play that was really Korean heavy . Allot of observation have been excluded so doing a osl of any sort is out of the question (not saying your analyse is wrong but the data u are using is not good).
There allot more issues with the data itself that i don't feel like rambling up. To keep it short each tournaments win ratio is repented by diffrent variabels effecting the outcome. They are not the same so i belive u cant add them up.
Exluding observations is fine... He clearly stated what data he used. It would be extraordinarily unreasonable to expect anyone to do this with every starcraft game ever. Any data collected is going to be a subset of the overall data. That is fine. As long as you are aware what the data you are working with actually is (which OP clearly stated), then you can do the same analysis you would do on any other set of data...
Criteria: - Calculated based on Team Liquid listed “Premiere Events” and “Major Events” with a prize pool of at least $10,000, at least 16 competitors - Forfeited rounds are not calculated - Early competition rounds with more than 64 players were not counted as skill level between players is often too disparate to make useful comparisons.
And of course tournament win ratio is affected by different variables... So what? No one is trying to calculate the effect that jet lag has on korean tournament performance. Whatever the values and/or variables may be is irrelveant to the single variable OP is looking at. He didn't claim to know what caused these results, only what they are. So his analysis is totally fine.
On September 09 2012 01:56 theJob wrote: 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 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2.
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.
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.
I am not wrong s data cant be used for anything statistical at all. The op decided to exclude observations. Even if he thinks that there are less top players playing below top 16 its still an opinion and should not effect the sample size. We all know for instance that stephano have played polt in the pool play. IPL hade a pol play that was really Korean heavy . Allot of observation have been excluded so doing a osl of any sort is out of the question (not saying your analyse is wrong but the data u are using is not good).
There allot more issues with the data itself that i don't feel like rambling up. To keep it short each tournaments win ratio is repented by diffrent variabels effecting the outcome. They are not the same so i belive u cant add them up.
My post touched on the notion that the material shows a negative trend (which it doesn't necessarily do). I never intended to prove or disprove that the sample data is appropriate for the OPs hypothesis. So yes you are right that if one were to not accept the OPs sample for whatever reason, then it’s not interesting what kind of trend there is. But again, I never touched upon that so I'm confused why you bring that up.
Your second point seems to be a bit off. As far as I understand it the OP doesn’t intend to present a comprehensive model which explains why players loose or win tournaments but rather to show whether or nor the skill gap between foreigners and Korean players are changing. For this you would simply need a time variable to represent the flow of time and a second variable representing the skill gap. Foreigner vs Korean win percentages seem to be a reasonable demonstration of differences in skill, at least to me.
Keep in mind that most of the Top tier players within Korea are kept in GSL, and there are still many Code S class players who never competed in foreign scene. If you factor in the fact that competition within Korea is much tougher than other Global competitions, numbers would probably look even more grim for the foreigners.
On September 09 2012 01:56 theJob wrote: 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 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2.
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.
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.
I am not wrong s data cant be used for anything statistical at all. The op decided to exclude observations. Even if he thinks that there are less top players playing below top 16 its still an opinion and should not effect the sample size. We all know for instance that stephano have played polt in the pool play. IPL hade a pol play that was really Korean heavy . Allot of observation have been excluded so doing a osl of any sort is out of the question (not saying your analyse is wrong but the data u are using is not good).
There allot more issues with the data itself that i don't feel like rambling up. To keep it short each tournaments win ratio is repented by diffrent variabels effecting the outcome. They are not the same so i belive u cant add them up.
My post touched on the notion that the material shows a negative trend (which it doesn't necessarily do). I never intended to prove or disprove that the sample data is appropriate for the OPs hypothesis. So yes you are right that if one were to not accept the OPs sample for whatever reason, then it’s not interesting what kind of trend there is. But again, I never touched upon that so I'm confused why you bring that up.
Your second point seems to be a bit off. As far as I understand it the OP doesn’t intend to present a comprehensive model which explains why players loose or win tournaments but rather to show whether or nor the skill gap between foreigners and Korean players are changing. For this you would simply need a time variable to represent the flow of time and a second variable representing the skill gap. Foreigner vs Korean win percentages seem to be a reasonable demonstration of differences in skill, at least to me.
I think u have misinterpreted me. As u can see i only quoted your post since i am well aware that he sated in his post. If it was about the op i would have quoted him . What my post was directed to was your statement alone wich is allot different from the op.
" A linear regression tells us that the relationship between the win percentage of foreigners versus Korean players is declining with roughly 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2. "
Edited: I hade to redo my post again. I tought the answer above u was yours myjob. The points you brought up are all correct. Sry for the confusion. I should have been clear on that i was only discussing the statment alone and not anything else. I am self dont think win ratio by itself is a good measurement for skills
I this would be even more interesting if you ran a data set counting foreigners who live in korea as part of the "koreans" data group. I'd bet that a significant amount of Foreigner vs Korean wins have come from Naniwa, Huk, Sase, Thorzain and even people like Idra or Ret that have competed in korea for a fair amount of time.
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.
Damn, never would've seen it coming.
It makes sense that early on when the game first came out, foreigners had a 40% win rate vs Koreans since the game wasn't really figured out. Now that the game's evolving within Korean gaming houses, it's only a matter of time that even taking a game off a no name Korean guy on the ladder will be an achievement.
inb4 top 10 KeSPA players dominate. Right now they're adjusting to the new game, but their mechanics are far more superior than eSF players.
On September 09 2012 01:56 theJob wrote: 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 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2.
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.
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.
I am not wrong s data cant be used for anything statistical at all. The op decided to exclude observations. Even if he thinks that there are less top players playing below top 16 its still an opinion and should not effect the sample size. We all know for instance that stephano have played polt in the pool play. IPL hade a pol play that was really Korean heavy . Allot of observation have been excluded so doing a osl of any sort is out of the question (not saying your analyse is wrong but the data u are using is not good).
There allot more issues with the data itself that i don't feel like rambling up. To keep it short each tournaments win ratio is repented by diffrent variabels effecting the outcome. They are not the same so i belive u cant add them up.
My post touched on the notion that the material shows a negative trend (which it doesn't necessarily do). I never intended to prove or disprove that the sample data is appropriate for the OPs hypothesis. So yes you are right that if one were to not accept the OPs sample for whatever reason, then it’s not interesting what kind of trend there is. But again, I never touched upon that so I'm confused why you bring that up.
Your second point seems to be a bit off. As far as I understand it the OP doesn’t intend to present a comprehensive model which explains why players loose or win tournaments but rather to show whether or nor the skill gap between foreigners and Korean players are changing. For this you would simply need a time variable to represent the flow of time and a second variable representing the skill gap. Foreigner vs Korean win percentages seem to be a reasonable demonstration of differences in skill, at least to me.
I think u have misinterpreted me. As u can see i only quoted your post since i am well aware that he sated in his post. If it was about the op i would have quoted him . What my post was directed to was your statement alone wich is allot different from the op.
" A linear regression tells us that the relationship between the win percentage of foreigners versus Korean players is declining with roughly 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2. "
This interpetation of the result is correct.
If we are to use a term like "trend" then the relationship (or the coefficient) between the time variable and the win percentage variable is -1,577, under a linear OLS regression. This model has a R^2 of 0,55 and holds on a 95% significanse level.
But I was claiming that a linear trend isn't optimal and that the best fitted line shows a decrease in skillgap recently.
On September 09 2012 01:56 theJob wrote: 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 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2.
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.
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.
I am not wrong s data cant be used for anything statistical at all. The op decided to exclude observations. Even if he thinks that there are less top players playing below top 16 its still an opinion and should not effect the sample size. We all know for instance that stephano have played polt in the pool play. IPL hade a pol play that was really Korean heavy . Allot of observation have been excluded so doing a osl of any sort is out of the question (not saying your analyse is wrong but the data u are using is not good).
There allot more issues with the data itself that i don't feel like rambling up. To keep it short each tournaments win ratio is repented by diffrent variabels effecting the outcome. They are not the same so i belive u cant add them up.
My post touched on the notion that the material shows a negative trend (which it doesn't necessarily do). I never intended to prove or disprove that the sample data is appropriate for the OPs hypothesis. So yes you are right that if one were to not accept the OPs sample for whatever reason, then it’s not interesting what kind of trend there is. But again, I never touched upon that so I'm confused why you bring that up.
Your second point seems to be a bit off. As far as I understand it the OP doesn’t intend to present a comprehensive model which explains why players loose or win tournaments but rather to show whether or nor the skill gap between foreigners and Korean players are changing. For this you would simply need a time variable to represent the flow of time and a second variable representing the skill gap. Foreigner vs Korean win percentages seem to be a reasonable demonstration of differences in skill, at least to me.
I think u have misinterpreted me. As u can see i only quoted your post since i am well aware that he sated in his post. If it was about the op i would have quoted him . What my post was directed to was your statement alone wich is allot different from the op.
" A linear regression tells us that the relationship between the win percentage of foreigners versus Korean players is declining with roughly 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2. "
This interpetation of the result is correct.
If we are to use a term like "trend" then the relationship (or the coefficient) between the time variable and the win percentage variable is -1,577, under a linear OLS regression. This model has a R^2 of 0,55 and holds on a 95% significanse level.
But I was claiming that a linear trend isn't optimal and that the best fitted line shows a decrease in skillgap recently.
Then i apologies . Seems that i was the one misunderstanding on what u were claiming.
On September 09 2012 01:56 theJob wrote: 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 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2.
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.
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.
I am not wrong s data cant be used for anything statistical at all. The op decided to exclude observations. Even if he thinks that there are less top players playing below top 16 its still an opinion and should not effect the sample size. We all know for instance that stephano have played polt in the pool play. IPL hade a pol play that was really Korean heavy . Allot of observation have been excluded so doing a osl of any sort is out of the question (not saying your analyse is wrong but the data u are using is not good).
There allot more issues with the data itself that i don't feel like rambling up. To keep it short each tournaments win ratio is repented by diffrent variabels effecting the outcome. They are not the same so i belive u cant add them up.
My post touched on the notion that the material shows a negative trend (which it doesn't necessarily do). I never intended to prove or disprove that the sample data is appropriate for the OPs hypothesis. So yes you are right that if one were to not accept the OPs sample for whatever reason, then it’s not interesting what kind of trend there is. But again, I never touched upon that so I'm confused why you bring that up.
Your second point seems to be a bit off. As far as I understand it the OP doesn’t intend to present a comprehensive model which explains why players loose or win tournaments but rather to show whether or nor the skill gap between foreigners and Korean players are changing. For this you would simply need a time variable to represent the flow of time and a second variable representing the skill gap. Foreigner vs Korean win percentages seem to be a reasonable demonstration of differences in skill, at least to me.
I think u have misinterpreted me. As u can see i only quoted your post since i am well aware that he sated in his post. If it was about the op i would have quoted him . What my post was directed to was your statement alone wich is allot different from the op.
" A linear regression tells us that the relationship between the win percentage of foreigners versus Korean players is declining with roughly 1,5 % per quarter. The regression holds true on a 95% significance level and has an explanationvalue of 0,55 R^2. "
This interpetation of the result is correct.
If we are to use a term like "trend" then the relationship (or the coefficient) between the time variable and the win percentage variable is -1,577, under a linear OLS regression. This model has a R^2 of 0,55 and holds on a 95% significanse level.
But I was claiming that a linear trend isn't optimal and that the best fitted line shows a decrease in skillgap recently.
Then i apologies . Seems that i was the one misunderstanding on what u were claiming.
I'm unsure whether there would be enough participants meeting these criteria, however it would be interested to do a study that involved comparing koreans born/living in korea vs. 1st or 2nd generation koreans born/living in a foreign country. Although it would strictly be correlation, this could give us a little information regarding whether it is innate ("genetic") or cultural (i.e. work-ethic) differences that seem to enable koreans to be so much better than all foreigners. What do you think?
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
Then one must explain why Crank, Revival, asd, Sleep, Sting, Inori, Monster, etc. have done so well at foreign tournaments.
None of them won any yet I don't think. I'm sure that if you picked 4 of them and sent them to an MLG or a dreamhack without any other koreans, they wouldn't necessarily blow away the competition (especially at dreamhack)
...they already have blown away the competition. That's why I chose them specifically as examples. The only reason they lose is because they run into top foreigners or they play other Koreans. But these mid-tier Koreans do not usually lose against mid-tier foreigners, which should severely dent the "top Koreans skew the statistics" argument.
The last time I saw Monster do really well at a foreign tournament he got utterly stomped by Thorzain so...
What's more, the money for SC2 is clearly in the West this time. At the moment the Koreans have the advantage of their BW history. That will begin to fade in time.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
He won 2 of 4 matches, that is not "getting stomped".
On September 09 2012 00:19 Anomi wrote: U should instead of using Korean vs foreigners switch it to compare full time foreigners players vs full time Korean player.
Full time doesn't mean anything. Nerchio studies, plays other games etc and he's top foreiner. There are some full time pro gamers (I won't name them 'cos it's not positive ) that are rly bad. So that's not a good idea.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
Don't be silly. Just look at this season Code S. Stephano's beaten a lot of those players in Foreign tournaments. Your parochial mindset is very amusing though.
Also beating DRG and Hero in Blizzard Cup - two current Code S players - is hardly getting stomped. It's almost like you are making stuff up to support your amusing viewpoint.
It is beautiful to see people making a science out of this.
Can we bring more publicity to other events as well by analyzing tournament data with say, for example, Taiwanese players vs. Americans or Europeans vs. Koreans, or Americans vs. Koreans. or Americans vs Europeans, etc.
On September 09 2012 03:46 GodTroll wrote: Keep in mind that most of the Top tier players within Korea are kept in GSL, and there are still many Code S class players who never competed in foreign scene. If you factor in the fact that competition within Korea is much tougher than other Global competitions, numbers would probably look even more grim for the foreigners.
You are probably right in your assumptions, but they are still assumptions. Might as well stick to actual results which are on the record rather than theoretical predictions. Results cannot be disputed but predictions are subjective. I think the OP is trying to log the results and letting everyone draw conclusions from that.
Things are going to get skewed very soon anyway because HOTS is running in parallel with WoL. Different players will devote different amounts of time to the different games, and during the Beta there will be lots of imbalanced units and maps that make any conclusions based on results in early Beta somewhat tenuous.
On September 09 2012 03:46 GodTroll wrote: Keep in mind that most of the Top tier players within Korea are kept in GSL, and there are still many Code S class players who never competed in foreign scene. If you factor in the fact that competition within Korea is much tougher than other Global competitions, numbers would probably look even more grim for the foreigners.
This is a very good statement. A lot of other Koreans get overrated if they do well in foreign tournaments which actually most of the top koreans would be able to do.
MVP won IEM? He beat Nestea, lost to violet, then beat 3 eurozergs. Leenock won MLG? Didnt need to beat a single Code S player. Creator winning the Korean WCS is a much much bigger achievement, but goes more unnoticed.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
I don't agree with Stephano being top 10. Who would you leave off the list behind him?
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
I don't agree with Stephano being top 10. Who would you leave off the list behind him?
He was like 10+ spots ahead of Supernova and Byun. That is just utter stupidity.
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
Then one must explain why Crank, Revival, asd, Sleep, Sting, Inori, Monster, etc. have done so well at foreign tournaments.
None of them won any yet I don't think. I'm sure that if you picked 4 of them and sent them to an MLG or a dreamhack without any other koreans, they wouldn't necessarily blow away the competition (especially at dreamhack)
...they already have blown away the competition. That's why I chose them specifically as examples. The only reason they lose is because they run into top foreigners or they play other Koreans. But these mid-tier Koreans do not usually lose against mid-tier foreigners, which should severely dent the "top Koreans skew the statistics" argument.
The last time I saw Monster do really well at a foreign tournament he got utterly stomped by Thorzain so...
What's more, the money for SC2 is clearly in the West this time. At the moment the Koreans have the advantage of their BW history. That will begin to fade in time.
As long as Koreans practice more and better they will keep their advantage. If all the money is in West this time they simply go there to win, we alreay see it happening.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
He won 2 of 4 matches, that is not "getting stomped".
go rewatch his match vs MvP and say that again.. Mvp was on like 5 base to his 2 and nuke pushing stephano's natural....stephano is a great player but that was just gross.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
He won 2 of 4 matches, that is not "getting stomped".
go rewatch his match vs MvP and say that again.. Mvp was on like 5 base to his 2 and nuke pushing stephano's natural....stephano is a great player but that was just gross.
now i know your really making garbage up, i saw that blizzard cup game with mvp and stephano.. Basically mvp did a really big hellion/marine timing and won. Nukes? lawl make shit up please.
Stephano good player , cut the hate. In those days stephano was still evolving his strategys, Soon after that he started building roaches everygame everytime against T to prevent cute shit like that , his vs T right now is incredibly impressive as he has been evolving it further to take into account the mass queen strats as well. Steffy dont loose vs T right now. I'd say only a select few terrans can beat him ( taeja/marineking/ and mvp when hes on fire)
You'd think the gap would at least even out at at least 30% but looks like it's just declining further. WHY is that?? It's just one country vs maybe about 20-30 (?). The Beta Koreans are still reaching top 4 Code S whereas the foreigner Beta players can't even make Code A anymore. So you cant really say coz the good foreigners have "aged out" thus declining in reflex speed.
You'd think the gap would at least even out at at least 30% but looks like it's just declining further. WHY is that?? It's just one country vs maybe about 20-30 (?). The Beta Koreans are still reaching top 4 Code S whereas the foreigner Beta players can't even make Code A anymore. So you cant really say coz the good foreigners have "aged out" thus declining in reflex speed.
I feel when people talk about the gap closing, they are too often referring to the top foreigners vsing the moving average of koreans. The top tier koreans still stand on a pedestal. The data included in here is skewed. Inclusion of the overall foreign community isn't wrong, but it doesn't show what the top foreigner's results specifically. By the inclusion of the average of the foreign pro, and the expansion of the SC2 scene in foreign play, you're expected to see a certain drop. I don't think it's unexpected to see what's being shown in the OP; but the OP should try and include results of the top performing foreigners vsing koreans at aforementioned events.
On September 09 2012 13:27 etherealfall wrote: I feel when people talk about the gap closing, they are too often referring to the top foreigners vsing the moving average of koreans. The top tier koreans still stand on a pedestal. The data included in here is skewed. Inclusion of the overall foreign community isn't wrong, but it doesn't show what the top foreigner's results specifically. By the inclusion of the average of the foreign pro, and the expansion of the SC2 scene in foreign play, you're expected to see a certain drop. I don't think it's unexpected to see what's being shown in the OP; but the OP should try and include results of the top performing foreigners vsing koreans at aforementioned events.
Pretty much this. They see a few top foreigners like Naniwa, Stephano, etc.. taking games off high level koreans and they apply that to the overall foreign scene
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
do you know how big code s is?
truth is there are hundreds of Code A Koreans are just as good as their Code S counter parts, and when you add in the KeSPA players, well there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best".
Truth is, there is not even 100 code a players. There are 48.
there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best"
This is just utterly false, go on Korean ELO, there are less than 200 pros. And unless you count biybybit, hopetorture, haypro, carn, and artosis as the "best of the best," then not even the top 200 are.
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
do you know how big code s is?
truth is there are hundreds of Code A Koreans are just as good as their Code S counter parts, and when you add in the KeSPA players, well there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best".
Truth is, there is not even 100 code a players. There are 48.
there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best"
This is just utterly false, go on Korean ELO, there are less than 200 pros. And unless you count biybybit, hopetorture, haypro, carn, and artosis as the "best of the best," then not even the top 200 are.
There will be 80 Kespa players that will be competing in Code A qualifiers. Would you honestly say most of them aren't better than most foreign pros?
The only reason the gap isn't as huge as it was in broodwar is because SC2 is an easier game, with a lower skill cap, hard counters, and more ways to win if you are the weaker mechanical player. Also is why foreign Terrans have performed worse than their Z and P counterparts. Naniwa/Mana mechanics are very similar to MC/Parting because Protoss doesn't have a very demanding mechanical aspect. Same with Stephano/Nerchio to Korean Zergs.
Now Taeja or Bomber? No Foreign T even comes close to their mechanics and never will.
i think foreigners are simply too susceptible to pressure, and they really don't scout as much as koreans. i think these two factors lead koreans simply to have much better results when their standard play includes checking for cheeses and hitting their timings right.
idk its everything when it comes to skill, koreans just are way better lol
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
do you know how big code s is?
truth is there are hundreds of Code A Koreans are just as good as their Code S counter parts, and when you add in the KeSPA players, well there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best".
Truth is, there is not even 100 code a players. There are 48.
there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best"
This is just utterly false, go on Korean ELO, there are less than 200 pros. And unless you count biybybit, hopetorture, haypro, carn, and artosis as the "best of the best," then not even the top 200 are.
There will be 80 Kespa players that will be competing in Code A qualifiers. Would you honestly say most of them aren't better than most foreign pros?
The only reason the gap isn't as huge as it was in broodwar is because SC2 is an easier game, with a lower skill cap, hard counters, and more ways to win if you are the weaker mechanical player. Also is why foreign Terrans have performed worse than their Z and P counterparts. Naniwa/Mana mechanics are very similar to MC/Parting because Protoss doesn't have a very demanding mechanical aspect. Same with Stephano/Nerchio to Korean Zergs.
Now Taeja or Bomber? No Foreign T even comes close to their mechanics and never will.
Did you mean to reply to me? Code a will still be 48 players, also,a ton of the kespa guys are already on the sc2 elo charts from wcs, wcg, osl and pro-league. Literally everything I said still stands. The best of the best will always be a few people.
As for Kespa vs foreigner, I think we should wait until they play some matches before assuming anything.
On September 07 2012 10:52 Cascade wrote: Two suggestions: 1) Include error bars. It is very easy and should show what are actually trends, and what are just fluctuations. You will get errors of a few percent I think, so "33.4%" is maybe a bit too ambitious way to write it, and just "33%" is probably enough.
2) To try to estimate the "well it's the best koreans vs scrub foreigners" argument above, you can plot round of 16,8,4 and finals separately. If indeed it is an important effect you will see koreans having better winrates in the earlier rounds. Beware of low statistics though, specially at the later rounds. Probably better to do this for all data, rather than quarter by quarter.
I fully support this proposal. If DRob did it, it would be great!
The fact of the matter is practice. You have guys living together in an apartment who just practice all day, and actually practicing, ie. actively working on developing their skills, rather than just playing. That's the main reason why Korean players are so much better.
Nearly all non-Koreans pros simply don't have that kind of dedication and effort. Keep in mind most Korean players are hold up in Korea. Release more of them in non-Korean tourneys, and I'm willing to bet the numbers would be even more uneven.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
That's not even remotely correct.
First things first, he didn't get stomped at blizzard cup. He went 2-2, same record as MC, beating Hero and the master of ZvZ himself (at the time, as he had recently defeated Nestea in a ZvZ) DRG.
So then you go listing a bunch of zergs because you think he has bad ZvZ, and sure, it's his worst matchup, but that doesn't mean that any of those guys are better than him. Freaky is fantastic to watch, but he's retired now because he just couldn't cut it. Seal and Life are streaky at best. Life almost lost to Elfi in a BO5. ELFI!
Even IF you focus purely on ones ability to win the mirror matchup as a judge of skill of how good they are (which is completely retarded by the way), stephano has lost to the same sort of players plenty of koreans have lost to. Nerchio has been on fire lately for example, from Dreamhack Winter to WCS Poland to Homestory Cup to IEM, he's been putting up great results and frequently knocking down koreans. His results of course pale in comparison to Stephano's.
The fact of the matter is, that while the koreans in general are vastly better than foriegners a select few foreigners are able to truely compete. There's just a handful of them, but while everyone else is busy losing games they're out there inspiring. Stephano has proven to be even better than that though, he beats code S players such as MC, Hero and Polt ALL THE TIME. He's top ten in the world. Look at his fucking bracket in the NASL finals, that was NOT an easy bracket. His blizzard cup run was SO CLOSE to making it into the next round but unfortunately that's not the way the cookie crumbled that time. Lone star clash taking down Polt? MLG Spring Arena where he beat Ryung, MC and Heart? Summer championship beating Rain, Heart, and STC? the list goes on and on. But whatever, if you want to pretend there's pretend none of that happened then you're just delusional and I won't bother arguing with you.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
I don't agree with Stephano being top 10. Who would you leave off the list behind him?
He was like 10+ spots ahead of Supernova and Byun. That is just utter stupidity.
Is that the SuperNova that Stephano beat last week?
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
He won 2 of 4 matches, that is not "getting stomped".
go rewatch his match vs MvP and say that again.. Mvp was on like 5 base to his 2 and nuke pushing stephano's natural....stephano is a great player but that was just gross.
now i know your really making garbage up, i saw that blizzard cup game with mvp and stephano.. Basically mvp did a really big hellion/marine timing and won. Nukes? lawl make shit up please.
Stephano good player , cut the hate. In those days stephano was still evolving his strategys, Soon after that he started building roaches everygame everytime against T to prevent cute shit like that , his vs T right now is incredibly impressive as he has been evolving it further to take into account the mass queen strats as well. Steffy dont loose vs T right now. I'd say only a select few terrans can beat him ( taeja/marineking/ and mvp when hes on fire)
It's quite amusing how the haters completely undermine any credibility they might have by making up stuff that never happened in a desperate attempt to support their amusing fantasy. 5 bases vs 2? Nuking the natural? Haha, are these people drunk or just pathological liars? Next he'll be claiming MVP swooped in on a unicorn to harrass Stephano's mineral line and got his drones to defect to his side!
On September 09 2012 01:56 theJob wrote: 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.
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.
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.
Thanks!
The OLS regression doesn't take the error of the data into account right? What about using a plain sqrt(N) error for each data point and using a chi-square minimization instead (linear or squared as you want)? Can you do that without too much work?
I'm asking as the two first points are contributing quite a lot to the negative trend, and they are also the points with the smallest sample size. So it would be interesting to see how strong the signal for decreasing winrate is if you take the low statistics into account.
Sorry folks, Stephano =/= all foreigners. Look at the bigger picture. You want to look at real inspirational foreigners? Look no further, Mana and Naniwa are here. Many of you have no idea how hard it is to make it in a foreign country where you don't even know the native language. Yet these 2 have have made that giant leap forward, understood that to be the best, they had to practise among the best and most importantly, shown results in the worlds toughest tournament.
TBH isn´t the reason for Koreans doing better vs foreigners as of late, simply because fewer Koreans attend foreign tournaments and the ones that do are really at the top of the curve. There was a time where every team just sent their players because they could get easy tournament wins, which means less good korean players.
The only reason the gap isn't as huge as it was in broodwar is because SC2 is an easier game, with a lower skill cap, hard counters, and more ways to win if you are the weaker mechanical player. Also is why foreign Terrans have performed worse than their Z and P counterparts. Naniwa/Mana mechanics are very similar to MC/Parting because Protoss doesn't have a very demanding mechanical aspect. Same with Stephano/Nerchio to Korean Zergs.
Now Taeja or Bomber? No Foreign T even comes close to their mechanics and never will.
The reason the gap isn´t as huge is because, unlike in Broodwar foreigners actually play the game at a high level and they get practice vs koreans. In Broodwar there wasn´t really any European scene and US cybergaming has always been very meek. Now we´ve got a bigger US AND European scene and thus they will fair better vs the Korean always HUGE scene.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
He won 2 of 4 matches, that is not "getting stomped".
go rewatch his match vs MvP and say that again.. Mvp was on like 5 base to his 2 and nuke pushing stephano's natural....stephano is a great player but that was just gross.
now i know your really making garbage up, i saw that blizzard cup game with mvp and stephano.. Basically mvp did a really big hellion/marine timing and won. Nukes? lawl make shit up please.
Stephano good player , cut the hate. In those days stephano was still evolving his strategys, Soon after that he started building roaches everygame everytime against T to prevent cute shit like that , his vs T right now is incredibly impressive as he has been evolving it further to take into account the mass queen strats as well. Steffy dont loose vs T right now. I'd say only a select few terrans can beat him ( taeja/marineking/ and mvp when hes on fire)
It's quite amusing how the haters completely undermine any credibility they might have by making up stuff that never happened in a desperate attempt to support their amusing fantasy. 5 bases vs 2? Nuking the natural? Haha, are these people drunk or just pathological liars? Next he'll be claiming MVP swooped in on a unicorn to harrass Stephano's mineral line and got his drones to defect to his side!
LOL, whut?
It did happen, I really don't know what you guys are on about. The thing is that the game was already over when MVP did a hellion/marine push, the mass expanding everywhere was because MVP floated a lot of minerals.
You Stephano fanboys, I have nothing against other than the way you argue. I don't mind you defending a player, but say stuff like it was a bo1 or the 5 base vs 2 was irrelevent as the game was over already due to a timing attack which is entirely true. You don't have to deny shit that actually happened. Hell this just makes the "haters" correct and makes those in the community hate you.
Btw, MVP tried to nuke twice (once the ghost died and the other, Stephano gg-ed before it ended).
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
First things first, he didn't get stomped at blizzard cup. He went 2-2, same record as MC, beating Hero and the master of ZvZ himself (at the time, as he had recently defeated Nestea in a ZvZ) DRG. .
Nothing against the rest of your argument. But DRG beat Nestea in Code S 2 months later... unless I'm missing something?
On September 09 2012 21:18 ejozl wrote: TBH isn´t the reason for Koreans doing better vs foreigners as of late, simply because fewer Koreans attend foreign tournaments and the ones that do are really at the top of the curve. There was a time where every team just sent their players because they could get easy tournament wins, which means less good korean players.
Hmm, there we would expect fewer games between foreigners and koreans lately, which is not what you see in the data the OP published (follow link, go to spreadsheet).
On September 09 2012 21:12 Incomplet wrote: Sorry folks, Stephano =/= all foreigners. Look at the bigger picture. You want to look at real inspirational foreigners? Look no further, Mana and Naniwa are here. Many of you have no idea how hard it is to make it in a foreign country where you don't even know the native language. Yet these 2 have have made that giant leap forward, understood that to be the best, they had to practise among the best and most importantly, shown results in the worlds toughest tournament.
No-one is pretending that Stephano is a typical foreigner. There has just been people making untrue claims about him that needed correcting. If every foreigner was at the level of Stephano then there would be parity between Korean and foreign pro-gamers - an even rivalry. There would probably not even be a rivalry between Koreans and foreign players as such, if there was no disparity in ability. It would just be player vs player and nationality would be much more of a side-note.
Everyone knows that Koreans dominate SC2. It is quite clearly the case. This thread is logging the actual results as hard data from which trends can be extrapolated. In your own recent thread on the issue, you have addressed some of the challenges that foreign pro-teams need to overcome in order to help bridge the gap. Your thread is about the possible solutions to bridging that gap.
I am not sure what the OP is intending to do here now that HOTS Beta has come out. It clouds the data and conclusions based on results over the next few months become less secure due to the instability of the Beta process.
On September 07 2012 15:50 saynomore wrote: In these days and ages it would be good to separate americans from europeans imo.
Yes, wasn't there a thread that showed europeans had similar or better stats than koreans (and american were far behind)? I think it came from a tournament like MLG.
Like MMR and moving MMR, you can't really talk about 'skill' level until you start mapping these out. Why? Because of luck, variance and discrepancy in skill level. You can argue 'x' beat 'y' at 'z' but really, that's one match, one series, at one place in time. That's like saying well I beat 3 Masters players out of the 15 games I've played today - does that mean I'm at Masters level yet? Seems like everyone is trying to 'rank' skill without really looking at how complicated such a term is.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
I don't agree with Stephano being top 10. Who would you leave off the list behind him?
He was like 10+ spots ahead of Supernova and Byun. That is just utter stupidity.
Is that the SuperNova that Stephano beat last week?
you're honestly putting stock into a ZvT that was online to boot?
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
I don't agree with Stephano being top 10. Who would you leave off the list behind him?
He was like 10+ spots ahead of Supernova and Byun. That is just utter stupidity.
Is that the SuperNova that Stephano beat last week?
you're honestly putting stock into a ZvT that was online to boot?
As opposed to you who are just ignoring tournament results due to your hatred of Stephano? Or making up lies about Stephano getting stomped in Blizzard Cup?
You obviously did not even watch SuperNova play Stephano with $1000 on the line because 'you don't care about foreign tournaments'. Thankfully most people are not so parochial and narrow-minded.
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
so foreigners playing in GSL is not fair due to jetlag/preparation but koreans playing in foreign tournaments is not fair cus only good players attend...
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.
What I'm trying to say is that most koreans playing in foreign tournaments are Code S level which is not really fair for comparisons.
do you know how big code s is?
truth is there are hundreds of Code A Koreans are just as good as their Code S counter parts, and when you add in the KeSPA players, well there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best".
Truth is, there is not even 100 code a players. There are 48.
there are literally thousands of Koreans that are considered the "best of the best"
This is just utterly false, go on Korean ELO, there are less than 200 pros. And unless you count biybybit, hopetorture, haypro, carn, and artosis as the "best of the best," then not even the top 200 are.
There will be 80 Kespa players that will be competing in Code A qualifiers. Would you honestly say most of them aren't better than most foreign pros?
The only reason the gap isn't as huge as it was in broodwar is because SC2 is an easier game, with a lower skill cap, hard counters, and more ways to win if you are the weaker mechanical player. Also is why foreign Terrans have performed worse than their Z and P counterparts. Naniwa/Mana mechanics are very similar to MC/Parting because Protoss doesn't have a very demanding mechanical aspect. Same with Stephano/Nerchio to Korean Zergs.
Now Taeja or Bomber? No Foreign T even comes close to their mechanics and never will.
Did you mean to reply to me? Code a will still be 48 players, also,a ton of the kespa guys are already on the sc2 elo charts from wcs, wcg, osl and pro-league. Literally everything I said still stands. The best of the best will always be a few people.
As for Kespa vs foreigner, I think we should wait until they play some matches before assuming anything.
he did cus ur wrong. code A players = players with enuf skill to get into/compete in code A. yeah of course there are only a certain amount of players that can play in code A but there at least a 100 code A level players in korea. examples can be top foreigners and many other skilled former code S/A players that cant even qualify for new code A seasons and Naniwa's poor performance in Code A.
Whats your conclusion as to why the win rates are declining. I would assume that, the competitive foreigner player pool isnt as large as the koreans, so players like ret who is constantly on and off with practice is up against the newest korean robot
that and as the game gets more figured out koreans are just fulling ahead with their superior execution and mechanics
That is cool data. It would be nice to see this described in terms of relative ladder rankings. For example, is an ~25% win ratio similar to mid-masters vs. high-masters, or more like low-diamond vs. high-masters? I'm hoping someone more familiar with MMR (which seems similar to ELO) will be able to give insight.
Yeah but most certainly the korean players pool in the stats is way smaller than the non korean pool, because the best koreans only comes to international tournaments.
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 ><)
Lol everyone thinks it's closing, I wrote a topic discussing the gap and it was how the gap was rising similar to BW where at first Rekrul and pro players could compete and then eventually only a few people could match them.
Needless to say I got shut down by the community from posters saying the gap was closing : D
On June 26 2012 02:43 Colocolo wrote: tbh I think foreigners are more and more closing the gap
especially: Stephano, Sase, Naniwa beating Code-S players in tourneys atm.
So there might be no basis for any discussion?
I believe that is short sited, I can understand the prospect of equality based off recent results from the "stars" of the foreigners but you have to really look at Korea... How many no name players are sitting in Code B waiting to get on? A hell of a lot more up and coming foreigners, Artosis is quoted many times saying that there are some Code B players who could easily play in Code S and make a run but the qualifiers are filled with so much talent. So I'm looking a bit more down the road, 3-5 years, will we have a sea of talent? Or one or two names here and there while all the talent originates from Korea.
Anywho the gap is increasing and soon it will be the same as before
On September 09 2012 21:12 Incomplet wrote: Sorry folks, Stephano =/= all foreigners. Look at the bigger picture. You want to look at real inspirational foreigners? Look no further, Mana and Naniwa are here. Many of you have no idea how hard it is to make it in a foreign country where you don't even know the native language. Yet these 2 have have made that giant leap forward, understood that to be the best, they had to practise among the best and most importantly, shown results in the worlds toughest tournament.
Which result did MaNa put in the GSL? As far as I know he didn't win a match yet. Not saying that it's bad (his group was hardcore, a double GSL champion got eliminated from it...) but he hasn't shown results in the world's toughest tournament yet.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
That's not even remotely correct.
First things first, he didn't get stomped at blizzard cup. He went 2-2, same record as MC, beating Hero and the master of ZvZ himself (at the time, as he had recently defeated Nestea in a ZvZ) DRG.
So then you go listing a bunch of zergs because you think he has bad ZvZ, and sure, it's his worst matchup, but that doesn't mean that any of those guys are better than him. Freaky is fantastic to watch, but he's retired now because he just couldn't cut it. Seal and Life are streaky at best. Life almost lost to Elfi in a BO5. ELFI!
Even IF you focus purely on ones ability to win the mirror matchup as a judge of skill of how good they are (which is completely retarded by the way), stephano has lost to the same sort of players plenty of koreans have lost to. Nerchio has been on fire lately for example, from Dreamhack Winter to WCS Poland to Homestory Cup to IEM, he's been putting up great results and frequently knocking down koreans. His results of course pale in comparison to Stephano's.
The fact of the matter is, that while the koreans in general are vastly better than foriegners a select few foreigners are able to truely compete. There's just a handful of them, but while everyone else is busy losing games they're out there inspiring. Stephano has proven to be even better than that though, he beats code S players such as MC, Hero and Polt ALL THE TIME. He's top ten in the world. Look at his fucking bracket in the NASL finals, that was NOT an easy bracket. His blizzard cup run was SO CLOSE to making it into the next round but unfortunately that's not the way the cookie crumbled that time. Lone star clash taking down Polt? MLG Spring Arena where he beat Ryung, MC and Heart? Summer championship beating Rain, Heart, and STC? the list goes on and on. But whatever, if you want to pretend there's pretend none of that happened then you're just delusional and I won't bother arguing with you.
listing a bunch of terran when the TvZ meta was clearly zerg favorite realy helps you prove your point /sarcasm
On September 07 2012 15:50 saynomore wrote: In these days and ages it would be good to separate americans from europeans imo.
Yes, wasn't there a thread that showed europeans had similar or better stats than koreans (and american were far behind)? I think it came from a tournament like MLG.
Yeah in Spring Championship where Stephano placed 6th and Sase 4th Europeans won 53% of their matches against Koreans.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
That's not even remotely correct.
First things first, he didn't get stomped at blizzard cup. He went 2-2, same record as MC, beating Hero and the master of ZvZ himself (at the time, as he had recently defeated Nestea in a ZvZ) DRG.
So then you go listing a bunch of zergs because you think he has bad ZvZ, and sure, it's his worst matchup, but that doesn't mean that any of those guys are better than him. Freaky is fantastic to watch, but he's retired now because he just couldn't cut it. Seal and Life are streaky at best. Life almost lost to Elfi in a BO5. ELFI!
Even IF you focus purely on ones ability to win the mirror matchup as a judge of skill of how good they are (which is completely retarded by the way), stephano has lost to the same sort of players plenty of koreans have lost to. Nerchio has been on fire lately for example, from Dreamhack Winter to WCS Poland to Homestory Cup to IEM, he's been putting up great results and frequently knocking down koreans. His results of course pale in comparison to Stephano's.
The fact of the matter is, that while the koreans in general are vastly better than foriegners a select few foreigners are able to truely compete. There's just a handful of them, but while everyone else is busy losing games they're out there inspiring. Stephano has proven to be even better than that though, he beats code S players such as MC, Hero and Polt ALL THE TIME. He's top ten in the world. Look at his fucking bracket in the NASL finals, that was NOT an easy bracket. His blizzard cup run was SO CLOSE to making it into the next round but unfortunately that's not the way the cookie crumbled that time. Lone star clash taking down Polt? MLG Spring Arena where he beat Ryung, MC and Heart? Summer championship beating Rain, Heart, and STC? the list goes on and on. But whatever, if you want to pretend there's pretend none of that happened then you're just delusional and I won't bother arguing with you.
listing a bunch of terran when the TvZ meta was clearly zerg favorite realy helps you prove your point /sarcasm
Yup, it was during the time when GSTL was 20-1 in favor of Zerg in ZvT and Ryung said he couldn't even beat any Zergs on NA ladder.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
That's not even remotely correct.
First things first, he didn't get stomped at blizzard cup. He went 2-2, same record as MC, beating Hero and the master of ZvZ himself (at the time, as he had recently defeated Nestea in a ZvZ) DRG.
So then you go listing a bunch of zergs because you think he has bad ZvZ, and sure, it's his worst matchup, but that doesn't mean that any of those guys are better than him. Freaky is fantastic to watch, but he's retired now because he just couldn't cut it. Seal and Life are streaky at best. Life almost lost to Elfi in a BO5. ELFI!
Even IF you focus purely on ones ability to win the mirror matchup as a judge of skill of how good they are (which is completely retarded by the way), stephano has lost to the same sort of players plenty of koreans have lost to. Nerchio has been on fire lately for example, from Dreamhack Winter to WCS Poland to Homestory Cup to IEM, he's been putting up great results and frequently knocking down koreans. His results of course pale in comparison to Stephano's.
The fact of the matter is, that while the koreans in general are vastly better than foriegners a select few foreigners are able to truely compete. There's just a handful of them, but while everyone else is busy losing games they're out there inspiring. Stephano has proven to be even better than that though, he beats code S players such as MC, Hero and Polt ALL THE TIME. He's top ten in the world. Look at his fucking bracket in the NASL finals, that was NOT an easy bracket. His blizzard cup run was SO CLOSE to making it into the next round but unfortunately that's not the way the cookie crumbled that time. Lone star clash taking down Polt? MLG Spring Arena where he beat Ryung, MC and Heart? Summer championship beating Rain, Heart, and STC? the list goes on and on. But whatever, if you want to pretend there's pretend none of that happened then you're just delusional and I won't bother arguing with you.
listing a bunch of terran when the TvZ meta was clearly zerg favorite realy helps you prove your point /sarcasm
I listed MC among them, could've also said Hero and Alicia for NASL. I'm saying that he places highly in just about every tournament he enters. He is more consistent than all but maybe nine people on the planet right now and that is because he has mastered two matchups and his ZvZ is improving again.
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.
Only Korean tournament he entered, Blizzard Cup, he got stomped. I don't care about foreign tournaments. There are dozens of players in Korea that don't go to Foreign tournaments that could win them effortlessly over Stephano aka Seal, Freaky, Life + soooo many others.
That's not even remotely correct.
First things first, he didn't get stomped at blizzard cup. He went 2-2, same record as MC, beating Hero and the master of ZvZ himself (at the time, as he had recently defeated Nestea in a ZvZ) DRG.
So then you go listing a bunch of zergs because you think he has bad ZvZ, and sure, it's his worst matchup, but that doesn't mean that any of those guys are better than him. Freaky is fantastic to watch, but he's retired now because he just couldn't cut it. Seal and Life are streaky at best. Life almost lost to Elfi in a BO5. ELFI!
Even IF you focus purely on ones ability to win the mirror matchup as a judge of skill of how good they are (which is completely retarded by the way), stephano has lost to the same sort of players plenty of koreans have lost to. Nerchio has been on fire lately for example, from Dreamhack Winter to WCS Poland to Homestory Cup to IEM, he's been putting up great results and frequently knocking down koreans. His results of course pale in comparison to Stephano's.
The fact of the matter is, that while the koreans in general are vastly better than foriegners a select few foreigners are able to truely compete. There's just a handful of them, but while everyone else is busy losing games they're out there inspiring. Stephano has proven to be even better than that though, he beats code S players such as MC, Hero and Polt ALL THE TIME. He's top ten in the world. Look at his fucking bracket in the NASL finals, that was NOT an easy bracket. His blizzard cup run was SO CLOSE to making it into the next round but unfortunately that's not the way the cookie crumbled that time. Lone star clash taking down Polt? MLG Spring Arena where he beat Ryung, MC and Heart? Summer championship beating Rain, Heart, and STC? the list goes on and on. But whatever, if you want to pretend there's pretend none of that happened then you're just delusional and I won't bother arguing with you.
listing a bunch of terran when the TvZ meta was clearly zerg favorite realy helps you prove your point /sarcasm
I listed MC among them, could've also said Hero and Alicia for NASL. I'm saying that he places highly in just about every tournament he enters. He is more consistent than all but maybe nine people on the planet right now and that is because he has mastered two matchups and his ZvZ is improving again.
Or because there are dozens of Koreans as good or better than him that don't go to Foreign tourneys?
On September 09 2012 21:12 Incomplet wrote: Sorry folks, Stephano =/= all foreigners. Look at the bigger picture. You want to look at real inspirational foreigners? Look no further, Mana and Naniwa are here. Many of you have no idea how hard it is to make it in a foreign country where you don't even know the native language. Yet these 2 have have made that giant leap forward, understood that to be the best, they had to practise among the best and most importantly, shown results in the worlds toughest tournament.
Which result did MaNa put in the GSL? As far as I know he didn't win a match yet. Not saying that it's bad (his group was hardcore, a double GSL champion got eliminated from it...) but he hasn't shown results in the world's toughest tournament yet.
He played Up & Down if i am not completely mistaken.
Split with US vs EU vs KR would be somewhat unfair as there are many not so great players going to MLGs but only the better Europeans and the top notch Koreans go there so you can not compare this stuff all that well tbh.
On September 11 2012 02:54 Burns wrote: Whats your conclusion as to why the win rates are declining. I would assume that, the competitive foreigner player pool isnt as large as the koreans, so players like ret who is constantly on and off with practice is up against the newest korean robot
that and as the game gets more figured out koreans are just fulling ahead with their superior execution and mechanics
That's the problem. You cannot just turn it off and on.
If I take time off or suffer an injuty. That's time lost to train whereas every other athlete is trains around the clock with little to no rest periods. It's a job and you have to treat it as such. If you start messing around with your routine well sir don't expect to get much in return.
This has always been the pretense of the Foreigner. We treat it more like a hobby or do a lot of other things on the side.
"Oh screw this, I'm going to do something else for a little while."
You wonder why some guys have a hard time and come up with the excuses, "Well, I might of had a shot if I knew what he was doing but that's the first time I've ever seen it." When guys have been doing it for months on the other servers.
That's no excuse. If you are down on your results well you might want to look at the way you've been training and things you might have been missing.
As for the pool of gamers. Abroad I see just as many up-and-comers/jump start teams, so I wouldn't say the pool for SC2 gamers in Korea is any bigger than the global scale of gamers we have playing as of now.
Half the foreigner wins are from Stephano. (Just kidding).
Honestly, not very surprising, but the data IS skewed though. There are "foreigner" events and "Korean" events, where only the best Koreans go to foreigner events. Would love to see the numbers for, say, tournaments after the Ro16 where all the bad foreigners are out and there is a healthy number of Korean representation.
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 ><)
Considering the amount of koreans in foreign tournaments has a growing trend (since 2010), and the competition in korea is getting bigger (which should lead to a rise in level), more or less equal winrates (per map, not set) is not a very bad sign. Not saying the gap is closing, but it's not as bad as you describe. It means level of play is probably rising. Also, bolded part of your post was always the case, except for a few outliers, like jinro, idra, stephano and naniwa.
Don't get me wrong, i'm not very optimistic, levels rise, but foreigners will never get further then those outliers imo.
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