Lilbow and his Approach to WCS Finals 2015 - Page 31

On November 04 2015 17:38 FromtheAbysS wrote:


That's a fact. So, here we have a interesting question that I saw already in this topic. Is Life's cheese the same than a diamond player can do it on ladder ? Is it defendable or not. Lilbow tried to defend cheese whithout play at 100% of his capacities, or he wasn't able to defend it at all ?

I think he began the serie as he lost it already. As I said before, I don't blame him to did'nt practice HOTS before the event, he has his reasons, but I would have liked to see him to tickle Life a little bit more.

On November 04 2015 17:58 deacon.frost wrote:

Edit> Hm, I just realized that Lilbow had no forge therefore the only playable option was to go 3 gate expand.

On November 04 2015 17:48 papaz wrote:
Impressive that this Lil guy made it all the way to this tournament. Watching the series was quite painful though because he was no where in the same league as his opponent. But sometimes watching Goliath stomp David can also be fun.

On November 04 2015 22:20 FromtheAbysS wrote:


Yep. I am Top Plat Terran and Mid Gold Zerg. I play Toss only vs IA, but I know well SC2 and the lack of forge shocked me too Especially vs Life the "Master of speedlings". Maybe Lilbow didn't watch replay from Life, and didn't know his playstyle

This is a big deal for many folks because Lilbow was our Foreign Hope. He left WCS S3 a Champion with a Champion's mentality. I talked to Dayshi a lot about Lilbow at Gfinity, and he said that Lilbow believed he could win Blizzcon and that he was gunning for a very high finish. What the fuck happened? That was on September 24th/25th. The WCS brackets were released October 6th. Did Lilbow see his opponent and think "Well, shit, never mind. I'll just go play Legacy." That's not how a champion approaches competition and that's not how a professional shows respect for his fans or his sport.

On November 04 2015 17:58 deacon.frost wrote:

The problem probably is that Lilbow doesn't meet this strategy too often so he doesn't know the proper response and he was playing LotV where is no 6 pool. IIRC he went 1 gate expand after he defended the 6 pool. He didn't scout Life therefore he didn't know if there's an expansion(wasn't). He saw many slow lings(too many vs 3 zealots without a choke). Taking natural is a big nono. Probably the best option if you want to go risky natural is to go a pylon near ramp, cannon touching your nexus and the nexus itself. This way you can protect you cannon and nexus with fewer units. Usually you go good old WoL 3 gate expand. He went "fuck it, I'm done" expansion... I was really shocked as a diamond Protoss player

Edit> Hm, I just realized that Lilbow had no forge therefore the only playable option was to go 3 gate expand.

On November 05 2015 00:08 brickrd wrote:
he did standard gateway scout timing and saw the lings at the same time any pro player doing any normal build would ever see them... no one 9 scouts at pro level, he had plenty of time to react. the problem was he went for gate expand at the natural wall, which meant he had to try to build the forge IN the wall just so he could get cannons in his mineral line. it was greedy.

as for the "he didn't know how to defend it" argument, lol. the way you make it to masters, GM, pro level is exactly by knowing how to response to any weird build you can think of, otherwise you will die in diamond league to people who do the same strange cheese every single game and know how to execute it perfectly. if he doesn't know how to defend a 6 pool he doesn't belong in the booth

On November 04 2015 03:21 Nebuchad wrote:You are literally arguing that "foreign scene is embarrassed" and "foreign player produces embarrassing games" have no connection to each other. I don't know what else to say.

On November 05 2015 01:40 Cazimirbzh wrote:
so i hope we all agree that once again blizzard and DK are to blame right ?

On November 05 2015 01:27 Umpteen wrote:


That's not true, though.

A few years back a guy from Equatorial Guinea entered the Olympic 100m Freestyle swimming. He had never in his life seen a 50m pool, and had trained in a lake. He took over twice as long to complete the distance as anyone else, and when he finished he brought the fucking house down. He had the guts to try his best in front of thousands of spectators, knowing that he was going to finish dead last.

Now imagine for a moment the guy from Bahrain who finished second to last - still almost a minute quicker - had said "Eh; I didn't bother training because I had more important things going on."

Which of those guys would look like an asshat? Which country would feel embarrassed by the person who represented them? Who would be remembered as insulting the spirit of the Olympics, and who as exemplifying it?

On November 03 2015 01:15 NonY wrote:
I was surprised because Lilbow struck me as a player who entered tournaments with some plans and specific builds in mind. The mechanics between LotV and HotS are not that different. As long as he's playing a lot of one or the other and has some good builds to bring to the match, builds which he already knows or can tweak a little bit without needing a live opponent, he should do pretty well. He wouldn't have to put in that much effort to pick the builds and he'd only have to go through each one a few times vs AI the day before to freshen up on them. It wouldn't be ideal because it'd be unlikely that he innovates and without many hours of practice against a worthy opponent he couldn't hammer out all the details, but still I think he'd get 90% of the way with minimal effort and have a better showing than what he did. Maybe I'm misjudging the whole situation and misjudging him but I think he has the talent and already attained enough skill to do as I've said and the best explanation for when the results prove otherwise is that he gave up before he started.

edit: I'm guessing that it didn't occur to him that a little bit of effort could have carried him 90% of the way and preserved his dignity and given him a shot at actually advancing a round. But to comment on the gist of the OP: It is a bit disappointing that our best players don't see something like this Blizzcon finals, which is the most important tournament in SC2 and is the last HotS tournament ever and the last chance to show all the knowledge and skill you have in HotS, that they don't see it as a challenge and the very reason they got into progaming in the first place. There are several players that have a decent shot at beating top Koreans, and they do it in tournaments here and there, but it's only at a tournament like at Blizzcon where foreigners can make history by advancing a few rounds. Pretty hard to imagine passing that opportunity up out of fear that the off-season won't be enough time to prep for LotV. And if his performance declines in LotV anyway, he's gonna get eaten up by the community.

On November 05 2015 01:55 Penev wrote:

Of course we do! Goes without saying

To be fair, Lilbow was put in a very awkward position with Blizzard launching LotV during Blizzcon. And I also want to point out that since Robert Ohlen left (!), Dreamhack decided to make things even worse by organizing a LotV tourney so short after!