The Myth of the Inconsistent Champion

In the last 5 years, SC2 has had 166 Premier Tournaments. This includes all GSLs, SSLs, OSLs, KeSPA Cups, WCS, IEMs, MLGs, IPLs, NASLs, ASUS ROGs, DreamHacks, Red Bulls, Hot6ix Cups and a large amount of assorted other tournaments. This doesn’t even touch on major, minor, online or national tournaments.

In that time we have had large influxes of new players throughout all 5 years totaling anywhere between 450-500 pro players depending on your definition. Perhaps more importantly, we have had 2 expansions and multiple patches across that time that have changed the game dramatically. This doesn’t include the chaos of how map pools can affect balance and matchups at any given moment. Additionally, there is no seeding system nor a world wide agreed upon ELO system which lessens top players knocking each other out in earlier rounds.

Given the insane amount of changes, the constantly rising competition, the slowly increasing skill of the players, unrelenting tournament schedules and the travel and fatigue that causes, it isn’t surprising to hear fans and casters call SC2 an inconsistent game with inconsistent results.



In a sense they are right. While we have had dominating players, no single player has ever had a rightful claim to being the best player in the world for a sustained period longer than one year (with the notable exception being Mvp). The game is too competitive and changes too often for even the best players to stay on top unless they have the strength of will and ambition to do anything to win, like Mvp.

However in another sense, they are completely wrong. The numbers alone tell you a very clear story. In 5 years we have had 166 Premier Tournaments. Out of the 450 players that could have won, only 68 have. That equates to only 15% of all pro players ever winning a Premier. Among those, 30 are one time winners. The total number of players that have won 2 Premier Tournaments or higher is 38. That means 8.5% of the competitive pro player pool have won 82% of total Premier Tournaments. There are 22 players that have won 3+ Premier Tournaments and they total 115 Premier Tournament victories, meaning that 5% of the pro player pool has 70% of all Premier Championships. There are 11 5+ Premier Tournament winners. They have won a total of 79 Premier victories and account for 47.5% of all Premier Championships. The three greatest players of all time: Taeja, Life and Mvp have 30 wins to their names making up 18% of all Premier Championships in 5 years.



Next I looked at the Top 8 of Korean leagues. This includes every Korean LAN barring the first 3 GSL Opens (as the game had just begun), the first OSL (because of the strange half Kespa/half non-Kespa seeding), and the GSL Worlds, GSL ST and the KeSPA Cups because they were all single bracket elimination tournaments with no seeding. Given these parameters there have been a total of 25 Ro8s in Korean tournaments in the last 5 years.

The next problem is trying to judge whether a result was an upset or not. Essentially, we can define it as any player that was a Ro8 player not making it to the Ro8 by to someone not of that caliber. For instance, in GSL March 2011, Mvp was knocked out early on by JulyZerg. While this qualifies as an upset, you have to consider what July’s form was at the time. During the summer of 2011 he was unarguably the second best Zerg by results. A 2nd place in GSL, two Ro4s in DH and NASL and another Ro8 in GSL. While it is an upset he beat Mvp, July is a player we can say with hindsight we should have expected in a Ro8 of GSL. In contrast to that is Paralyze’s run to the Ro8 in GSL Season 2 2014. In order to get there he had to beat both Life and Rain. That was Paralyze’s best and only notable results in nearly 2 years of play.

This is a subjective ranking based on my judgement of how good a player was relative to the scene and where we should have expected him given his approximate skill. Given all of that, you find that there are generally on average two players per tournament that were upset before the Ro8. (An interesting data point to this rule is that SSL 1-3 put together only had 1 upset total being Classic’s loss to Rogue, however this can be explained by only having a single Swiss bracket group compared to GSL’s 2). The players who have been upset the most before the Ro8 are: Rain, MC, Parting, Life, Flash and MarineKing. The first 4 were upset 3 times before reaching the Ro16. Flash was upset 4 times (6 if you count the two times he was in a Group of Death) and MKP was upset the most at 5 times total during his peak skill level from 2011-early 2012. Given what we know of both MarineKing and Flash, this isn’t surprising at all as both players were known for playing greedy static styles and were taken advantage of by their opponents time and time again. That means on average an upset can happen a quarter of the time which matches up with the data of overall champions as the “upset” champions account for approximately 30% of titles while the other 70% of titles are won by the same 38 people.

The numbers are convincing, but you also need to remember the fact that players are limited in how many tournaments they can participate in at any given time due to scheduling, travel limitations, expense limitations or tournament entry restrictions. This doesn’t even include the variance of skill at any given tournament, but the overall picture is clear. In a majority of Premier tournaments, the strongest players just seem to win. In Mvp’s words, “Winners just win.”



To read more about the multi champions, you can read my series of articles on the Greatest Players of All Time starting here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/484802-greatest-sc2-player-of-all-time-bonus-edition




It is only natural that fans will begin to make comparisons with Brood War. While it is way too lengthy to go through the same amount of rigorous analysis for Ro8s and upsets, it is fairly easy to compare the number of champions that both games have spawned over the years.

The number indicated on the left is the number of titles each player has won. For Brood War, we included every OSL and MSL. For Starcraft 2, we included all GSLs, OSLs, SSLs, KeSPA Cups and Hot6ix Cups—basically every premier tournament held in Korea barring WCS Finals. We decided to include every premier tournament in order to even out the randomness of early BW with the randomness of early SC2 and its stranger formats (Super Tournament, single elimination cups).

Brood War
6 - NaDa Flash
5 - Jaedong iloveoov
4 - sAviOr
3 - July BoxeR Bisu
2 - GARIMTO JangBi Nal_rA
1 - Freemura Grrrr... Kingdom Reach XellOs Sync Anytime Casy GGPlay Stork EffOrt FanTaSy GoRush ChoJJa Mind ForGG Luxury Calm Hydra

Total titles: 60
Total champions: 30
Average titles per champion: 2
One-time champions - 19
Percentage of one time champs - 63.33%

Starcraft 2
4 - Mvp
3 - NesTea Life Zest Rain
2 - MC MMA INnoVation Classic Maru herO
1 - FruitDealer Polt jjakji DongRaeGu Seed Sniper RorO Soulkey Dear soO sOs

Total titles: 39
Total champions: 22
Average titles per champion: 1.77
One time champions - 11
Percentage of one time champs - 50.00%

Based on the number of champions, we can make the following observations:

• BW had a greater number of one-time champions. While many of these champions occurred during the early years unlike SC2, there were also one-off champs in BW's later life such as EffOrt and FanTaSy. However, it is a stretch to say that they were undeserving, because they were legitimately two of the best players during the time period where they won. The same goes for winners like Dear and Soulkey. FanTaSy was unfortunate not to win more titles due to JangBi beating him in two of the last OSL finals; otherwise he would not be considered a one-time champ. Similarly, soO (and ByuL, perhaps) would have been a deserving multi-time champion had history gone differently.
  
• BW champions had a greater average number of titles despite the greater number of one time champions. This is because of players like Flash, NaDa, Jaedong and iloveoov, who had 6 or 5 titles each. The highest number of Korean premier titles for SC2 is Mvp at 4. If we look at the players commonly referred to as bonjwas, 4 Korean titles appears to be the bar.
  
• While SC2 has had fewer one time champions, many of those were players that dropped off completely or never again contended for a title. Seed was good for one more season. Dear completely fell off until a mini revival in 2015. Sniper will forever be remembered as the most reviled champion. However, it is difficult to argue that they weren't deserving of their titles. Their rises and falls in form were still peculiar.
  
• While it seems like a conclusion can be drawn from this, it's a very shallow examination of whether championship winners were consistent and how random one off winners truly were. In order to do that, a more thorough examination of brackets is necessary. The only thing this surface look can say is that based on title winners alone, the two games weren't that different in terms of consistency. It will be interesting to see whether anyone will reach more than 4 titles for SC2, however.
  

Photo Credits: silverfire, Helena Kristiansson, teamacer.com, ESL, ThisIsEsports, DailyEsports
Writer: stuchiu
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Editor and Appendix: lichter