MaSa's recent tear through the scene

[MD]Frostbite

Canada292 Posts

August 12 2017 04:22 GMT

As a requested by feardragon64, I shall write and analyze about MaSa's recent tear through the scene

With the only guideline of “recent tear through the scene”, we’re only going to look at the current year (2017) for results. Although it is important to note where MaSa placed in the playing field at the end of 2016.

For this, we look at the most common way to rank players in terms of skill; Aligulac. All the sources will be linked as they are discussed (or they won’t IDK).

According to List 178 on Aligulac which represents the 21st of December 2016, MaSa was ranked #38 in the world with the respectable rating of 2082 overall, 2003 vP, 2134 vT and 2111 vZ. An explanation of these numbers, what they represent and how they are calculated can be found on Aligulac’ FAQ, but long story short, the higher the number, the stronger the player.

MaSa ended the year 2016 with an online tournament win. He was able to best MaNa in a Bo7, going 4-1 and taking the title for the Gauntlet 2016 Season 2 finals. Not a bad result by any means.

Unnecessary long summary about MaSa' year.
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Going into 2017, our Canadian dipped a bit in rating, his lowest being 2016 the 1st of February. This slump was accompanied by relatively poor results, a Ro4 finish in Cheeseadelphia 4 and a 1-3 loss against the Korean Bunny in the european qualifiers for IEM Season XI Championship.

This January slump will be his only big dip in Aligulac rating, he went from 2082 overall to 2016 overall rating. From then on, he started taking games off relatively better opponents, 3-0 over MaNa in Gauntlet S2 E1, a 2-1 over Kelazhur in the Gauntlet S3 E4 and a 3-2 over TRUE in the Gauntlet S3 E6. With February and March behind him, he was able to raise the overall ranking to 2097. This resurgence included a 2nd place finish in the Underdogs Intercontinental Clash going 1-4 vs ShoWTimE, winning LAN ETS 2017 with a 4-0 finals win over Semper, winning Ladder Heroes NA 2017 March with a 3-0 over Namshar and losing in the 2nd group stage of WCS Austin 2017 going 3rd in his group.

At the end of March and the beginning of April, Aligulac records zero games played in any notable tournament, this could be explained with MaSa being a student and he decided to study for his midterm exams instead of playing some good old StarCraft… What a traitor.

Anyhow, in the the month of May, nothing quite notable happened as opposed to the previous months, he maintained his rating of 2097 by barely missing out qualifying for WCS Jönköping losing 1-3 against Semper in the Losers’ Round 4 yet he qualified to Game Land Invitational in the 2nd wildcard qualifier by going 2-0 over Hades. Between May and June, he also had a brief inactivity period, which could be explained by final exams of the year, but I can only speculate.

Now June rolled around and MaSa stopped playing around, he started by winning SEA Master’ Cup #95 over tough opponents in Iaguz and Scarlett, then he won the finals 3-2 over Snute. Followed it up with a 4-3 over Neeb in KOTN Versus. He followed up that result by absolutely tearing through the WCS Valencia qualifiers. He was able to 3-0 Neeb, 3-0 JonSnow, 3-1 Scarlett then 3-1 her in the grand finals rematch. He secured himself a spot to Valencia and put himself back on the map. His Aligulac rating jumped 200 points and he was now at 2263 as of 7th of June with 2164 vP, 2319 vT, 2306 vZ and was now 25th in the world.

He then had a solid 3-2 win over TRUE in the finals of Ladder Heroes NA April, a disappointing result at GameLand Invitational getting knocked out in 3rd place of his group and 0-3 loss against aLive in Gauntlet Season 3 Finals after beating Bly 3-2.

Jumping straight into July, MaSa qualifies to DreamHack Atlanta BYOC following a 3-0 over Hero and a 3-0 over Kalazhur. Despite a 2-3 loss against Snute in the SC2 Online Community Open #48, he bounced back ever so slightly at WCS Valencia with a 9th-16th finish losing in a close 3-2 versus Kelazhur. With the momentum from the previous bounce, he was able to land on TRUE, JonSnow and a came-out-of-retirement Suppy and win DH Atlanta BYOC without dropping a single map.

He then repeated his feat at Cheeseadelphia 5, winning the entire tournament with the finals going 4-0 over TRUE, but this time, he lost a single map, to Suppy, somehow.

With all this said and done, he is now comfortably at 2506 Aligulac Rating, this places him 10th in the world, he is 17th in the world vP with a 2402 rating. He is 13th in the world vT with a 2485 rating and he is 5th vZ with a 2632 rating. In 2017, MaSa has a 69% win rate in games and a 75.65% win rate in matches.

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Finally some analysis

So how would one explain this Canadian-Korean’s tear through the scene recently? Well there a couple theories I could think of; for one, he gained more Aligulac rating during June. What ends in June? University classes are done for the summer in June, maybe this gave MaSa more time to focus on the game and he was able to get back into form.

Another theory is he has been lucky in his opponents. “You mean he has faced bad opponents?!! He played Neeb, Kelazhur, Snute, Scarl-” I mean the race of the opponents. His best matchup in 2017 has been versus Zerg, now which race has he played the most this year? You guessed it! Zerg, he has played 140 games versus Zerg, 92 versus Terran and 82 versus Protoss. You play a matchup a lot, you get good at it no?

And my last theory, and probably the best, his secretly Maru, the Korean Terran. I mean he is Korean, Maru is Korean, MaSa’s name is literally Maru, his Twitter bio is : “MARU WANNABE ll”. I mean maybe the perfect subterfuge is simply making the joke that you want to be Maru, when secretly, behind the elaborate mask, you ARE Maru…

Now go follow MaSa because he deserves it https://twitter.com/MaSa_sc2
And his new team too, why not https://twitter.com/OSCElite

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Sources:

+ Show Spoiler +

http://aligulac.com/players/251/results/?after=2017-01-01&before=2017-08-12&event=&race=ptzr&country=all&bestof=all&offline=both&game=all&wcs_season=&wcs_tier=&op=

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/KOTN_Versus

http://aligulac.com/players/251-MaSa/historical/

http://aligulac.com/periods/194/

-Kyo-

Japan1927 Posts

August 12 2017 04:39 GMT

As someone who played against him forever ago, I personally think MaSa has been one of the best T's in AM for years, just never really had a lucky break.
He was doing pretty well in the last few tournaments he entered, but I still think he can do even better.

A fun thread ~

feardragon

United States973 Posts

August 12 2017 04:43 GMT

My theory is that MaSa was on the verge of retirement after the first half of the year not going his way. WCS Austin Challenger he lost first round of the winner's and loser's bracket and did poorly at the main tournament so they were really disappointing results for him. Then WCS Jonkoping Challenger he lost first round of the winner and loser's bracket again. He was on the verge of retirement from conversations we had and the Valencia qualifier was going to be his last big shot at things.

And then he went beast mode because he had nothing to lose. That's my theory. Desperation breeds a will to succeed. He also started playing way more aggro with lots more proxies and hyper-aggro plays I think, which is way more suited to his strengths. I hope he goes on to destroy at Montreal.

ZigguratOfUr

Iraq16955 Posts

August 12 2017 04:50 GMT

It's hard not to argue that his rating is seriously inflated at the moment due to farming a bunch of opponents in the local scene (much like KingKong's rating was in November 2013), but he's also definitely in much better shape than he's ever been.

WCS Montreal is only a month away. Let's see if MaSa lives up to the hype there.