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If there is one guy who can climb back to the top after military service, it's Polt. Yes, 30 years old is an ancient age to be playing Starcraft professionally. But first, you have to take a realistic look at the skill level difference between WCS and GSL. Yes, the gap has lessen over the years, but it still goes GSL > WCS EU > WCS US. I mean no disrespect but you don't think Polt can beat Cham or Astrea even at 30? Those players are top 6 in WCS US this season.
Another point that nobody mentioned yet is that Polt always had a more cerebral than mechanical game. He never needed 350+ apm to win tournaments because his build order and decision making were always world class. He's like the terran sOs, just a crafty, kind of slow player that just finds way to win. I think his skill set will translate much better into older age than a Maru or soO, 2 exemples of strong mechanical players but sometimes critiqued for their decision making.
Whether he is successful or not, I'm just happy to see him coming back and I look forward to his future streams figuring out the game as he returns.
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Yeah, burnout is the real thing. It used to be insane to keep going after a few years because of how much practice you need to keep up with everyone else, especially in a scene that used to have ALL the young kids trying to get into it.
Starcraft is old now, it's doing well, but lets not lie to ourselves, we're past the days where every 13 years old in Korea plays starcraft in hope of being the next Boxer. The pool of future pros is smaller, making the requierements to stay competitive a lot less stressfull on current pros.
Especially for broodwar right now. When Bisu comes back from his military service, there won't be 30 new insane good protoss to fight against to stay relevant.
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Northern Ireland25344 Posts
Yeah absolutely fastr, that as well. His builds and pre-planning were pretty top tier in his day, and I feel his on-the-fly decision making within games and improvisations were possibly the best I've seen in SC2, and if not definitely up there.
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Polt is not US citizen. He is full-fledged Korean. He was competing at WCS in the past under P1 visa (athlete visa). I assume an organization will recruit him and take care of the visa for him so he can compete in WCS. Envy/CM Storm has done that for him in the past. They may do it again for him. Frankly, I bet Psistorm can get him.
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On the subject of eligibility: He was living in the US full-time before there was even a hint of region lock being considered by Blizzard. I doubt the logistical hurdles will be difficult for him to surmount.
On the subject of age: Daigo Umehara is almost 40. Polt with his highly efficient hand actions (he had some of the lowest wasted APM back in the day) should have no problem.
On the subject of Polt's possible return: 
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I'm really hoping for Polt to open up a can of whoop-ass on the WCS NA scene
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Canada8989 Posts
I don't think his age his a problem as far as his play goes, but he may not want to go back to putting the time and make the sacrifice to get to the top again, plus I imagine it's gets hard when you realize that most of your friend/colleague that you used to play with are gone, can't be good for motivation.
Like it was said FGC has plenty of 30 or even 40 years old top player, including some with kids and family (Sako for example) but I presume that the more "community" focus aspect play a role in it, their community seems to be tighter then SC2 (particularly the foreign scene) mostly cause they are used to practice together in lan. But for the reaction time or whatnot aspect of it I don't think it really matter, starting young is clearly a benefit but keeping up level of skill dosen't seem that impossible as long as you don't get back or wrist problems, it's not like you need that fast of a reaction time in Starcraft anyway (as oppose to CSGO or fighting game for example).
Bottom line if Federer can be the best at running around smashing balls at 100 kh for 2 hours at 40 years old it would be silly to think that a 30 years old Starcraft player can't be at the top.
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How did I miss this when it was new?
As far as his age is concerned, he was already old among pros before retiring. I don't know if two more years is going to slow him down much more. He might need time to shake off rust but if he can stick around that long, I'm sure he'll be great again.
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So excited! Let's hope he finds his way back!
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everyone saying that being 40 doesn't make a difference from 20 for reaction time and dexterity is simply medically wrong and should immediately stop spreading misinformation
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On April 04 2019 03:37 brickrd wrote:
everyone saying that being 40 doesn't make a difference from 20 for reaction time and dexterity is simply medically wrong and should immediately stop spreading misinformation
It does make a difference, but its not as big of a deal as everyone makes it to be when someone old stops winning.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On April 04 2019 03:37 brickrd wrote:
everyone saying that being 40 doesn't make a difference from 20 for reaction time and dexterity is simply medically wrong and should immediately stop spreading misinformation
On the other hand you have the experience to not spam and use your slower reactions more wisely and update the style to follow this.
Nobody is saying he will be as fast as when he was 20, but it's not that big of a deal and this is not a full athletic sport where you need the whole body. And anyway, I remember some pro players playing in very high age - e.g. Jaromir Jagr, Zdeno Chara. (edit> and if these can play NHL at 40 where you need the whole body, what's stopping Polt? )
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On April 04 2019 03:35 claybones wrote:
How did I miss this when it was new?
As far as his age is concerned, he was already old among pros before retiring. I don't know if two more years is going to slow him down much more. He might need time to shake off rust but if he can stick around that long, I'm sure he'll be great again.
Not a problem. He's still more than young enough. Federer still has the speed/reaction timing to be at the very top of the ATP tour at 37 years old. And that is much more competitive than SC2 because it's so much more popular and has massive potential prize money winnings. Much more physical too. Polt at 30 is still a young guy. The real question is motivation because physical ability will not be a problem at all unless he runs into injury issues.
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Northern Ireland25344 Posts
I just think people are massively overstating the demands of eSports on a purely physiological level.
The only argument I can maybe think that SC and pure reaction times could differ from other activities especially sporting is minimap awareness.
Roger Federer isn’t reacting to a tennis ball coming at him, most of it is subconscious prediction based on his opponents and body shape etc. We do a lot of this stuff even outside of competitive arenas, if you’re approaching someone on the street and your trajectory will be to clash you both generally realign to avoid it. If you were both quizzed why you choose the respective side you did, chances are most times you wouldn’t know.
Minimap awareness there’s not really a tell to read, something pops up out of nowhere and it’s pure reaction. Granted the response will be ingrained to a degree, say a runby in your natural you’ll know to hit that camera hotkey through experience.
Below is interesting, first thing I found when I googled about reaction speed decline, actually uses SC2. Methinks me search history has maybe pushed an SC one up.
It finds the peak is 24 in terms of pure reaction speed, which used to be considered veteran status in SC, and I guess still is to a degree.
journals.plos.org
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On April 04 2019 07:41 Wombat_NI wrote:
Roger Federer isn’t reacting to a tennis ball coming at him,
Are you kidding me? The guys at that level hit the ball super fast especially on serves. It takes amazing reaction timing to play tennis at that level, there's no doubt. Just try returning 130-140 mph serves...
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Northern Ireland25344 Posts
On April 04 2019 08:32 NinjaNight wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2019 07:41 Wombat_NI wrote:
Roger Federer isn’t reacting to a tennis ball coming at him,
Are you kidding me? The guys at that level hit the ball super fast especially on serves. It takes amazing reaction timing to play tennis at that level, there's no doubt. Just try returning 130-140 mph serves...
Well no you can’t do that, based on reaction times. Not just to recognise where the ball is going, but to align your body to return it.
My point isn’t that Roger Federer isn’t an amazing talent, but he isn’t hitting those back via his reactions alone as that’s not actually possible.
It’s mostly pattern recognition, figuring out instinctively based on body shape, practiced technique for returning based on that etc
There’s a guy in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink book for example who could really accurately predict if a tennis player was going to fault just based on those things and how they tossed the ball.
If Federer does have an advantage it probably isn’t in his innate reactions, he might be marginally better at parsing all that information faster than others, and whatever you call that ability it doesn’t appear to measurably decline in the same way with age as pure reaction times do.
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On April 04 2019 09:14 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2019 08:32 NinjaNight wrote:On April 04 2019 07:41 Wombat_NI wrote:
Roger Federer isn’t reacting to a tennis ball coming at him,
Are you kidding me? The guys at that level hit the ball super fast especially on serves. It takes amazing reaction timing to play tennis at that level, there's no doubt. Just try returning 130-140 mph serves... Well no you can’t do that, based on reaction times. Not just to recognise where the ball is going, but to align your body to return it. My point isn’t that Roger Federer isn’t an amazing talent, but he isn’t hitting those back via his reactions alone as that’s not actually possible. It’s mostly pattern recognition, figuring out instinctively based on body shape, practiced technique for returning based on that etc There’s a guy in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink book for example who could really accurately predict if a tennis player was going to fault just based on those things and how they tossed the ball. If Federer does have an advantage it probably isn’t in his innate reactions, he might be marginally better at parsing all that information faster than others, and whatever you call that ability it doesn’t appear to measurably decline in the same way with age as pure reaction times do.
Yes it's much more than just reaction times but my point is there is still a huge element of reaction timing in tennis at that level. I stand by the claim that being 30 is not much of a problem in physical ability in SC2. The real problem with being 30 is you probably have a lot more other things going on in your life at that age and likely don't have so much time to devote to starcraft anymore. Motivation may also be an issue as it seems the older you get the less you tend to care about video games.
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On April 04 2019 00:51 Noocta wrote:
Yeah, burnout is the real thing. It used to be insane to keep going after a few years because of how much practice you need to keep up with everyone else, especially in a scene that used to have ALL the young kids trying to get into it.
Starcraft is old now, it's doing well, but lets not lie to ourselves, we're past the days where every 13 years old in Korea plays starcraft in hope of being the next Boxer. The pool of future pros is smaller, making the requierements to stay competitive a lot less stressfull on current pros.
Especially for broodwar right now. When Bisu comes back from his military service, there won't be 30 new insane good protoss to fight against to stay relevant.
Age is not a problem for Esports, "the problem" is the fact as you age you get more responsibilities and you cant play 12h per day anymore.
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With great age, there comes great responsibility..
I´m willing to believe all you guys, but yet there is someone to come back to championship form after military. Never happened. There were other great champions that failed to even reach top foreigner level. Maybe one factor is the changing meta and patches, you don´t have to face that in Tennis, and in FGC the meta changes but I believe not on the same level as a RTS game (different build orders, counters, all ins, reactions to all of that, reactions to the reactions etc. etc.).
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EPT
