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On December 05 2019 06:38 blooblooblahblah wrote:
It doesn't take much to become GM. There are GM players that have probably never watched a pro game in their life, have awful mechanics/understanding, or never even built a 3rd base. GM is just a portrait, nothing more. It means you know how to win, which is an important attribute when playing sc2, but it doesn't suggest anything about your skill/understand overall, apart from the fact that you probably have passable mechanics (but again, you don't need amazing mechanics by any means).
To become a good player, well that takes hours and hours of practice and discipline and self-criticism. Which is why there are only a handful of players in the world that are good. The rest of us are pretty much plebes, GM portrait or not.
There are also trolls on this forum who throw out outrageous claims without any proof to fish for reactions from other posters.
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On December 05 2019 06:28 Dedraterllaerau wrote:
Having played SC since the first release of the game in 98 I can say attaining game understanding will benefit you an incredible amount. It will make your practice more efficient because you will draw the correct conclusions from every game you play or watch,(Your own or others). If you have a poor perspective of how the game works you will constantly make illogical and poor conclusions from your experiences playing or watching.
All I can say is once you reach a high level of game understanding and mechanics combined you will laugh at the above mentioned 1 trick pony robots GM's and enjoy the free ladder points every single time.
I did this in a small-time RTS and became top tier in few hundred hours -- unfourtunately, sc2 is more mechanically demanding and far more worked out.
Game knowledge won't help all them time.There are cheese builds that are difficult/esoteric to defend. There are harrassment styles that basically pit mechanics vs mechanics. Going for a strong game understanding isn't easy, you'll still need to grind mechanics like everyone else, and making decisons / changing course mid-game can be super difficult. But practicing it will greatly improve your ability to improve and become a solid player.
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just mechanics. practice vs ai
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On December 05 2019 15:26 Chronopolis wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2019 06:28 Dedraterllaerau wrote:
Having played SC since the first release of the game in 98 I can say attaining game understanding will benefit you an incredible amount. It will make your practice more efficient because you will draw the correct conclusions from every game you play or watch,(Your own or others). If you have a poor perspective of how the game works you will constantly make illogical and poor conclusions from your experiences playing or watching.
All I can say is once you reach a high level of game understanding and mechanics combined you will laugh at the above mentioned 1 trick pony robots GM's and enjoy the free ladder points every single time.
I did this in a small-time RTS and became top tier in few hundred hours -- unfourtunately, sc2 is more mechanically demanding and far more worked out. Game knowledge won't help all them time.There are cheese builds that are difficult/esoteric to defend. There are harrassment styles that basically pit mechanics vs mechanics. Going for a strong game understanding isn't easy, you'll still need to grind mechanics like everyone else, and making decisons / changing course mid-game can be super difficult. But practicing it will greatly improve your ability to improve and become a solid player.
I m possitive, that Dedraterllaerau meant, that all thinks equal the player with better game understanding is allways superior and can even compensate for beeing a bit worse in other aspects.
No single attribute alone is sufficent enough to bring you to the top level.
I ve never been GM or even close, but I picture even the players, that are "just mechanically faster" and nothing else, still have a somewhat decent build order and a basic game understanding.
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Do you guys believe you can start SC2 at 30 and be competitive? What is the age factor's significance and it's influence on Starcraft?
Yes. Bomber is living proof. also isn't Light 30? he just won KSL, arguably the most demanding game. Sure they didn't start at 30 but it goes to show that your skill ceiling is still just as high as anyone else's at that age.
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In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30?
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Northern Ireland24875 Posts
On December 05 2019 20:59 MockHamill wrote:
In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30?
Depends on the sport, old folks do hold their own in many anyway.
In many you don’t see huge amounts of practice once players get to an elite level, because the benefits drop off. On the way up certainly the hours must be put in, but when you get to that level you can hit a golf or a tennis ball, kick a football or throw a basketball pretty damn well and it might be a poor use of time to grind practice here over resting or focusing on other things.
How many of the top 20 are teens now? There’s many in and around the mid 20 range, which is unfortunately Korean military service age.
Even combined with Brood War we’ve only got about 20 years of history to deal with and I think we’ve seen preconceived ideas about youth being necessary in eSports to be proven pretty off base.
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On December 05 2019 21:25 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2019 20:59 MockHamill wrote:
In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30? Depends on the sport, old folks do hold their own in many anyway. In many you don’t see huge amounts of practice once players get to an elite level, because the benefits drop off. On the way up certainly the hours must be put in, but when you get to that level you can hit a golf or a tennis ball, kick a football or throw a basketball pretty damn well and it might be a poor use of time to grind practice here over resting or focusing on other things. How many of the top 20 are teens now? There’s many in and around the mid 20 range, which is unfortunately Korean military service age. Even combined with Brood War we’ve only got about 20 years of history to deal with and I think we’ve seen preconceived ideas about youth being necessary in eSports to be proven pretty off base.
Yeah, a 29 year old just won Brood War's KSL a week or so ago.
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The age factor differs widely from sport to sport. In gymnastics for example you re dead old, when you are 25, in marathon running or triathlon, you are just getting started. The human body is unable to reproduce all dieing cells from about 25 or so. Thats why Sports that demand a lot of strenght or precision or involve a high risk in injurie usually see their peak perforemer around that age. Sports that benefit greatly from repetition, tend to have the peak later.
In SC2 it is some midle ground I gues. Beeing physically slower can be somewhat compensated by better judgement and so on. But those limitations are probably only in play at an much higher level than bottom GM and affect actuall pro players
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Like it has been already said a couple of times. Maintaining a specific skill level is not that hard in general - most of us know from experience, we can get back to our old MMR or rank pretty easily even after a couple of weeks/months off. The difficult part starts with getting better. In my opinion there has to be a certain threshold of number of games to reach a certain level. e.g. you won´t get GM if you only play 100 games a season (just to give an example).
It would be interessting to see, how many games fresh, first-time GM players have played over their entire career and if the overall timeframe plays a significant factor in that equation (what I think might be true). The sheer number of games alone surely can´t be a reliable source of data, otherwise there wouldn´t be so many Diamond players with 5k+ games on their account.
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Northern Ireland24875 Posts
On December 06 2019 00:49 daskleinehotte wrote:
Like it has been already said a couple of times. Maintaining a specific skill level is not that hard in general - most of us know from experience, we can get back to our old MMR or rank pretty easily even after a couple of weeks/months off. The difficult part starts with getting better. In my opinion there has to be a certain threshold of number of games to reach a certain level. e.g. you won´t get GM if you only play 100 games a season (just to give an example).
It would be interessting to see, how many games fresh, first-time GM players have played over their entire career and if the overall timeframe plays a significant factor in that equation (what I think might be true). The sheer number of games alone surely can´t be a reliable source of data, otherwise there wouldn´t be so many Diamond players with 5k+ games on their account.
I’m almost more curious about people who are still in Diamond after 5k games as I am about what is needed to get into GM.
I like playing pool for example, not super serious about it, as do many of my friends. We just got better playing casually over the years but there was one guy in the group who was basically the same level as when we first started playing and that always mystified me more than why my friend was better than I am.
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As a 34 year old who played since SC Original, ranked Masters 1 in both WoL and HotS in all races, never quite hit GM but was right there, now coasts at low Diamond, and has a career and life, I feel like I have some insight on topic.
First of all, there is a significant difference in being GM and being Pro. It's like the difference between being the top 3 in your class at the 100M dash in high school vs being able to qualify for the Olympics. There is waaaaaaay less investment necessary, but you still have to try a bit. Here's my little tidbits.
1) Intimate knowledge of the game is the most important part. If you can identify what's happening and how to respond, the game is easy. I'm not just talking about countering roaches with Marauders, but learning how to identify and deal with compositions, builds, aggression, turtle-ing, expansion timings, etc. When we watch pro matches, we know what the right move is because we can see the entire map. We can't apply that to our games exactly, but if you know the game and scout somewhat better than your opponent, you will win 60+% of the time until your mechanics cap you. One thing that hindered me from breaking into GM was good spotter pylons and Overlords.
2) Time is not that important, but regular play and a plan is. I would say that you need 2 or 3 games to properly warm up, and every game after that will serve to improve yourself. If you take days off, you need more time to warm up or get the rust off. You also need enough games to be net positive in the grind for MMR. Based on that, I would say 2-4 hours a day would conservatively suffice to make it to GM. Probably closer to 2. However, you also need to know what you need to improve on and work on that. I'm very happy to play mindless games in Diamond right now, and I will not improve the way I play. If you constantly identify weak points in your play, such as scouting, map presence, timing, etc, and work on those, you'll get to GM in no time. It is really exhausting though, so you have to really want it.
3) Make sure you have solid mechanics, and break your lazy habits early. This is a given, but it's also what makes or breaks potential GM Players. Another thing that hindered me from making GM was probably my hot keys. For Terran I put Command Centers on 3, main production on 2, other production on 4 and 5, and army on 1 and F2. It's one of the worst configurations because of the lack of army control, but I stuck with it because I was lazy.
Training Environment, Financial and Time Resources, and Age (under 40) should all be irrelevant. In terms of natural talent, one needs to definitely have the synergy with Starcraft, but not some sort of Maru/Reynor prodigy style talent. I'm noting this because there are people who just don't mix well with Starcraft or RTS in general. Personality might be one of the more significant items needed to reach GM. The higher up you go, the harder and less fun the games are. Actually, the higher up you go, the harder and less fun anything is life is. I gave up on GM, but someone mentally stronger in the same place probably would have made it.
SHORT CUT: You can make GM on a single build. You can't be pro on a single build, the famous kids who tried are all retired now. But you can be GM. Granted, you won't be as good as GM players, and you probably won't go far, but you'll have the rank. The build will usually have a rush element that disrupts the other player's build flow. You'll learn how to macro perfectly while harassing perfectly, and how to perfectly transition with a big lead. Basically you'll learn how to execute this build like a high GM player, while probably not being great at the rest of the game. You'll need minimal warm-up because you're doing the exact same thing every time, adding to your net MMR. Once you hit GM, enjoy the glory and then fall back to your natural rank, because the game will stop being fun after that. Bonus Tip: Wait 1-2 Minutes after every game to make sure you don't play the same guy, which will likely result in a loss.
It's simple to know what you need to do, but actually doing it can be a drag. Like knowing what you need to do to lose 15 pounds, vs actually doing it. It's simple enough, but most people don't want to go through with getting to GM. To those who do, good luck!
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Grandmaster is largely about mental space. By the time you're a Masters 1 player you already know a decent variety of builds or at least how to use your limited builds to defeat the average scrub at your level.
When I first got to that level, it was a very mental thing for me. I'm not naturally talented at too many things but I spent thousands of hours practicing and still got stuck at the "high masters" wall for a while. I tribute a lot to my general anxiety keeping me from performing when I saw the gold border in the loading screen the first hundred or so times. I thought, "I'm so close, I'm playing vs Top 200 players now." Of course when this starts you aren't THAT close but it's still a big part of making the jump. It takes a lot of overhyped lost games at the top of masters to finally get over the "rush" that you're "close" to making it.
For me I got a lot more success at staying focused and playing well when I gave up on beating these guys because it was the only way to not get worked up over it for me. I don't think my mechanics improved much, I just made WAY less mental mistakes when I was able to care less about how good my opponent was and just give it my all. It got so much easier when I was first promoted to GM because then of course I was the one wearing the belt.
Just my two cents, of course this is from my extremely specific perspective as a player that grinded for years and studied all sorts of builds etc but ultimately couldn't break that threshold until I disciplined myself.
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My opinion as someone who has been GM since 2010 and done a lot of coaching:
- Some natural inclination for video games and/or analytical abilities. This usually means starting as a young child. If you don't touch a computer keyboard until you are 15 years old you will have a lot harder time succeeding than someone who has played other RTS games, other competitive games, or even worked their problem solving muscles in a computer environment in some way their entire life. I first played Starcraft when I was 4 years old and I think that pretty much carried me the entire way without ever really having to try hard. This first point covers "mechanics" along with the practice time and self improvement points further down.
- Desire to be good at everything you do. I think one thing that a lot of high level Starcraft players share is that they tend to focus on a pretty small number of hobbies/games and like to be very good at them. They don't tend to be the personality types that play the hot new game every couple months, they like to self-analyze and hone their skillks til they reach at least a level they deem competent.
- The right mindset for self improvement. I don't think specific tasks like replay watching or studying vods constantly are necessary for everyone - some high level players benefit more from these specific things than others - but what they all share is an ability to self analyze on the fly and understand what their weaknesses are, why they are losing games, and make adjustments as needed. Perhaps even more important than why they are losing games is identifying and improving their flaws even when they win! I know for me a win feels less satisfying if I feel like I played poorly and noticed many mistakes during my gameplay.
- Some amount of time and environment, though I don't think this is as important as some make it out to be. As long as you are "comfortable" (i.e have food on the table and a place to live, a reasonable pc and internet connection to play the game on low graphics settings which is basically nothing), and enough time to play (on average) a couple hours a day. I don't think you need more than maybe 2-3 hours a day on average of free time to make GM, which is generally attainable by almost anyone before they start to have a family. Still, the later you start age-wise, the harder it is to pick up these skills. I generally think there are quite diminishing returns on practice time after a few hours per day - if you are playing a solid ladder session of 2-4 hours pretty much every day, I don't think more than that is a huge impact.
- Immersing yourself in the community and the gameplay. If you enjoy making friends through gaming, watching tournaments and streams, etc you are more likely to stay motivated and pick up ideas and knowledge even subconsciously. This isn't mandatory if you are good at focused practice, but if you enjoy the game many of these things tend to happen naturally.
These are at least my initial thoughts, feel free to follow up on anything I said with more specific questions or areas you'd like me to address.
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On December 05 2019 06:38 blooblooblahblah wrote:
It doesn't take much to become GM. There are GM players that have probably never watched a pro game in their life, have awful mechanics/understanding, or never even built a 3rd base. GM is just a portrait, nothing more. It means you know how to win, which is an important attribute when playing sc2, but it doesn't suggest anything about your skill/understand overall, apart from the fact that you probably have passable mechanics (but again, you don't need amazing mechanics by any means).
To become a good player, well that takes hours and hours of practice and discipline and self-criticism. Which is why there are only a handful of players in the world that are good. The rest of us are pretty much plebes, GM portrait or not.
that's wrong sir.
you can't reach GM on eu like that. you need 5.6k mmr for that, and doing that completly on ur own / without a 3rd base is impossible.
yes you can do it with things like cannonrushing and zerg cheese, but that requires a lot of understanding and research.
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On December 05 2019 23:16 LHK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2019 21:25 Wombat_NI wrote:On December 05 2019 20:59 MockHamill wrote:
In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30? Depends on the sport, old folks do hold their own in many anyway. In many you don’t see huge amounts of practice once players get to an elite level, because the benefits drop off. On the way up certainly the hours must be put in, but when you get to that level you can hit a golf or a tennis ball, kick a football or throw a basketball pretty damn well and it might be a poor use of time to grind practice here over resting or focusing on other things. How many of the top 20 are teens now? There’s many in and around the mid 20 range, which is unfortunately Korean military service age. Even combined with Brood War we’ve only got about 20 years of history to deal with and I think we’ve seen preconceived ideas about youth being necessary in eSports to be proven pretty off base. Yeah, a 29 year old just won Brood War's KSL a week or so ago.
Vishy Anand just turned 50. he is top 10 in the world in chess still - even in super fast time formats like blitz.
that being said he's a former world champion and certainly not at the peak of his abilities ~15-20 years ago, but not far from it.
Samsonov (43y) and Boll (39y) are in the top 10 in the world in table tennis, a super fast, reaction and agility based sport.
age isn't the key factor, it's lack of determination and responsibilty that usually comes WITH age.
1 Key factor a lot of ppl are missing though is this:
RAW TALENT.
Yes, it exists. not everyone can be great at everything. you need a baseline of intelligence and other geneticially determined attributes to succeed - esp. at the highest level.
2 ppl can do the exact same things and be equally determined - one can reach gm within a year, someone else will forever be stuck in diamond.
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Northern Ireland24875 Posts
On December 06 2019 06:36 KalWarkov wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2019 23:16 LHK wrote:On December 05 2019 21:25 Wombat_NI wrote:On December 05 2019 20:59 MockHamill wrote:
In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30? Depends on the sport, old folks do hold their own in many anyway. In many you don’t see huge amounts of practice once players get to an elite level, because the benefits drop off. On the way up certainly the hours must be put in, but when you get to that level you can hit a golf or a tennis ball, kick a football or throw a basketball pretty damn well and it might be a poor use of time to grind practice here over resting or focusing on other things. How many of the top 20 are teens now? There’s many in and around the mid 20 range, which is unfortunately Korean military service age. Even combined with Brood War we’ve only got about 20 years of history to deal with and I think we’ve seen preconceived ideas about youth being necessary in eSports to be proven pretty off base. Yeah, a 29 year old just won Brood War's KSL a week or so ago. Vishy Anand just turned 50. he is top 10 in the world in chess still - even in super fast time formats like blitz. that being said he's a former world champion and certainly not at the peak of his abilities ~15-20 years ago, but not far from it. Samsonov (43y) and Boll (39y) are in the top 10 in the world in table tennis, a super fast, reaction and agility based sport. age isn't the key factor, it's lack of determination and responsibilty that usually comes WITH age. 1 Key factor a lot of ppl are missing though is this: RAW TALENT. Yes, it exists. not everyone can be great at everything. you need a baseline of intelligence and other geneticially determined attributes to succeed - esp. at the highest level. 2 ppl can do the exact same things and be equally determined - one can reach gm within a year, someone else will forever be stuck in diamond.
What is raw talent here though?
Is it having some talent for Starcraft, or is it singularly focusing on Starcraft?
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On December 06 2019 04:09 Nathanias wrote:
Grandmaster is largely about mental space. By the time you're a Masters 1 player you already know a decent variety of builds or at least how to use your limited builds to defeat the average scrub at your level.
When I first got to that level, it was a very mental thing for me. I'm not naturally talented at too many things but I spent thousands of hours practicing and still got stuck at the "high masters" wall for a while. I tribute a lot to my general anxiety keeping me from performing when I saw the gold border in the loading screen the first hundred or so times. I thought, "I'm so close, I'm playing vs Top 200 players now." Of course when this starts you aren't THAT close but it's still a big part of making the jump. It takes a lot of overhyped lost games at the top of masters to finally get over the "rush" that you're "close" to making it.
For me I got a lot more success at staying focused and playing well when I gave up on beating these guys because it was the only way to not get worked up over it for me. I don't think my mechanics improved much, I just made WAY less mental mistakes when I was able to care less about how good my opponent was and just give it my all. It got so much easier when I was first promoted to GM because then of course I was the one wearing the belt.
Just my two cents, of course this is from my extremely specific perspective as a player that grinded for years and studied all sorts of builds etc but ultimately couldn't break that threshold until I disciplined myself.
To expand on your point (and forgive me if I misspeak here), I suspect the mental space you describe is a shift in mindset.
For myself, I never cracked master league back in my playing days, I was always stuck hitting my head on the ceiling of diamond league. Looking back, I think what held me back was a fixed mindset - I allowed the ranking system to dictate my play because I believed that the diamond tag on my profile was a stamp of my ability, never to be changed. I played to the same point over and over - If I couldn't kill protoss before he got the deathball, I was lost. Same could be said of the broodlord infestor army when I played zerg opponents, and maxed out mech/BC armies against fellow terran opponents. I knew that when my opponent reached a certain point in his game, there was nothing I could do in my game to contest and defeat it.
I think what separated me from players who were able to take the next step into Master and GM leagues was their mindset - they were able to adapt their game to overcome the barriers that their opponents put up, where I told myself that the game was lost once I saw an opposing army that I didn't think I could kill. It discouraged me from trying new builds, working on my micro, clocking a ghost and dropping a nuke on their unguarded expansions, etc etc. I just did the same thing over and over to extremely frustrating effect.
I've since read quite a bit about this subject and I do believe it has allowed me to change my mindset and improve aspects of my life. I have a great job, I kick ass in the video games that I play today, and I'm a hell of an athlete. I would like to think that if I did come back to starcraft 2, I would be able to push my game much further than I was able to back in my college days.
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EPT
