IEM Katowice 2022: RO24 groups, RO36 bracket announced

On January 29 2022 09:34 zalem95 wrote:
No serral?
WTH?

On January 29 2022 08:58 ShowTheLights wrote:
Has Vs Cyan.. are you fucking serious?

The BIGGEST tournament of the year and you match HAS vs CYAN?!

We get literally ONE tournament to see the World play vs each other and you cant make a better bracket than this?

On January 29 2022 07:59 JJH777 wrote:
I like this bracket. It seems very well balanced. Hope some Toss make it through so the group stage isn't extremely unbalanced. Would be nice to see some success from herO and Creator.

On January 29 2022 13:32 zelevin wrote:
Of these ro36 players, who do you think has the best shot at winning the whole thing?

On January 29 2022 13:32 zelevin wrote:
Of these ro36 players, who do you think has the best shot at winning the whole thing?

On January 29 2022 13:32 zelevin wrote:
Of these ro36 players, who do you think has the best shot at winning the whole thing?

On January 29 2022 14:33 Blargh wrote:
Jeeze, traveling right now must be hell... Think about traveling internationally just to get beat by Byun or DRG before even reaching the final bracket... At least they get prize money at 36th place...

On January 29 2022 19:36 Vindicare605 wrote:
I dunno, I think Percival in a TvT is very capable of knocking Byun out. In the other two match ups though I'd say Byun is still the better player as long as his wrists hold out. But if Percival takes out Byun I'd say he has a decent shot at coming through that top part of the bracket.

The lower bracket is harder though and I gotta be pulling for DRG to get out of there. I think he can make waves in the main tournament, there's at least 10 players I'd favor him in a Bo5 with.

So dark horse pick for me here is Percival making it out of the top bracket. I'd say it's a long shot but I don't think Byun is as favored there as others do.

On January 30 2022 03:36 honorablemacroterran wrote:
A             B             C             D      
2937       2670       2897       3185
2153       2397       1976       2536
1369       1333       1573       1914
1265       1237       1240       1315
1172       752             740       1106

Mean 1779       1677       1685       2011
Variance 570396       668001       664304       741687

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.

On January 30 2022 04:05 Durnuu wrote:

It's an ESL tournament and Apollo is part of ESL.
Need I say more?

On January 30 2022 03:22 Vindicare605 wrote:
How the hell does Group B (and it's ALWAYS Serral's groups) have only one Korean player in it, but Group A has 4?

On January 30 2022 04:08 JJH777 wrote:
Jeeze after being pleasantly surprised by the ro36 bracket these groups are miserable. They really don't want KR to dominate the ro12. Also Dark/Serral/Special/Time were all in the same group last year weren't they..? I know Dark/Serral/Special were.

On January 30 2022 04:31 tigera6 wrote:

Yeah, I think ESL just copy pasta the whole group from last year or something, just too much of a coincidence for the group to repeat.
And group D got the highest total of EPTs points because first four players in the groups are at the top of their respective "tier", so its 1-5-9-13. Again, too much of a coincidence for something to be that way.

On January 30 2022 04:43 Nakajin wrote:


I mean it's a one in 64 chance, it's like mildly surprising.

On January 30 2022 04:45 honorablemacroterran wrote:


Can you show us the math on the probability?

On January 30 2022 04:48 Nakajin wrote:


4*4*4 (no1 need to be in one of the groups, on chance in four for 5th seed, 9th seed, 13th seed to be in the same one)

Don't get me wrong it's a very hard group and it's unfortunate for the players (and fortunate for the fans!) But very much in the realm of possibility without thinkering with the groups

On January 30 2022 04:48 Nakajin wrote:


4*4*4 (no1 need to be in one of the groups, on chance in four for 5th seed, 9th seed, 13th seed to be in the same one)

import numpy as np
tier2 = [5,6,7,8]
tier3 = [9,10,11,12]
tier4 = [13,14,15,16]
tier5 = [17,18,19,20]

sims = []
for i in range(100000):
selected_group = [1,
np.random.choice(tier2),
np.random.choice(tier3),
np.random.choice(tier4),
np.random.choice(tier5)]
sims.append(selected_group)

numerator = 0
for x in sims:
if x == [1, 5, 9, 13, 17]:
numerator += 1

prob = numerator/100000
print(prob)

On January 30 2022 05:03 JJH777 wrote:


That's only one of the odd coincidences though. What about group B having one Korean and having 4 of the same players as last year?

On January 30 2022 05:06 honorablemacroterran wrote:



I think you're off by a factor of 4.



This gives me a 0.4% chance.

On January 30 2022 05:10 honorablemacroterran wrote:
1/64 chance is still enough for a lot of research to claim it is statistically significant, though, to put it into perspective.

On January 30 2022 05:21 Nakajin wrote:


Fair enough.

I just think it's a bit silly to throw in that the bracket are rigged and quite mean toward the players.

On January 30 2022 05:21 honorablemacroterran wrote:



I don't think it implies anything about the players--they shouldn't have had anything to do with it.

On January 30 2022 05:27 Nakajin wrote:


The way it's presented by some is definitly that certain players (ie Serral) have had more success than they deserved because tournament organisers are stacking the odd in their favor behind the scene.

On January 30 2022 06:21 honorablemacroterran wrote:


Here's another interesting way to look at this problem.

https://pastebin.com/bv2uP8tZ

It says that there's a 0.8% chance for the average of Group D EPT points to be 297 points or greater than the averages of the other groups.

On January 30 2022 06:26 Die4Ever wrote:

0.8% chance for group D or Maru's group? cause "Group D" doesn't actually mean anything

and Maru himself brings a bunch of points with him so his group is naturally a bit higher since ESL doesn't give any advantage to the #1 seed

On January 30 2022 06:33 warnull wrote:


it's 0.8% for the group with the highest points

On January 30 2022 06:37 Die4Ever wrote:

so it's even lower for Maru then

On January 30 2022 06:39 honorablemacroterran wrote:


Yes I can try constructing that simulation but I think your intuition will be correct. On the other hand, Maru having the most points and the tier system will tend to make his group the one with the most points anyway.

On January 30 2022 06:55 Nakajin wrote:


Unless I'm crazy it can only be a Maru group since the 297 is the maximum amount -65 (dif between Dream and Zoun) and Maru has almost 250 point over Rogue in second place

On January 30 2022 09:27 JJH777 wrote:
The foreigners get easier brackets/groups conspiracy has been going on since at least 2011. In most cases it's just chance and even though I often call it out I know that most tournaments aren't rigged in that way and it really did just happen by chance but I do believe there have been tournaments where an organizer rolled the groups or bracket an extra time to get the matchups they wanted. It's hard to know which is which.

Also, regardless of whether it's actually rigged or not a big reason I mention it is because it should be part of a players legacy. The fact that Serral has only ever had a single tournament where he played top players from start to finish should be counted when people are talking about his dominance/results. I don't know of any other top player who consistently gets easy paths like Serral. Even ones who have won less.

On January 30 2022 11:45 bela.mervado wrote:
oh hai

thanks for the problem (while i let the whisky settle a bit)

it is aktchually 1.17% (probability for the max EPT sum group to have no less than 10056 points, uniform draws per tiers).
there are 3 of those scores, this current 10056, 10072 (Neeb+Dream) and the max 10122 (Nakajin: confirm, all these has Maru)
i have assigned the first 4 players a group id (it is just a labeling for an extra * 4! which we dont care about )
the rest can be computed, we only have (4!)^4 = 331776 cases.
these 3 scores each account for (3!)^4=1296 cases, so we have 3*1296/331776.

sorry for my gnuplot skills

On January 30 2022 12:02 Balnazza wrote:
I don't get what people complain about tbh.
As far as I can see, the groups got drawn in packs of four, right? 1 player from Top 4, 1 player from Top 8/12/16/20.
Yes, Group D is a group of death, but that just happens. There is always some "weirdness" happening with draws, but that doesn't mean it is rigged.
I also don't get how people think Serral "always has easy draws". Last year at Kattowice he had Dark and Innovation. Bad draws like that happen...if you want to avoid that, you probably had to put in some kind of seeding.

Just for the lolz - lets do a seeding, where we start in Group A with 1st and just go right:
Group A: Maru - Zest - Reynor - SpeCial - Dream
Group B: Rogue - Cure - Heromarine - Bunny - Zoun
Group C: Trap - Dark -Solar - Neeb - Showtime
Group D: Serral - Clem - TIME - Scarlett - Lambo
(yes, I know, the flaw in this system is that the "weakest" player (Lambo) gets seeded into the 4th players group...it gets balanced out after you seed the PlayIn Top 4 into it)

Is it just me or does Marus group still look really strong while Serrals probably got a bit easier? And we still have a group with four koreans, while we also got one with none.
And this is technically a "fair" seeding without any randomness.

On January 30 2022 12:02 Balnazza wrote:
I don't get what people complain about tbh.
As far as I can see, the groups got drawn in packs of four, right? 1 player from Top 4, 1 player from Top 8/12/16/20.
Yes, Group D is a group of death, but that just happens. There is always some "weirdness" happening with draws, but that doesn't mean it is rigged.
I also don't get how people think Serral "always has easy draws". Last year at Kattowice he had Dark and Innovation. Bad draws like that happen...if you want to avoid that, you probably had to put in some kind of seeding.

Just for the lolz - lets do a seeding, where we start in Group A with 1st and just go right:
Group A: Maru - Zest - Reynor - SpeCial - Dream
Group B: Rogue - Cure - Heromarine - Bunny - Zoun
Group C: Trap - Dark -Solar - Neeb - Showtime
Group D: Serral - Clem - TIME - Scarlett - Lambo
(yes, I know, the flaw in this system is that the "weakest" player (Lambo) gets seeded into the 4th players group...it gets balanced out after you seed the PlayIn Top 4 into it)

Is it just me or does Marus group still look really strong while Serrals probably got a bit easier? And we still have a group with four koreans, while we also got one with none.
And this is technically a "fair" seeding without any randomness.

On January 30 2022 15:39 DarkGamer wrote:
I like these groups because every race is represented and there are very good match ups coming for us

On a side-note: i played "kings" last year. Its a game where u roll the dice two times. to get two times a six has a probability of 1/36. i got this 3 rounds after another! this has a probability of 1/46656. all my friends laughed and accused me of cheating, but i didnt.
I think probabilities are deceptive sometimes!

On January 30 2022 15:46 honorablemacroterran wrote:


The probability is 1/36 every time though. It's not really comparable to this situation. Sounds like you fell into what's called the "Gambler's Fallacy."

On January 30 2022 08:50 deacon.frost wrote:
Two years in a row(and that's just what I remember) with this conspiracy. Is it really that hard to record the process and show the video there's no conspiracy involved?

On January 30 2022 14:24 Balnazza wrote:


I will be honest: Math is just not my strong point. I tried to follow it, but it wasn't working for me - not saying you or Bela are wrong though. But the one thing I do know about statistic is, that it isn't absolute. The chance to win the jackpot is incredibly low - yet it still happens rather frequently. Weirder things have happened. I've seen Hearthstone RNG that went down in the 0,00X%...

I would disagree however that I "went by my gut". The groups I mentioned are based on EPT points, so basically groups without any draw, just pure seeding. It is not what I think is stronger or weaker, it is what the points dictate. And overall I don't think the groups look that different compared to the ones we actually got. Because in the end, the difference between the 5th player (Clem) and the 8th player (Zest) is not that big, even though they have 600 points between them. On paper, either one of them looks strong in a group.
Though you might be right, Clem is a harder opponent for Serral, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. Either way (actual draw vs. "my" seeding) Serral is in a group that he easily should come out of, while Maru is still in a group that could go bad for one of the big three.

I would agree however with some comments that I really don't get why SC2 draws are always done in private. For example, I really enjoy the group-draws before the LoL Worlds. But correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that kind of an ESL thing to not show draws? I don't watch much Counterstrike, but I'm sure I've never seen a group draw in any shape or form in it.

On January 30 2022 19:54 deacon.frost wrote:

The fuck is this logic? You realise this isn't the first time this come into discussion? And this isn't a jackpot situation per se, because you keep ignoring how many times they have to do the drawing and how many people have to take a part to actually get the winner of the jackpot.

But in here we have a situation where people complain about the groups EVERY. DAMN. TIME. So while weirder things have happen, they don't tend to happen with this frequency.

The frequency is the thing that people question the most and you graciously ignore it

Edit> the most pathetic thing is that all it takes is 5 or 10 minutes of few people life on a camera and then presenting the video.

On January 30 2022 23:45 Poopi wrote:
I don't think people are complaining about Serral group being too easy, more so that group D is so hard for virtually no reason, and not only because Maru is in it. Hopefully they don't readjust groups for mean EPT points with ro36 qualified players, because herO might make it an even more absurd group seeing how few points he has with still a high chance to qualify

On January 31 2022 01:29 JJH777 wrote:
The idea that Serral could never be eliminated in an IEM group so the only thing that matters is how easy it is for him to get first meaning this is actually a hard group is such a Serral fanboy thing to say mere weeks after he was eliminated in a premier group stage by DRG of all players. Dream barely didn't do it too.

If you swap him with Rogue or Maru into their groups and the right player comes in from the ro36 (say DRG?) There's absolutely a chance he could be eliminated. It's low but if you played either of those hypothetical groups out 10 times he'd definitely lose out to some combination of DRG/Solar/Cure/Dream or Reynor/Clem/Zoun/DRG at least 1-2 times each group.

On January 31 2022 01:52 Acrofales wrote:
Trap and Zest in the same group

On January 31 2022 04:33 honorablemacroterran wrote:
I don't know how people are saying that a group that has Dark and the lowest total EPT points is the worst possible for Serral when there's a group with Clem and Reynor in the 2nd and 3rd slots. I want to be clear that I don't think the draw was rigged for Serral, but come on. If Serral were in Maru's slot I bet they'd be saying it's rigged against him.

On January 31 2022 11:21 tilhorizon wrote:
stop whining about group d
clem is historical not that good vs koreans and reynor is on a long slump
you have 4 favorites to win the tournament maru/serral/rogue/dark
2 of them are in group b
the tournament winner will be decided on single elimination bracket and the current shape of the players
the importance of group seeding is a bit overrated

On January 31 2022 04:52 dysenterymd wrote:

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the same people would be complaining and calling it foreigner favoritism so the big 3 can dodge top Koreans and make the bracket.

While I'm sure you can find a few people over the years claiming things are rigged against Serral, it's pretty obvious where the lion's share of deranged claims of rigging are coming from.

On January 30 2022 22:04 Nakajin wrote:


People complain about the groups because they want to complain, not necessarely because weird things happen
They would have complain if the second player of Serral group was either Dark, Clem, Cure or Zest, if the last player was Lambo instead of Showtime, if Heromarine replaced Time, or if Neeb or Bunny replaced Special. The proportion combinaison that would make people complain about Serral group is very big.

I'd be more suspicious if anyone had an oppinion on the groups of like Heromarine or Bunny in the last few years, they would be impacted too if the draw was righed, except no one see it weird cause no one ever look at their groups in an effort to find a pattern.

Making a live draw would probably solve some of the problems, but I wouldn't hold my breath, aren't we still using Trap Jin-Air picture?

Anyhow, that enough for me. The long wait for Kato begging, we'll restart this conversation once herO get put in group D!

On February 01 2022 03:13 honorablemacroterran wrote:
I don't think there's a real risk of Maru not making it out of the group, but it will definitely be harder for him than most of the other top seeds despite him being #1. Usually, the higher your seed, the easier your path, but in this case it's the opposite.

On February 01 2022 03:52 Acrofales wrote:

You think Maru has it harder than Trap? Or for that matter, Rogue?

I mean... Maru in Trap's group would definitely crush the whole thing. But it's far from an easy group for Trap.

The only first seed with an actual easy group is Serral, although I expect him to lose to Dark (they'll both beat everybody else, though).

On February 01 2022 07:17 bela.mervado wrote:
isn't this what you are looking for?

444.75

8951
Maru,T,3185
Zest,P,1976
Solar,Z,1369
Scarlett,Z,1315
Zoun,P,1106

8924
Rogue,Z,2937
Dark,Z,2397
Heromarine,T,1573
Neeb,P,1265
Showtime,P,752

8944
Trap,P,2897
Cure,T,2153
Reynor,Z,1914
Bunny,T,1240
Lambo,Z,740

8948
Serral,Z,2670
Clem,T,2536
Time,T,1333
Special,T,1237
Dream,T,1172

On February 01 2022 07:29 bela.mervado wrote:
yes this is just the sum of square of gr sum pts diff from avg

uhh this line looks ugly
i keep it

On February 01 2022 08:12 Poopi wrote:
Are these proposals using the rules in place ie. tiers / buckets of 4 players? But without random draw

On February 01 2022 08:38 Poopi wrote:
I think random draws is fine / can add hype, and too low variance would be boring if favorites had very good shot of advancing. But they should make their process public so people don’t think rigged

On February 01 2022 07:17 bela.mervado wrote:
isn't this what you are looking for?

444.75

8951
Maru,T,3185
Zest,P,1976
Solar,Z,1369
Scarlett,Z,1315
Zoun,P,1106

8924
Rogue,Z,2937
Dark,Z,2397
Heromarine,T,1573
Neeb,P,1265
Showtime,P,752

8944
Trap,P,2897
Cure,T,2153
Reynor,Z,1914
Bunny,T,1240
Lambo,Z,740

8948
Serral,Z,2670
Clem,T,2536
Time,T,1333
Special,T,1237
Dream,T,1172

On January 31 2022 20:59 Gina wrote:
They might not be using a nice-looking draw like bits of paper out of a hat, but just put the names and points into a program and get the groups. I know my friends running Go tournaments had software for that sort of thing. So there may not be anything to show on video.

On February 01 2022 19:02 deacon.frost wrote:

That would be what? 30 seconds video? So why not show it? I mean there's literally no reason to not show it. You're not competing for views or to be interesting, you're doing it so you stop these stupid conspiracy theories.

On February 01 2022 19:47 warnull wrote:


IMO there's no such conspiracy theory. The only people that claim grievances with the seeding method are select individuals in this TL thread. ESL shouldn't waste production resources catering those people. I would rather see more player interviews.

On February 01 2022 16:32 Acrofales wrote:


How is this better?

Group A: interesting fight for 2nd place between Zest, Solar and Zoun. Maru all but guaranteed through unless he somehow loses to Protoss.

Group B: Rogue vs Dark for the billionth time this year. Heromarine with an outside chance of causing an upset.

Group C: interesting.

Group D: Serral has an even easier group. Sure, you trade one angstgegner for another, but the rest still can't touch him. Clem has to TvT a bunch, so he should be comfortably second, but either Dream or Time can surprise.

Vs the actual groups:

Group A: interesting fight for 2nd place between Solar, Cure and Dream. Rogue all but guaranteed unless he decided to leave his A-game at home.

Group B: Serral and Dark should stomp this. Only question is who is #1.

Group C: interesting.

Group D: interesting fight for second place. If Maru has an off day it's even possible that he falls to Clem, Zoun and/or Reynor. Unlikely given current forms.


Seems like a lot of effort for no significant gain.