• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 01:06
CEST 07:06
KST 14:06
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Team Liquid Map Contest #22 - The Finalists12[ASL21] Ro16 Preview Pt1: Fresh Flow9[ASL21] Ro24 Preview Pt2: News Flash10[ASL21] Ro24 Preview Pt1: New Chaos0Team Liquid Map Contest #22 - Presented by Monster Energy21
Community News
2026 GSL Season 1 Qualifiers11Maestros of the Game 2 announced32026 GSL Tour plans announced10Weekly Cups (April 6-12): herO doubles, "Villains" prevail1MaNa leaves Team Liquid20
StarCraft 2
General
Adeleke University 2026/2027 Admission Form is Out Baze University 2026/2027 Admission Form is Out. C Weekly Cups (April 6-12): herO doubles, "Villains" prevail MaNa leaves Team Liquid Oliveira Would Have Returned If EWC Continued
Tourneys
2026 GSL Season 1 Qualifiers Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Master Swan Open (Global Bronze-Master 2) SEL Doubles (SC Evo Bimonthly) $5,000 WardiTV TLMC tournament - Presented by Monster Energy
Strategy
Custom Maps
[D]RTS in all its shapes and glory <3 [A] Nemrods 1/4 players [M] (2) Frigid Storage
External Content
Mutation # 521 Memorable Boss The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 520 Moving Fees Mutation # 519 Inner Power
Brood War
General
Pros React To: Tulbo in Ro.16 Group A ASL21 General Discussion BW General Discussion [BSL22] RO32 Group Stage mca64Launcher - New Version with StarCraft: Remast
Tourneys
[ASL21] Ro16 Group B Small VOD Thread 2.0 Korean KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 2 [BSL22] RO32 Group D - Sunday 21:00 CEST
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers What's the deal with APM & what's its true value Any training maps people recommend? Fighting Spirit mining rates
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread General RTS Discussion Thread Battle Aces/David Kim RTS Megathread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Starcraft Tabletop Miniature Game
Dota 2
The Story of Wings Gaming Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
G2 just beat GenG in First stand
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
Vanilla Mini Mafia Mafia Game Mode Feedback/Ideas TL Mafia Community Thread Five o'clock TL Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine YouTube Thread Canadian Politics Mega-thread
Fan Clubs
The IdrA Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Anime Discussion Thread [Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books [Manga] One Piece Movie Discussion!
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread McBoner: A hockey love story Formula 1 Discussion Cricket [SPORT]
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
[G] How to Block Livestream Ads
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Reappraising The Situation T…
TrAiDoS
lurker extra damage testi…
StaticNine
Broowar part 2
qwaykee
Funny Nicknames
LUCKY_NOOB
Iranian anarchists: organize…
XenOsky
ASL S21 English Commentary…
namkraft
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 2156 users

#1: Maru - Greatest Players of All Time - Page 55

Forum Index > SC2 General
1727 CommentsPost a Reply
Prev 1 53 54 55 56 57 87 Next
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26604 Posts
June 19 2024 17:53 GMT
#1081
On June 20 2024 02:38 Expensive-Law-9830 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 18:56 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 18:48 MJG wrote:
On June 19 2024 18:05 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 15:18 MJG wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

The fact that Serral accumulated everything after Proleague collapsed and the Korean scene was gutted is also significant...

... or maybe not because this is all subjective.

I''m not sure if you're rehashing the "more competitive era" argument, but in case you are, I'd already countered this argument at least twice before in this forum. The fact is, Proleague was replete with a bunch of Code A and Code B players. It's no difference if Maru, or even Serral beats up a bunch of them, or if they smashed through a bunch of upper-mid-tier Europeans, or even low-low-tier code S players today. Proleague wasn't all it's cracked up to be. It was just a very large pool of talents, ranging from low-tier Koreans that players like Heromarine/Showtime would easily crush to upper-tier Koreans, the vast majority of whom remained when Kespa pulled out support. It's the top talents that make the real difference in terms of level of competition.

"Low tier" Koreans utterly dominated the European and North American WCS circuits until they were region-locked out of them.

Not true. Low tier Koreans, for the most part, stayed in Korea, and played in Proleague. The Koreans who went abroad to compete against foreigners were largely mid-to-upper tier players. It makes sense. If you're not confident in your own ability, it's way too ambitious and risky to travel so far away to compete when you can already do so at home where it's comfortable. Bomber, Polt, MMA, Taeja, MC, etc. were far from low-tier. The non-Koreans of those days were also miles away from the Big Three of today's EU. Even the European players directly gatekeeping the Big Three were/are at least as strong as Neeb and Snute. Of course you would expect those Korean names listed to dominate those pre-LotV foreigners.


Pack it up boys, this forum has peaked at a new level of delusion.

It was in fact region locking that prevented foreigners from dominating Korea, not the other way around. How could past sc2 fans be all so wrong.

Not at all what was said though is it?
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
MyLovelyLurker
Profile Joined April 2007
France756 Posts
June 19 2024 18:06 GMT
#1082
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.


I don't count NationWars, and I don't think it's a reach to say a lot of regionals didn't have the same depth as the typical thing Maru is known for, given Serral essentially had to beat Reynor or Clem in finals (sorry, HeroMarine) to win. Serral's case stands strong enough on its own that he doesn't need to appeal to what were clearly lesser victories than say his GSL vs the World. I think I had arrived at Serral -2 vs Maru before his latest win, and clearly Serral accumulates victories faster as you mentioned, so they are close to tied and the days of Maru's sheer longevity/track record length argument are evidently numbered.

Either way, that is a much more valid and nuanced point than 'I went to the casino and bet twice on black, lost everything, and demanded my money back even because the roulette has to be balanced 50/50 right, I mathing correctly good ser'.
"I just say, it doesn't matter win or lose, I just love Starcraft 2, I love this game, I love this stage, just play like in practice" - TIME/Oliveira
MyLovelyLurker
Profile Joined April 2007
France756 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-19 18:09:37
June 19 2024 18:08 GMT
#1083
On June 19 2024 15:34 WombaT wrote:

Prize money is just a wonky metric all-round, given the exact same tournaments with the same prestige fluctuate in what they award amongst other things. Do these sites account for inflation I wonder, or currency fluctuation? :p


Prize-money-if-you'd-reinvested-everything-back-into-NVDA-at-the-time metric. The rich got richer, some even call it Jensen's inequality.
"I just say, it doesn't matter win or lose, I just love Starcraft 2, I love this game, I love this stage, just play like in practice" - TIME/Oliveira
Balnazza
Profile Joined January 2018
Germany1281 Posts
June 19 2024 20:22 GMT
#1084
On June 20 2024 02:53 WombaT wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 20 2024 02:38 Expensive-Law-9830 wrote:
On June 19 2024 18:56 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 18:48 MJG wrote:
On June 19 2024 18:05 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 15:18 MJG wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

The fact that Serral accumulated everything after Proleague collapsed and the Korean scene was gutted is also significant...

... or maybe not because this is all subjective.

I''m not sure if you're rehashing the "more competitive era" argument, but in case you are, I'd already countered this argument at least twice before in this forum. The fact is, Proleague was replete with a bunch of Code A and Code B players. It's no difference if Maru, or even Serral beats up a bunch of them, or if they smashed through a bunch of upper-mid-tier Europeans, or even low-low-tier code S players today. Proleague wasn't all it's cracked up to be. It was just a very large pool of talents, ranging from low-tier Koreans that players like Heromarine/Showtime would easily crush to upper-tier Koreans, the vast majority of whom remained when Kespa pulled out support. It's the top talents that make the real difference in terms of level of competition.

"Low tier" Koreans utterly dominated the European and North American WCS circuits until they were region-locked out of them.

Not true. Low tier Koreans, for the most part, stayed in Korea, and played in Proleague. The Koreans who went abroad to compete against foreigners were largely mid-to-upper tier players. It makes sense. If you're not confident in your own ability, it's way too ambitious and risky to travel so far away to compete when you can already do so at home where it's comfortable. Bomber, Polt, MMA, Taeja, MC, etc. were far from low-tier. The non-Koreans of those days were also miles away from the Big Three of today's EU. Even the European players directly gatekeeping the Big Three were/are at least as strong as Neeb and Snute. Of course you would expect those Korean names listed to dominate those pre-LotV foreigners.


Pack it up boys, this forum has peaked at a new level of delusion.

It was in fact region locking that prevented foreigners from dominating Korea, not the other way around. How could past sc2 fans be all so wrong.

Not at all what was said though is it?


Word of advice: Don't waste your keyboard on that guy. Literally here either to troll or live some very weird BW-fetish. It's the "Neeb is some random NA-Protoss"-guy
"Wenn die Zauberin runter geht, dann macht sie die Beine breit" - Khaldor, trying to cast WC3 German-only
ejozl
Profile Joined October 2010
Denmark3489 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-19 22:06:49
June 19 2024 22:02 GMT
#1085
Earnings is only really a bad metric because of invitationals and tournaments that exclude players. But I also don't think win rate is much better. If you talked to a guy who knew nothing about Starcraft, I think he'd be more impressed with you having won a million playing Starcraft, than with your 64% win rate in tournaments.

On June 19 2024 07:59 Balnazza wrote:
I mean, since fairness seems to be the utmost goal here...teamhouses naturally gave an unfair advantage, therefore they imbalanced the natural skill distribution. Which basically means we need to remove any player who ever trained in a teamhouse at any given time.

Therefore, by earnings, this is the true list of Top 10 SC2 players:

1. Serral
2. Reynor
3. Neeb
4. Scarlett
5. SpeCial
6. Oliveira
7. Nerchio
8. Snute (noice!)
9. ShoWTimE
10. Clem

(according to Esportsearnings...wtf, is Clem really that low on the list?)
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if Scarlett and SpeCial ever trained in a korean teamhouse, so maybe they need to be kicked out aswell.

There, fixed it. Data clearly supports it, therefore it most be true.

(just in case: No, I'm not serious, but c'mon, neither is that "balancing")

This is funny

On June 19 2024 14:53 Charoisaur wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

Then you should also count Maru's Proleague victory as he hard-carried with a 22-4 record

+
On June 19 2024 15:18 MJG wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

The fact that Serral accumulated everything after Proleague collapsed and the Korean scene was gutted is also significant...

... or maybe not because this is all subjective.

Well almost all of Maru's accolades were in the same time span as Serral. He didn't 1 man pro league, for most of pro league sOs was the ACE player.
SC2 Archon needs "Terrible, terrible damage" as one of it's quotes.
Balnazza
Profile Joined January 2018
Germany1281 Posts
June 19 2024 22:51 GMT
#1086
On June 19 2024 14:53 Charoisaur wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

Then you should also count Maru's Proleague victory as he hard-carried with a 22-4 record


While I wouldn't count teamleagues at all...c'mon, this is silly. Maru didn't "hard-carry" Jin Air. They literally had three players in the Top 10. It's not like they would have been deadlast without Maru. But that is exactly the case with Finlands NationWar-win. Without Serral, they don't make it out the Group Stage. Serral went 24-2 that season, the next best Finnish player is ZhuGeLiang with I believe 3 wins to however many losses.

Serral literally invited some dudes to a side-seeing tour to Paris. I highly doubt anyone would say "yes, the rest of Jin Air was just there to watch Maru play, they were basically useless".
"Wenn die Zauberin runter geht, dann macht sie die Beine breit" - Khaldor, trying to cast WC3 German-only
Bennito_bh
Profile Joined June 2022
15 Posts
June 19 2024 22:55 GMT
#1087
On June 20 2024 03:06 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.


I don't count NationWars, and I don't think it's a reach to say a lot of regionals didn't have the same depth as the typical thing Maru is known for, given Serral essentially had to beat Reynor or Clem in finals (sorry, HeroMarine) to win. Serral's case stands strong enough on its own that he doesn't need to appeal to what were clearly lesser victories than say his GSL vs the World. I think I had arrived at Serral -2 vs Maru before his latest win, and clearly Serral accumulates victories faster as you mentioned, so they are close to tied and the days of Maru's sheer longevity/track record length argument are evidently numbered.

Either way, that is a much more valid and nuanced point than 'I went to the casino and bet twice on black, lost everything, and demanded my money back even because the roulette has to be balanced 50/50 right, I mathing correctly good ser'.


It's fair to not count Nation Wars as it is a team match, technically, but if you aren't counting EU Regionals then it's hard to justify counting WESG 2017 (Maru only played v foreigners and Dark) or StarsWar11.

The gist of what you say is fair, but if we're going to nit-pick one person's accomplishments we need to do the same for the rest. There are also some random HSCs Serral's taken that aren't on the list, including ones where he beat top Koreans. That may only be due to prize pool, I'm lazy to look everything up right now.
tskarzyn
Profile Joined July 2010
United States516 Posts
June 19 2024 23:49 GMT
#1088
Someone brought up soccer earlier when talking about the subjectivity of GOAT debates. Why is Messi soccer's GOAT and not (insert name of the greatest goalkeeper).

Maru is SC2's Messi. Serral is it's greatest goalkeeper.
Charoisaur
Profile Joined August 2014
Germany16062 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-20 05:06:08
June 20 2024 05:02 GMT
#1089
On June 20 2024 07:55 Bennito_bh wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 20 2024 03:06 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.


I don't count NationWars, and I don't think it's a reach to say a lot of regionals didn't have the same depth as the typical thing Maru is known for, given Serral essentially had to beat Reynor or Clem in finals (sorry, HeroMarine) to win. Serral's case stands strong enough on its own that he doesn't need to appeal to what were clearly lesser victories than say his GSL vs the World. I think I had arrived at Serral -2 vs Maru before his latest win, and clearly Serral accumulates victories faster as you mentioned, so they are close to tied and the days of Maru's sheer longevity/track record length argument are evidently numbered.

Either way, that is a much more valid and nuanced point than 'I went to the casino and bet twice on black, lost everything, and demanded my money back even because the roulette has to be balanced 50/50 right, I mathing correctly good ser'.


It's fair to not count Nation Wars as it is a team match, technically, but if you aren't counting EU Regionals then it's hard to justify counting WESG 2017 (Maru only played v foreigners and Dark) or StarsWar11.

The gist of what you say is fair, but if we're going to nit-pick one person's accomplishments we need to do the same for the rest. There are also some random HSCs Serral's taken that aren't on the list, including ones where he beat top Koreans. That may only be due to prize pool, I'm lazy to look everything up right now.

The difference between EU regionals and other tournaments is that players outside of EU literally aren't allowed to compete in it.

It's like the money argument - you can't compare prize money if players have unequal opportunities to earn it.

WESG and StarsWar were open to all players and including qualifiers many more players attempted to compete in it.

And there are also tournaments like ASUS Rog Maru won that aren't on the list
Many of the coolest moments in sc2 happen due to worker harassment
Charoisaur
Profile Joined August 2014
Germany16062 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-20 05:06:46
June 20 2024 05:05 GMT
#1090
Many of the coolest moments in sc2 happen due to worker harassment
Azzur
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Australia6260 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-20 06:07:54
June 20 2024 06:05 GMT
#1091
We should one day do a compilation of GOAT tl.net articles! There will be serious competition - e.g. Elephant in the Room, etc
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26604 Posts
June 20 2024 07:04 GMT
#1092
On June 20 2024 07:51 Balnazza wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 14:53 Charoisaur wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

Then you should also count Maru's Proleague victory as he hard-carried with a 22-4 record


While I wouldn't count teamleagues at all...c'mon, this is silly. Maru didn't "hard-carry" Jin Air. They literally had three players in the Top 10. It's not like they would have been deadlast without Maru. But that is exactly the case with Finlands NationWar-win. Without Serral, they don't make it out the Group Stage. Serral went 24-2 that season, the next best Finnish player is ZhuGeLiang with I believe 3 wins to however many losses.

Serral literally invited some dudes to a side-seeing tour to Paris. I highly doubt anyone would say "yes, the rest of Jin Air was just there to watch Maru play, they were basically useless".

Man that was a fun tournament, I wish we had a bit more of it over the years.

It also gave folks from weaker SC2 nations something to get hyped for, and the better players there something to compete to be a part of. Even if it was to be monstered by someone like a Serral haha. Something like WCG too come to think of it

'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
radracer
Profile Joined March 2020
United States74 Posts
June 20 2024 07:30 GMT
#1093
IDK what world anyone would defend region locked tournaments as legitimate... joke.

Probably the same people that don't realize foreigners only got seriously competitive once KR scene died and SC2 fell out of the mainstream, becoming a niche game. (But NeEb WoN a KeSpA CuP iN 2016!)

It's the same type of people that think Happy is the GOAT War3 player since he's the best right now, while Moon dominated when the game was in it's prime competitiveness.
old
MJG
Profile Joined May 2018
United Kingdom1451 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-20 08:12:27
June 20 2024 08:11 GMT
#1094
On June 20 2024 07:02 ejozl wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 15:18 MJG wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

The fact that Serral accumulated everything after Proleague collapsed and the Korean scene was gutted is also significant...

... or maybe not because this is all subjective.

Well almost all of Maru's accolades were in the same time span as Serral. He didn't 1 man pro league, for most of pro league sOs was the ACE player.

I wasn't arguing in favour of Maru so..?
puking up frothing vitriolic sarcastic spittle
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26604 Posts
June 20 2024 08:13 GMT
#1095
On June 20 2024 16:30 radracer wrote:
IDK what world anyone would defend region locked tournaments as legitimate... joke.

Probably the same people that don't realize foreigners only got seriously competitive once KR scene died and SC2 fell out of the mainstream, becoming a niche game. (But NeEb WoN a KeSpA CuP iN 2016!)

It's the same type of people that think Happy is the GOAT War3 player since he's the best right now, while Moon dominated when the game was in it's prime competitiveness.

It’s almost like, I don’t know, region-locked tournaments actually gave foreigners a pathway to develop as fulltime players without having to compete with Korea’s best right off the gate or something.

Foreigners absolutely stepped up a level because that system came in when talents like Serral, Reynor or Clem were maturing. Perhaps they’d have committed to the full time progamer life regardless, but I imagine it aided the decision when one could reliably make a decent living for ‘merely’ being amongst the best in Europe/foreign land rather than in the world.

The shame is that simultaneously the Korean scene had a lot of problems, and IMO the likes of Blizz/ESL really did fuck all to help out that region.

'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
Harris1st
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Germany7148 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-20 08:48:30
June 20 2024 08:47 GMT
#1096
On June 20 2024 02:38 Expensive-Law-9830 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 18:56 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 18:48 MJG wrote:
On June 19 2024 18:05 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 15:18 MJG wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

The fact that Serral accumulated everything after Proleague collapsed and the Korean scene was gutted is also significant...

... or maybe not because this is all subjective.

I''m not sure if you're rehashing the "more competitive era" argument, but in case you are, I'd already countered this argument at least twice before in this forum. The fact is, Proleague was replete with a bunch of Code A and Code B players. It's no difference if Maru, or even Serral beats up a bunch of them, or if they smashed through a bunch of upper-mid-tier Europeans, or even low-low-tier code S players today. Proleague wasn't all it's cracked up to be. It was just a very large pool of talents, ranging from low-tier Koreans that players like Heromarine/Showtime would easily crush to upper-tier Koreans, the vast majority of whom remained when Kespa pulled out support. It's the top talents that make the real difference in terms of level of competition.

"Low tier" Koreans utterly dominated the European and North American WCS circuits until they were region-locked out of them.

Not true. Low tier Koreans, for the most part, stayed in Korea, and played in Proleague. The Koreans who went abroad to compete against foreigners were largely mid-to-upper tier players. It makes sense. If you're not confident in your own ability, it's way too ambitious and risky to travel so far away to compete when you can already do so at home where it's comfortable. Bomber, Polt, MMA, Taeja, MC, etc. were far from low-tier. The non-Koreans of those days were also miles away from the Big Three of today's EU. Even the European players directly gatekeeping the Big Three were/are at least as strong as Neeb and Snute. Of course you would expect those Korean names listed to dominate those pre-LotV foreigners.


Pack it up boys, this forum has peaked at a new level of delusion.

It was in fact region locking that prevented foreigners from dominating Korea, not the other way around. How could past sc2 fans be all so wrong.


You a free to leave. bye bye o/
Go Serral! GG EZ for Ence. Flashbang dance FTW
rwala
Profile Joined December 2019
338 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-20 18:12:57
June 20 2024 18:06 GMT
#1097
On June 20 2024 07:51 Balnazza wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 19 2024 14:53 Charoisaur wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

Then you should also count Maru's Proleague victory as he hard-carried with a 22-4 record


While I wouldn't count teamleagues at all...c'mon, this is silly. Maru didn't "hard-carry" Jin Air. They literally had three players in the Top 10. It's not like they would have been deadlast without Maru. But that is exactly the case with Finlands NationWar-win. Without Serral, they don't make it out the Group Stage. Serral went 24-2 that season, the next best Finnish player is ZhuGeLiang with I believe 3 wins to however many losses.

Serral literally invited some dudes to a side-seeing tour to Paris. I highly doubt anyone would say "yes, the rest of Jin Air was just there to watch Maru play, they were basically useless".


What’s silly is to compare NationWars on any level to Proleague, though I suppose this is actually a great example of what kind of perspective emerges from outcome-oriented thinking. I think a lot of people don’t realize that Proleague was arguably the most prestigious and important competition to ever exist in SCII (or at least on par with GSL, SSL, etc.). These were the matches that everyone watched. And players often devoted most of their practice time and saved their best builds for their Proleague matches with the hopes of impressing the managers and corporate sponsors and trading up to a new, better contract. NationWars was like a cute, fun thing featuring a handful of top pros, but mostly a bunch of mid- and lower-level pros. Very cool, but honestly nothing that should be seriously considered in any GOAT convo. There are lots of things in here on which reasonable people can disagree. This is not one of them.
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26604 Posts
June 20 2024 18:44 GMT
#1098
On June 21 2024 03:06 rwala wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 20 2024 07:51 Balnazza wrote:
On June 19 2024 14:53 Charoisaur wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

Then you should also count Maru's Proleague victory as he hard-carried with a 22-4 record


While I wouldn't count teamleagues at all...c'mon, this is silly. Maru didn't "hard-carry" Jin Air. They literally had three players in the Top 10. It's not like they would have been deadlast without Maru. But that is exactly the case with Finlands NationWar-win. Without Serral, they don't make it out the Group Stage. Serral went 24-2 that season, the next best Finnish player is ZhuGeLiang with I believe 3 wins to however many losses.

Serral literally invited some dudes to a side-seeing tour to Paris. I highly doubt anyone would say "yes, the rest of Jin Air was just there to watch Maru play, they were basically useless".


What’s silly is to compare NationWars on any level to Proleague, though I suppose this is actually a great example of what kind of perspective emerges from outcome-oriented thinking. I think a lot of people don’t realize that Proleague was arguably the most prestigious and important competition to ever exist in SCII (or at least on par with GSL, SSL, etc.). These were the matches that everyone watched. And players often devoted most of their practice time and saved their best builds for their Proleague matches with the hopes of impressing the managers and corporate sponsors and trading up to a new, better contract. NationWars was like a cute, fun thing featuring a handful of top pros, but mostly a bunch of mid- and lower-level pros. Very cool, but honestly nothing that should be seriously considered in any GOAT convo. There are lots of things in here on which reasonable people can disagree. This is not one of them.

Except they really didn’t. There’s a reason big chunks of the community don’t put a huge amount of weight on it.

I don’t think they’re right necessarily, but equally I think one can overstress its importance too.

It was a vestigial competition ported from a Brood War with a very different scene and audience, and it didn’t even run that long in SC2 either.

Where BW was closed and domestic, and Proleague was massive within that game and individual and team competition were equivalently prestigious, SC2 was more open, international and individual tournaments were the main focus from day 1.

This isnt to diminish it either, but it really doesn’t neatly fit into the wider scene structure and GOAT chat outside of players who played in it and can directly be compared either.

You had to be in Korea, on an eligible team and active for a relatively short period of SC2’s existence to even play in it at all. If memory serves Mvp didn’t in SC2, and Serral certainly never did.

Said as someone who did actively follow and enjoy Proleague, but I don’t think it enjoys nearly the cachet within the wider SC2 context as it did within Brood War.
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
PremoBeats
Profile Joined March 2024
542 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-06-20 19:45:07
June 20 2024 19:23 GMT
#1099
On June 20 2024 03:06 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
(...) Maru's sheer longevity/track record length argument are evidently numbered. (...)


Adding to this: not one Maru-is-GOAT-guy so far has answered my question how long Maru in their eyes would keep the GOAT throne if things went on like they are now.

Serral having win rates that are utterly surreal and showing a level of dominance no one ever could hope to attain. Accumulating more and more victories in the world's best events while beating everyone - including top Koreans - to the ground and standing at individual win records that are best to be described as absurd. Having more wins in PT with top Korean participation than anyone before him, while Maru still tries time and again to win Worlds and falling short, when the best of the world step in.

This is going on in the seventh year now. Maru was never able to surpass his peers in the way Serral did or be considered the undenied best in any given year. But somehow, these 2 premier tournament wins and a remarkable career at never being truly #1 seem to surpass Serral. But then the question is: How long is Maru's duration of playing at the top level sufficient to counter balance the inhuman dominance of Serral, who is destroying everyone for over half the game's life span? Does Serral need another 7 years to prove the point? When is enough enough? Or are these people seriously trying to argue that playing in the Kespa era and winning 2 PT in that time frame, while never being #1 back then, is enough to lift Maru above Serral in a GOAT debate?

No one so far, who claims Maru=GOAT has answered the question how long Serral's dominance needs to tower over everyone else, before Maru's duration handicap has reached its limit.
Balnazza
Profile Joined January 2018
Germany1281 Posts
June 20 2024 20:03 GMT
#1100
On June 21 2024 03:06 rwala wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 20 2024 07:51 Balnazza wrote:
On June 19 2024 14:53 Charoisaur wrote:
On June 19 2024 08:40 Perceivere wrote:
On June 19 2024 06:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
Honesty, I play Protoss, but this feels like an affront to the law of large numbers and Kolmogorov lol.

If you really want to, you can justify Maru being the GOAT simply by invoking his total number of premier wins, which is still a few over Serral (might be dethroned in a year or so ceteris paribus IIRC) provided you don't count Serral's euro-only wins - a bit harsh but hey. This is more intellectually honest than just performing arbitrary importance sampling by invoking a distribution SHOULD be perfect and zero-variance because you just said it would be (spoiler alert, empirical variance equal to 0 has by definition vanishing probability).

Even if we completely discount Serral's regional wins (which is an amazingly dismissive and dishonest reach), he would still have 18 premieres, vs Maru's 17. I counted Nation Wars 2019 for Serral, because it was basically him vs the world (sorry, ZhuGe, you did contribute some, I know).

Serral

ESL SC2 Masters 2024 Spring
IEM Katowice 2024
Master's Coliseum 7
Master's Coliseum 6
ESL SC2 Masters 2023 Summer
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9
HomeStory Cup XXI
IEM Katowice 2022 IEM Katowice 2022
NeXT 2021 S2 – SC2 Masters
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Fall: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Winter: Season Finals
DH SC2 Masters 2020 Summer: Season Finals
NationWars 2019
HomeStory Cup XX
2019 GSL vs the World
HomeStory Cup XVIII
2018 WCS Global Finals
2018 GSL vs the World

and Maru.

StarsWar 11
2024 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
King of Battles 2
DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
King of Battles: KB International Championship
2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League

The fact that Serral accumulated everything in two-thirds the amount of time as Maru is also significant.

Then you should also count Maru's Proleague victory as he hard-carried with a 22-4 record


While I wouldn't count teamleagues at all...c'mon, this is silly. Maru didn't "hard-carry" Jin Air. They literally had three players in the Top 10. It's not like they would have been deadlast without Maru. But that is exactly the case with Finlands NationWar-win. Without Serral, they don't make it out the Group Stage. Serral went 24-2 that season, the next best Finnish player is ZhuGeLiang with I believe 3 wins to however many losses.

Serral literally invited some dudes to a side-seeing tour to Paris. I highly doubt anyone would say "yes, the rest of Jin Air was just there to watch Maru play, they were basically useless".


What’s silly is to compare NationWars on any level to Proleague, though I suppose this is actually a great example of what kind of perspective emerges from outcome-oriented thinking. I think a lot of people don’t realize that Proleague was arguably the most prestigious and important competition to ever exist in SCII (or at least on par with GSL, SSL, etc.). These were the matches that everyone watched. And players often devoted most of their practice time and saved their best builds for their Proleague matches with the hopes of impressing the managers and corporate sponsors and trading up to a new, better contract. NationWars was like a cute, fun thing featuring a handful of top pros, but mostly a bunch of mid- and lower-level pros. Very cool, but honestly nothing that should be seriously considered in any GOAT convo. There are lots of things in here on which reasonable people can disagree. This is not one of them.


Yes, I'm sure every European watched Proleague at 10:00 on a Monday/Tuesday, it's crazy how empty the streets here became on these times because everyone was watching Proleague...
"Wenn die Zauberin runter geht, dann macht sie die Beine breit" - Khaldor, trying to cast WC3 German-only
Prev 1 53 54 55 56 57 87 Next
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Replay Cast
00:00
uThermal 2v2 Circuit S2 Mar
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
RuFF_SC2 205
StarCraft: Brood War
GuemChi 5806
Sharp 319
Tasteless 101
SilentControl 29
Stork 22
soO 16
Icarus 6
Dota 2
NeuroSwarm138
League of Legends
JimRising 616
Counter-Strike
Stewie2K479
Super Smash Bros
hungrybox358
Other Games
summit1g11991
tarik_tv2536
C9.Mang0371
Trikslyr146
Maynarde108
ViBE108
Organizations
Other Games
BasetradeTV301
Counter-Strike
PGL87
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 13 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Berry_CruncH309
• practicex 31
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Rush900
Upcoming Events
Escore
4h 54m
WardiTV Map Contest Tou…
5h 54m
OSC
9h 54m
Big Brain Bouts
10h 54m
MaNa vs goblin
Scarlett vs Spirit
Serral vs herO
Korean StarCraft League
21h 54m
CranKy Ducklings
1d 4h
WardiTV Map Contest Tou…
1d 5h
IPSL
1d 10h
WolFix vs nOmaD
dxtr13 vs Razz
BSL
1d 13h
UltrA vs KwarK
Gosudark vs cavapoo
dxtr13 vs HBO
Doodle vs Razz
CranKy Ducklings
1d 18h
[ Show More ]
Sparkling Tuna Cup
2 days
WardiTV Map Contest Tou…
2 days
Ladder Legends
2 days
BSL
2 days
StRyKeR vs rasowy
Artosis vs Aether
JDConan vs OyAji
Hawk vs izu
IPSL
2 days
JDConan vs TBD
Aegong vs rasowy
Replay Cast
3 days
Wardi Open
3 days
Afreeca Starleague
3 days
Bisu vs Ample
Jaedong vs Flash
Monday Night Weeklies
3 days
RSL Revival
3 days
Afreeca Starleague
4 days
Barracks vs Leta
Royal vs Light
WardiTV Map Contest Tou…
4 days
RSL Revival
5 days
Replay Cast
5 days
The PondCast
6 days
WardiTV Map Contest Tou…
6 days
Replay Cast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Proleague 2026-04-15
RSL Revival: Season 4
NationLESS Cup

Ongoing

BSL Season 22
ASL Season 21
CSL 2026 SPRING (S20)
IPSL Spring 2026
KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 2
Escore Tournament S2: W3
StarCraft2 Community Team League 2026 Spring
WardiTV TLMC #16
Nations Cup 2026
IEM Rio 2026
PGL Bucharest 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 1
BLAST Open Spring 2026
ESL Pro League S23 Finals
ESL Pro League S23 Stage 1&2
PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026
IEM Kraków 2026

Upcoming

Escore Tournament S2: W4
Acropolis #4
BSL 22 Non-Korean Championship
CSLAN 4
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
HSC XXIX
uThermal 2v2 2026 Main Event
2026 GSL S2
RSL Revival: Season 5
2026 GSL S1
XSE Pro League 2026
IEM Cologne Major 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 2
CS Asia Championships 2026
IEM Atlanta 2026
Asian Champions League 2026
PGL Astana 2026
BLAST Rivals Spring 2026
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.