At HSC 29 in Krefeld I had the chance to sit down with Reynor for our second interview, more than two years after the first. As always I had a lovely time chatting with Riccardo and think you will al enjoy watching!
lol, does Reynor still get any REAL hate for his GSL performances? I feel like after region lock was removed and constant overrating of foreigners by the casual community went away (largely in thanks to players like Reynor actually performing at a championship level), it settled the biggest grievances held by 'Korean-elitists.' If anything, I think he gets a lot of respect for being the foreigner who constantly challenges himself in GSL.
On July 15 2026 06:23 Waxangel wrote: lol, does Reynor still get any REAL hate for his GSL performances? I feel like after region lock was removed and constant overrating of foreigners by the casual community went away (largely in thanks to players like Reynor actually performing at a championship level), it settled the biggest grievances held by 'Korean-elitists.' If anything, I think he gets a lot of respect for being the foreigner who constantly challenges himself in GSL.
On July 15 2026 06:23 Waxangel wrote: lol, does Reynor still get any REAL hate for his GSL performances? I feel like after region lock was removed and constant overrating of foreigners by the casual community went away (largely in thanks to players like Reynor actually performing at a championship level), it settled the biggest grievances held by 'Korean-elitists.' If anything, I think he gets a lot of respect for being the foreigner who constantly challenges himself in GSL.
Yeah, cause the plainest of plain banter constitutes hate, especially from the notable xenophobe and hateful progamer Solar
On July 15 2026 06:23 Waxangel wrote: lol, does Reynor still get any REAL hate for his GSL performances? I feel like after region lock was removed and constant overrating of foreigners by the casual community went away (largely in thanks to players like Reynor actually performing at a championship level), it settled the biggest grievances held by 'Korean-elitists.' If anything, I think he gets a lot of respect for being the foreigner who constantly challenges himself in GSL.
Yeah, cause the plainest of plain banter constitutes hate, especially from the notable xenophobe and hateful progamer Solar
Bro, I don’t think this could have more obviously been a meme post on my part
On July 15 2026 06:23 Waxangel wrote: lol, does Reynor still get any REAL hate for his GSL performances? I feel like after region lock was removed and constant overrating of foreigners by the casual community went away (largely in thanks to players like Reynor actually performing at a championship level), it settled the biggest grievances held by 'Korean-elitists.' If anything, I think he gets a lot of respect for being the foreigner who constantly challenges himself in GSL.
Yeah, cause the plainest of plain banter constitutes hate, especially from the notable xenophobe and hateful progamer Solar
Bro, I don’t think this could have more obviously been a meme post on my part
Hey, you're the guy who asked the question seriously in the interview
The memes with the shiba are funny though? I mean GSL is difficult, Even for more proven KR players than Reynor, so nothing surprising about his exit Heck Even Clem iirc didn’t make it in the weak GSL era
One thing that would be legitimately interesting is to examine statistically whether there is a material difference in upset odds in prep tournaments versus weekenders. Anecdotally it feels for sure there is, but it would be interesting to see it quantified.
On July 15 2026 22:46 rwala wrote: One thing that would be legitimately interesting is to examine statistically whether there is a material difference in upset odds in prep tournaments versus weekenders. Anecdotally it feels for sure there is, but it would be interesting to see it quantified.
On July 15 2026 22:46 rwala wrote: One thing that would be legitimately interesting is to examine statistically whether there is a material difference in upset odds in prep tournaments versus weekenders. Anecdotally it feels for sure there is, but it would be interesting to see it quantified.
That's actually an interesting question. I could dig into my data. My current suspicion is that format (Bo1 vs. Bo9), patch quality, patch maturity, balance, and mirror matchups explain more of the variation in upset rates than the prep/weekender distinction, but it'd be interesting to test.
I also think you'd have to split the analysis into different eras. The competitive landscape has changed quite a bit over the years - tournament structures, patch cadence, player pool depth, and even the prevalence of prep events have all evolved. Pooling everything together could easily mask or inflate any prep/weekender effect.
On July 15 2026 22:46 rwala wrote: One thing that would be legitimately interesting is to examine statistically whether there is a material difference in upset odds in prep tournaments versus weekenders. Anecdotally it feels for sure there is, but it would be interesting to see it quantified.
Def would be super interesting to see!
My hunch is that preparation formats have less upsets because they usually have bo5 and bo7 earlier in the event, which would decrease variance.
On July 15 2026 22:46 rwala wrote: One thing that would be legitimately interesting is to examine statistically whether there is a material difference in upset odds in prep tournaments versus weekenders. Anecdotally it feels for sure there is, but it would be interesting to see it quantified.
Def would be super interesting to see!
My hunch is that preparation formats have less upsets because they usually have bo5 and bo7 earlier in the event, which would decrease variance.
Interesting. I was thinking the opposite, but then again I was also assuming we control for sets/match. My assumption is that prep tourneys have quite a bit more upset potential. When you have days or even weeks to prepare for a specific opponent, it’s easier to develop strategies and builds that can overcome the skill gap. By contrast, when you’re grinding out 15-20 games in 48 hours against an unpredictable slate of opponents, you have to rely much more on skill and mechanics. I’m blanking on whether Lambo ever went to Korea to participate in GSL, but I always thought he would do well in that kind of format since he’s such an incredible strategist.
On July 15 2026 22:46 rwala wrote: One thing that would be legitimately interesting is to examine statistically whether there is a material difference in upset odds in prep tournaments versus weekenders. Anecdotally it feels for sure there is, but it would be interesting to see it quantified.
Def would be super interesting to see!
My hunch is that preparation formats have less upsets because they usually have bo5 and bo7 earlier in the event, which would decrease variance.
Interesting. I was thinking the opposite, but then again I was also assuming we control for sets/match. My assumption is that prep tourneys have quite a bit more upset potential. When you have days or even weeks to prepare for a specific opponent, it’s easier to develop strategies and builds that can overcome the skill gap. By contrast, when you’re grinding out 15-20 games in 48 hours against an unpredictable slate of opponents, you have to rely much more on skill and mechanics. I’m blanking on whether Lambo ever went to Korea to participate in GSL, but I always thought he would do well in that kind of format since he’s such an incredible strategist.
It goes both ways. The inferior player has more time to prepare unexpected builds, but the better player has more time to study their opponent's tendencies.
On July 15 2026 22:46 rwala wrote: One thing that would be legitimately interesting is to examine statistically whether there is a material difference in upset odds in prep tournaments versus weekenders. Anecdotally it feels for sure there is, but it would be interesting to see it quantified.
Def would be super interesting to see!
My hunch is that preparation formats have less upsets because they usually have bo5 and bo7 earlier in the event, which would decrease variance.
Interesting. I was thinking the opposite, but then again I was also assuming we control for sets/match. My assumption is that prep tourneys have quite a bit more upset potential. When you have days or even weeks to prepare for a specific opponent, it’s easier to develop strategies and builds that can overcome the skill gap. By contrast, when you’re grinding out 15-20 games in 48 hours against an unpredictable slate of opponents, you have to rely much more on skill and mechanics. I’m blanking on whether Lambo ever went to Korea to participate in GSL, but I always thought he would do well in that kind of format since he’s such an incredible strategist.
It goes both ways. The inferior player has more time to prepare unexpected builds, but the better player has more time to study their opponent's tendencies.
That’s a good point. I actually was thinking a similar thought in listening to Clem’s interview. He talked about how he was spending a lot of time with Future and learned all about these very specific reaper builds that Future specializes in. It made me realize that outside of the super top tier, your opponent is likely to have a much narrower set of playstyles so it can be easier to study/prepare/counter. I can’t remember if it was Reynor or who but someone was saying that the hardest thing about playing Maru wasn’t his speed or skill but that he basically plays every playstyle of Terran and he’s quite unpredictable in how he mixes them in. Like sometimes he’ll play a match and do a smattering of mech, bio, 2 base all-in, camp, proxy, etc and sometimes he’ll just camp every game and sometimes he’ll pick some seemingly random build he thinks is good against an opponent and spam it. I feel like he learned this from Rogue a long time ago. I remember a long time ago he played a series against Stats and just spammed some weird (and not very good) battle mech build and almost won just because no one plays this way so it wasn’t on Stats’ bingo card and it’s hard to adapt in realtime.
I do think there's a clear difference between Prep and weekend tournaments. Pretty sure we've all acknowledged it as a community over the years. It's a bit of a shame the biggest events outside of gsl and proleague were pretty much always weekend events, I understand logistically why that's the case tho.
Both formats require a different skill set. I do think reynor doesn't do as well in a prep tourney but I think that's true of all foreigners simply due to lack of exp in the format