Now I wouldn't say I'm a huge BackHo fan. I'm not even really sure if I fully like him that much? But really, what's with all the BackHo hate? Sure his name isn't so great, and he's not the prettiest Starcraft player in the world, but everyone seems to have a grudge against this guy for no reason.
Okay, maybe you have reasons. He came out of nowhere and beat a player you like, his name pains you to read, or he's just the 'punk' out of nowhere who has no chance at greatness, and you believe will barely show up anywhere in season or two.
Maybe you don't think he shows any signs of becoming great, but the fact is he has outplayed his reputation. He may not be the most exciting player in the world, but it's always exciting to see the new kid on the block unexpectedly roar through the long-rooted favorites.
I noticed a few comments in the TL Power Rank about how he's not deserving of the monthly rank, and I believe his reputation as the 'least liked pro Starcraft player' has part to do with this. He's shown that he can seriously lay down the law against some formidable opponents. This -isn't- saying he's definitively deserving of the Power Rank 10, but he's DEFINITELY in the running. Give him a chance! Maybe he'll surprise us in the near future! Even if he doesn't, for the time being, he's a force to be reckoned with. He's shooting for the semifinals in the GOMTV Classic, and he's recently made it to the OSL semifinals. (Which he lost to the Golden Mouse hungry JulyZerg!) That's no small feat.
All I'm saying is, you don't have to like the guy, but at least give him the respect he deserves, because he's a damn good Starcraft player.
Be sure to tune in to the GOMTV Classic this Sunday morning and watch BackHo play Stork! And this time try not to hate him so much!
Here's a vid from his recent game 3 against Ganzi in the GOMTV Classic. His Reaver control is really fun to watch in this game, some of the funnest Reaverplay I've seen, so I highly suggest you check it out:
Sadly Tasteless was at WWI so Jason Lee is commentating during what would have been way more exciting with Tasteless. Nothing against Jason Lee, I thought he was great, but you can't replace Tasteless during games like this.
Anyway, I hope this will make people think twice before tossing BackHo aside or insulting his play.
Post your BackHo appreciation!
Please don't post your disagreements/arguments unless my facts are wrong, in which case I'll correct them. This is meant to be a 'forum' for those uneasy or unsure about BackHo, as well as a place for TERRIFIED (lol) BackHo fans to voice their opinions without getting bombarded with hate.
Who knows, maybe everyone's comments and input will convince ME to finally decide that I'm a BackHo fan.
I found the photo of him in the shower with Jaedong highly amusing. I actually like Backho because of the thread about him prior to this one. He's definitely a source of entertainment.
On July 11 2008 19:12 Plexa wrote: Just wondering, have you watched backho vs any of those gamers? or just going by statistics
I've watched about 1/2 to 2/3rds of them. I'm assuming you're referring to the cheesiness of many of them, which doesn't make them any less of a win in my book. I suppose others may disagree, but I don't really blame him when he's playing beasts like Jaedong.
backho is not a good name he is not insanely good (like for one, BeSt) backho has no good reputation.
you need to do better then 'acceptance' thread making to make backho shine. no offence, but i find the OP a bit lacking.
until backho manages to win from certain people, say anyone from the powerranking by example, he gets not enough respect from me. or at least, that is what you try to tell me right?
The major problem with Backho is frustration. Aside from July, many of the players who lost to him just fucking dropped the ball in terms of their play in the game itself (Much/Bisu in particular, Jangbi also, Jaedong too). Now I'm certainly not saying I hate Backho -> In fact I agree with Kwark in that the kid is mechanically quite good, his sense is what lacks. However, people were angry that a fair few of their players dropped the ball against him.
Until he has strong, dominating wins of his own accord then I doubt many people will respect him.
On July 11 2008 19:31 wo0py wrote: backho is not a good name he is not insanely good (like for one, BeSt) backho has no good reputation.
you need to do better then 'acceptance' thread making to make backho shine. no offence, but i find the OP a bit lacking.
until backho manages to win from certain people, say anyone from the powerranking by example, he gets not enough respect from me. or at least, that is what you try to tell me right?
Apparently there's a misunderstanding with the purpose of the thread. The purpose is not to "make backho shine," but instead to pull some respect to him as a serious pro gamer. There's a reason it's an 'acceptance' thread and not an 'appreciation' thread.
Secondly, he has beaten people from both the current and past power rankings, and even if he hadn't, why does that mean he cannot be respected? I respect -many- Starcraft players who never in their lives will ever come CLOSE to making the Power Rank.
All in all, I found your reply to be quite rude and inaccurate, when I respectfully requested against it.
Let's just not turn this into a flame war. And let's see if -maybe- a BackHo fan shows up! *cricket*
On July 11 2008 20:08 HaXxorIzed wrote: Until he has strong, dominating wins of his own accord then I doubt many people will respect him.
Yeah I see what you mean by this, however, doesn't it seem that he has to work much harder at it than others just because of his reputation? I mean, you don't really see people hardcore bashing other players like YoonJoong (Shuttle)? I believe Shuttle has performed a bit worse than BackHo, yet he does not recieve nearly as much disrespect.
Is the source of BackHo's disrespect the lameness of his name? The fact that he's -notsogracefully- executed a few top dogs? Or what?
I'm simultaneously trying to prove a point and inquire about why people really don't like this guy.
Help me understand! (Or post some BackHo acceptance!) lol
Respect for progamers comes naturally.. you dont need to make a thread for it. Some people will hate certain progamers for no obvious reason, its pretty normal on tl.net i guess.
To clarify: this is not a rehash of the KeSPA rankings. This is not a lifetime achievement award. This list consists entirely of my picks of who is hot right now. Any player who loses a big game to an amateur opponent or attempts some particularly retarded cheese can look forward to dropping off the list as quickly as he arrived. I consider much more than statistics when formulating this list, and although the placement might seem, on occasion, biased or even completely random, I assure you that I have my own, incredibly valid reasons for the decisions I make.
Backho still deserve to be a contender for power rank?
Opphh, a fellow BackHo fan, I really rooted for him after beating JangBi. Sure he may have cheesed Jaedong and upset Casy, he came as far as the OSL semi's where he lost the the hungry Tushin.
I mean, if people really hate him because other players dropped the ball against him, its not BackHo's fault if you put it that way, its not the guys fault the other dude dropped the ball. Sure he may have fluked some of his matches by cheese or something, but there are also some players who cheesed at the beginning, and they own now (I don't know much but I think Flash is one of them). Sure most of us hate him but I think the guy deserves some credit for coming as far as the Semifinals, no one just walks to get there. I really think he deserves even just little respect because of coming that far. And now he faces Stork at GOM. If he wins this one and takes a game off Flash (even just one), I think he deserves a lot more respect.
To clarify: this is not a rehash of the KeSPA rankings. This is not a lifetime achievement award. This list consists entirely of my picks of who is hot right now. Any player who loses a big game to an amateur opponent or attempts some particularly retarded cheese can look forward to dropping off the list as quickly as he arrived. I consider much more than statistics when formulating this list, and although the placement might seem, on occasion, biased or even completely random, I assure you that I have my own, incredibly valid reasons for the decisions I make.
Backho still deserve to be a contender for power rank?
Great point. I realize that this is how the Power Rank works, but I still believe he should be considered. I would place him in the "hot right now" category, but as you are obviously pointing to, he is also in the "attempts some particularly retarded cheese" category.
I think his moderate successes have been frequent and large enough to consider him worthy of being accepted as a serious Starcraft contender. No, not Jaedong or Flash serious, but still pretty serious.
As I stated in my OP, I'm not saying he should be in this month's Power Rank or anything, not until he's impressed a bit more, but I do believe he's in the running.
I think everyone is a lot harsher on him simply because of the snowballing bad reputation which seems to be erupting around him, and that's all I'm trying to say is give the guy a break.
As a side note, Plexa, your News posts are absolutely godly. <3
To clarify: this is not a rehash of the KeSPA rankings. This is not a lifetime achievement award. This list consists entirely of my picks of who is hot right now. Any player who loses a big game to an amateur opponent or attempts some particularly retarded cheese can look forward to dropping off the list as quickly as he arrived. I consider much more than statistics when formulating this list, and although the placement might seem, on occasion, biased or even completely random, I assure you that I have my own, incredibly valid reasons for the decisions I make.
Backho still deserve to be a contender for power rank?
Great point. I realize that this is how the Power Rank works, but I still believe he should be considered. I would place him in the "hot right now" category, but as you are obviously pointing to, he is also in the "attempts some particularly retarded cheese" category.
I think his moderate successes have been frequent and large enough to consider him worthy of being accepted as a serious Starcraft contender. No, not Jaedong or Flash serious, but still pretty serious.
Backho has one good matchup, PvP. His PvP is actually fairly good, and is quite solid. I'd pick him over Stork atm really. Him defeating Bisu/Much was basically a wakeup call saying "hey look at me, i can play pvp!"
Well to be fair, that was the case with much... bisu was injured and couldn't play to his full capacity but oh well, we'll ignore that.
But his PvT and PvZ are absolutely terrible. Ganzi collapsed against Backho, and is a young rising star for hanbit, and really doesn't amount to much of a terran opposition. Mind rolled him without Backho offering much opposition. Casy did some weird cheesy allin when he really didn't need to and Backho just walked all over him. Then again, what protoss doesn't walk over casy? I dont know much about his game against Boxer, but it was on Andromeda ie 17-7 P>T map. Once again, he shows little real talent in PvT and ultimately, in my honest opinion, sucks and got really lucky with how things came out.
Backho's vZ lacks all direction. His only non-cheese win against Zerg this year was Hyunjun (young zerg from wemade) on Katrina (2007 katrina ie p>all). When you can only win games against Zerg by using cheese that does not constitute a good player. It shows a player who lacks the fundamentals to advance legit. Sure, he cheesed Jaedong out of contention, thats nice, personally i dont care (i hate Jaedong anyway) but it doesn't mean that Jaedong wouldn't beat him the next 10 games in a row because ultimately Jaedong is the better player. Its not surprising that his only win against july was a 9-9 gate on the protoss favored troy. Quite simply put, with losses to the likes of Haran, Backho's PvZ sucks.
Drawing a comparison to Flash is erroneous in this situation. Backho cheesed one game (dual proxy gate in the middle of the map --zz) Flash used a excellent cheese on monty and then a bio build to boot (not that bad of a cheese really). Sure he crumbled afterwards, but Flash still looked very promising; bar his weakness to carriers. Flash didn't have one obviously strong mu and abuse it either, he got dealt a raw set of hands and played the game with them. He was allround pretty good.
A better comparison is Silver, who abused his ZvP something terrible to reach the finals of Pringles-2 where he ran into Savior and went 1-3. This is a much better comparison as Backho abused PvP to get into the Ro8 -> Ro4. Then he ran out of protoss and got squelched. Indeed the following season Silver got hit with some terran opponents and made a very short appearance the following season. Unless Backho's group gets stacked with protoss, he will follow a similar path.
In summary, Backho rose to fast; he needs more time to develop and hone his game. It's great that he managed to come this far, but outside of PvP he's looked absolutely terrible. Maybe in a years time his other matchups will be at a similar level and then we can say "wow Backho got so much better"
Sadly for you backho fans, that time is not now
EDIT; btw when did backho play iris? stork vs'd him in GOM and Iris played backho in 2007
How can you possibly say backho is the most hated player, he can't possibly compete with the hate that Go.Go[gsp] and Firebathero attract from all over...
I debated BackHo and the Power Rank with Steve and he convinced me the BackHo is not PR material. The problem with BackHo isn't his macro, micro or multitasking, all are top notch. He has the mechanics of a S class player (as I noted a long time ago when I singled him out for greatness). BackHos problem is his decision making. The decision making that'll make him attempt to use reavers against mutalisks and zealots with one observer against scourgelurkovi. I used to think BackHo just didn't understand the game. A C- player could sit down with him and explain that the scourgelurkovi combo works well because the zees run in, take a fuck load of damage, the observer dies and the zees get owned before the lurkers die. I have this mental image of BackHo going "oooh, so that's why they keep doing that and all my zealots die" or quite possibly "lurkers?!?! you're going to have to stop with all this complex jargon and explain more simply". The problem is once in almost every game he plays (he generally doesn't get the chance to do it twice) BackHo will make an absolutely retarded decision. Be it the glorious strategic error of "ALL DRAGOONS!" driving him to avoid templar tech pvz or a more tactical error like "I know it's 3 base each PvZ and I have map control but I'm going to go allin with zeereaver against muta because I can't see that working out badly". As much as I love watching BackHo, and I do because I have no idea what he will do in a given game, I don't think he's power rank material because he can and does implode without warning. He's a legend though. The antiboxer. With Boxer you got that feeling of "I have no idea where you're going with that strategy but I know it'll be awesome". With BackHo you get "I have no idea where you're going with that strategy, but nor do you, you're just doing it because you have no idea how to play bw but given it's backed up by some of the best mechanics in the proscene the abomination you're creating will be awesome, especially in it's epic fail death throes".
If you read through the power rank pages 7-9 you'll find me arguing BackHos case. Hopefully that'll help because I consider myself #1 UK BackHo fan (self proclaimed obv) (and possibly #1 non korean BackHo fan). And given it's now relevant to something and hopefully it'll convert some new guys to the cult of BackHo, I'll bring up my old BackHo <3 post.
On September 13 2007 14:55 Kwark wrote: I just watched BackHo's games vs sAviOr. The first one on Python reminded me so much of myself it hurt. Of course a much better me, playing a much better opponent but even so, the same mistakes. He did a fast expo, scouted sAviOr going fast lair and therefore without more information went for a few sairs with goon support. It's logical. It's a mistake, but it's a very logical mistake, one that I always make. Thought 1 The sairs are useful and can buy time vs muta until the goons arrive. If you pump goons then the muta can't do any real damage. Thought 2 If he goes lurks then the goons will break out in no time, but I'll need obs to exert map control. My FE gives me a short term advantage but I need to push quickly.
Consequence Stargate, mass goon and fast robo. No archives. At this point the muta have been repulsed and you're moving out vs lurks. But he's going mass hydra. You need a counter. You need it quickly. You have robo, you quickly throw down a support bay. It's logical. Reavers are a perfect support unit for goons.
Huge Fuck Up Somewhere along the line your thinking changes. Whereas normally you'd fight hydra with stormers and speedlots you've had a paradigm shift. You know you need to go stormers. You sit there thinking you must. But you've never got the gas because you're always pumping goons and you can't make zealots because somehow you still haven't got zealot speed. And a change occurs. On some level you start to believe if you could just make enough goons it might just work. In your mind you know you need storm, but in your heart you want to believe the goons can do it. You lay down gate after gate, upping it to 9 gates off your main and nat. You take an island. You keep those reavers coming, providing slow but effective support. Nothing can beat you. Goons are like the ultimate unit. 20 damage!!! EXPLOSIVE DAMAGE!!!(fuck yeah!) Kills shit on the ground!! Kills shit in the air!!! Decent range!!! There's nothing dragoons can't take, if you could just build enough of them. And before you know it you're late game, your grades are 1-1-1, you still haven't researched psi storm and your pure dragoon army is waiting for those reavers to crawl across the map. And that's when the pure hydralisk attack from every side in huge numbers. I lose game after game to this. BackHo demonstrated it flawlessly. I don't know what it is that makes players think pure dragoons are good PvZ. I don't know how we get there. But we do. Even at a pro level players still fall into the trap which gets me over and over. And that is why when I saw sAviOr tear through the huge army of pure goon as BackHo didn't even have an archives 20 minutes into a PvZ I knew I loved him. For me BackHo is hope. I look at him and I think "sure, right now I'm being owned by noobs on ICC because of that basic mistake but if I stick with the goons one day I could be owned by Savior on live television with it".
But there's more to him than pure dragoon PvZ. For shortly afterwards I saw another game of him against sAviOr. And I discovered BackHo has two modes, not one. That's right, not only has he pure dragoon, he has no dragoon. In game two BackHo did not make any dragoons. Realising his earlier mistake he purposefully avoided them. Early game we had sweeping armies of speedlots. Then we added copious amounts of stormers. By the late game we had speedlots, stormers and archons. The lack of dragoons was so obvious that sAviOr left a overlord following his army and whenever he added an observer he'd cruise a scourge in to kill it. That overlord didn't take a scratch. Every now and then a scourge would be stormed on it's approach to the observer but that was BackHo's only gesture towards anti-air. Time and time again the army of zealots swarmed into the lurkers, then retreated as BackHo realised they weren't very good at that. Over and over they failed to do any noticable damage to ultralisks as he replaced the fallen zealots from 12 gateways. This is a man who doesn't care what his opponent does. He doesn't see the need to react to them, he's got his game plan and he'll do it regardless. Pregame someone toggles him to either Dragoon = 1 or Dragoon = 0 and he'll play it out. He'll push his opponent to the limit with dragoons, or without, but no half measures. It may seem that this is a weakness, indeed it could be argued that it lost him two games vs sAviOr from relatively strong positions in each. But we should not consider these as losses. Not for BackHo. A loss would be when he goes against his arbitrary rules and makes a functional army. For him victory is the knowledge that he somehow has a progaming contract despite sabotaging his own game. And one day, when you all least expect it, he'll strike. And he'll use a mixed army and nobody will be able to equal him.
And that, more or less, is why I love BackHo. Oh, and there was that game that Pusan tried to lose over and over but BackHo just wouldn't let him. BackHo plays to nobody's rules but his own. Pusan can sacrifice 9 gateways for no strategic reason, Pusan can throw away as much of his unit production as he likes but if BackHo has decided he's going to lose then he's going to lose and nobody can change that.
EPT
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