SC2 Power Rank: May 2019 - Page 7

On May 02 2019 03:38 Xain0n wrote:


It's not like Katowice is the ultimate tournament, otherwise the Terran race would have gone exctinct already.
Thus said, even representation at BlizzCon probably is not the fairest system but I wouldn't skew it much in favor of koreans(probably the top 10 koreans and 6 foreigners would be the best at the moment).

You have not answered yet me on how could Serral be named best player of the year in 2018 if he achieved that on top of the equivalent of less than four consecutive ro8 placements in Code S(in addiction to his international successes, of course).

On May 02 2019 04:38 fronkschnonk wrote:

No tournament is "the ultimate tournament" but some are far more accurate in displaying an undistorted picture of the current competition. IEM features almost all top players - foreigners and koreans - since almost all try to qualify (before and also in offline qualifiers at the event). Thus no group of players is artificially inflated in numbers and also no current hot player can be excluded due to not gathering enough points earlier. IEM Katowice 2017, 2018 and 2019 all had the same format and all drew the same picture: only 3 (4 in 2017) foreigners in top 16, only 2 making it to the playoffs (top12 - only 1 in 2018).

I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly... could you please rephrase?

On May 02 2019 06:25 Xain0n wrote:


I'll rephrase my question: how do you justify the fact Serral was elected player of the year in 2018 if his triumphs(following your evaluations) basically equates to two artificially inflated tournaments, a non Premier HSC and four consecutive less-than-ro4 in Code S?

On May 02 2019 07:05 Charoisaur wrote:

Funny how you take Serral getting elected player of the year by TL as proof he was the best that year and when soO gets placed above him or Serral gets placed #6 suddenly TL is wrong and their list means nothing

On May 02 2019 06:25 Xain0n wrote:


Foreigners performed quite poorly at Katowice, a tournament that indeed possesses all the qualities you pointed out.

However, not having wholly open qualifiers has nothing to share with results and performances: if foreigners were as bad as IEM outcomes suggest they are(worse than top 12 koreans, on average) how would we explain their consistently much better placements at BlizzCon(Elazer's and Special's ro4, multiple ro8, Neeb and ShowTime both beating the eventual champions, let alone Serral's glory road) or the good showings in Code S in 2018(Neeb's ro4, Scarlett's ro8, Reynor's ro16).
If such a huge skill gap would exist, no comfortable placement could save foreigners from a brutal beatdown like it happened almost every time back in HoTS.

I don't remember if you considered judged winning WCS something like a "ro12" or a "ro6" in Code S; in the best case scenario, that's inferior to reaching semifinals.
I'll rephrase my question: how do you justify the fact Serral was elected player of the year in 2018 if his triumphs(following your evaluations) basically equates to two artificially inflated tournaments, a non Premier HSC and four consecutive less-than-ro4 in Code S?

On May 02 2019 11:47 fronkschnonk wrote:


Of course the openness of a qualifier has an influence on the results. I'll list them for you:
- not all the best (especially not all the current best) will participate due to some of them not having enough points or not being as popular to be successful in a vote. This is a bigger problem for koreans who have a bigger pool of top players
- having a artificially increased number of foreigners in a tournament increases the chance of one/some of them advancing further
- having a artificially increased number of foreigners in a tournament reduces the amount of tough koreans they will have to face on their tournament path
- as IEM results imply this means that in earlier rounds there are to beat easier opponnents than if the tournament was open
- this gives more opportunities to individual favorable/lucky tournament paths (as in smaller chance of being confronted with unfavorable matchups)
- as results of Blizzcon/GSL vs The World show, in higher rounds foreigners normally get eliminated after the easier first rounds with Serral being the one exception - which validates previous points.

But you might have gotten something wrong: I never said that foreigners didn't improve. As you say, Serral, Neeb, Scarlett, Reynor, Showtime and Special are prove of the gap getting smaller for the very top of the foreigners. Still, while most of them may regularly beat top koreans, they also almost always aren't good enough to make it to Ro8 or further in a non-distorted tournament environment - with few exception of course (and Serral being a big one).
What does this mean? Yes, the top foreigners are getting closer (or have getting closer - how this develops further is open) but they're not close enough yet to justify a only foreigner competition being valued as high as you're doing it.

Your question surprises me. As you know I never justified the fact that Serral was elected player of the year in 2018 but always critisized it as a wrong decision. A wrong decision probably caused by - as you would say - recency bias. A wrong decision more or less because of the reasons you stated.


@Anc13nt
I think the record of Serral vs Koreans is kind of distorted.
He only did compete in 2 tournaments with koreans in the first half of the year (in one of them only facing one korean: Maru to whom he lost 0-3), when he obviously wasn't as good as he became leater in the year. Thus it's highly questionable to think that he would've been as successful in the first two GSLs as his 2nd half of 2018 implies.
Also, if you take the two best streaks of Maru and Serral in 2018, we compare a 17:2 record of Maru and a 15:0 record of Serral vs koreans. While Serral's record is obviously better if you translate it into win percentage, the bigger sample size of Maru's games makes it hard to make the statement that Serral was objectively spoken the better player based on this data - especially if you take in account that Maru's streak lasted over the course of 6 months and Serral's over the course of 4 months (if one would extend Serral's period of dominance with additional 2 months, one would have to include his two losses vs soO at Nationwars which would make his record worse than Maru's)

On May 02 2019 18:42 Xain0n wrote:


The openness of the qualifier bracket obviously has an influence in determining the pool of the participating players, with all the related consequences.
Thus said, it has nothing to do with the actual results of thd matches, which are determined by the relative skills of the opponents; it doesn't matter how much you rig the bracket, if you would seed me directly at BlizzCon finals there is no way I could win. Luck cannot justify foreigners' results at BlizzCon in LoTV and Code S in 2018.
IEM's top 16 in 2018 is not much different than BlizzCon's in 2013 and 2015, but that's where the comparison ends: during HoTS, koreans were immensely ahead to the point that foreigners won a single Premier tournament while in LoTV, even excluding Serral completely, foreigners won two Premiers on korean soil.

I never said foreigners are on par with koreans, I am instead stating their top 8 as a whole is close to a fair replacements of #9-#16 koreans(just winning one match out of three is akin to validating this theory).
Compared to Code S, WCS is increasingly harder(or less easier if you prefer) at later stages(in relative terms) as it is less dense as only a restricted number of top foreigners is capable of beating top koreans on a somehow regular basis, but the potential finals are competitive even in absolute terms:Neeb vs Serral in PVZ or Serral vs Reynor in ZvZ, for example.

I know you wouldn't have given the award to Serral, it would have been a foolish decision considering how you evaluate tournaments; it seems one even bigger error than believing Maru to be the GOAT already, by my own standard.
So, did TL writers commit such a huge error? Or maybe you are underestimating the Circuit and the decision was much harder to make as Serral's and Maru's accomplishments were closer than you think?

As for Serral's streak against korean, he achieved that against harder opponents on average, it might as well be shortened by the fact he could not play against mid tier ones in the qualifiers; it's impossible to know at what point, after April last year, Serral rose to his GSL vs the World level so that we just cannot theorize how he would have fared in Code S S2.

On May 02 2019 20:45 Argonauta wrote:



But that is the problem no? It is artificial to say that Serral was the best player in the world second half of the year because he won GSL vs The world in summer and Blizzcon in winter. Because, only theorising without actual matches ,Maru would have been right now in the Ro16 or he would have never lost vs Meomaka, But he played and he lost and that is what it counts. I

On May 02 2019 20:49 Xain0n wrote:


Why would Serral not be the best player in the second half of 2018? He won every tournament he entered. The doubts are if he could theorically win before or if his streak would have been broken if he had to play against more koreans.

On May 02 2019 21:07 Argonauta wrote:


well being the best player implies playing tournaments vs koreans who are the elite of the game right now.

On May 02 2019 21:17 Xain0n wrote:


Who did Serral win those tournaments(and HSC) against? Keen or even worse Mamuri should have meant an end to Serral's streak while he was at the top? Unlikely.

On May 02 2019 18:42 Xain0n wrote:


The openness of the qualifier bracket obviously has an influence in determining the pool of the participating players, with all the related consequences.
Thus said, it has nothing to do with the actual results of thd matches, which are determined by the relative skills of the opponents; it doesn't matter how much you rig the bracket, if you would seed me directly at BlizzCon finals there is no way I could win. Luck cannot justify foreigners' results at BlizzCon in LoTV and Code S in 2018.
IEM's top 16 in 2018 is not much different than BlizzCon's in 2013 and 2015, but that's where the comparison ends: during HoTS, koreans were immensely ahead to the point that foreigners won a single Premier tournament while in LoTV, even excluding Serral completely, foreigners won two Premiers on korean soil.

On May 02 2019 18:42 Xain0n wrote:
I never said foreigners are on par with koreans, I am instead stating their top 8 as a whole is close to a fair replacements of #9-#16 koreans(just winning one match out of three is akin to validating this theory).
Compared to Code S, WCS is increasingly harder(or less easier if you prefer) at later stages(in relative terms) as it is less dense as only a restricted number of top foreigners is capable of beating top koreans on a somehow regular basis, but the potential finals are competitive even in absolute terms:Neeb vs Serral in PVZ or Serral vs Reynor in ZvZ, for example.

On May 02 2019 18:42 Xain0n wrote:
I know you wouldn't have given the award to Serral, it would have been a foolish decision considering how you evaluate tournaments; it seems one even bigger error than believing Maru to be the GOAT already, by my own standard.
So, did TL writers commit such a huge error? Or maybe you are underestimating the Circuit and the decision was much harder to make as Serral's and Maru's accomplishments were closer than you think?

On May 02 2019 18:42 Xain0n wrote:
As for Serral's streak against korean, he achieved that against harder opponents on average, it might as well be shortened by the fact he could not play against mid tier ones in the qualifiers; it's impossible to know at what point, after April last year, Serral rose to his GSL vs the World level so that we just cannot theorize how he would have fared in Code S S2.

On May 02 2019 21:25 Argonauta wrote:



there were no tournaments between GSL vs the world and Blizzcon

On May 02 2019 21:54 fronkschnonk wrote:

Of course: the matches are what they are. But the lack of more tough matches in a tournament due to it's qualification process makes a tournament overall easier. So Serral proved to be the best at GSL vs The World and Blizzcon and he could be rightfully called current "best player" since his blizzcon win. But still the accomplishment in terms of pure difficulty of opponents isn't as high as at IEM or in GSL Code S or even ST (but to be fair: I think that ST has the flaw of only being single elimination which always kills high skilled players earlier than their actual skill would imply due to bad luck in seeding). Thus being eliminated by another very good player who's having a great day is less probable at blizzcon than at IEM.



I know, I'm on repeat, but still: the most realistic example of competition (IEM) implies that the top 8 of foreigners is indeed overall worse than #9-#16 koreans.
Yes, the finals of WCS are legit, but they aren't representative for the foreign scene, not even for the top 8 of it. Look at Reynor: he is incredible at ZvZ but showed weaknesses in other matchups (thus not qualifying for IEM). And look at other finalists we had last year: Mana and Has... they are cool and can make something happen on a very good day but I would bet against them at any time if they were to get out of blizzcon groupstage. But I would think that of any top4 player of GSL since 2018 Season 1 would have a good chance (and most top8 players of GSL, too). Now we can repeat this thought experiment with quarterfinalist of WCS-events last year (since you're insisting that top8 foreigners would be a good replacement)...



Well, this "perhaps"-thinking isn't very helpful. Yes, perhaps many things could be different than I assume. But that this or that person or those writers are thinking different than me isn't prove of anything. Also I didn't say that TL writers did a "huge error". I just think they were wrong in this case which is indeed not easy to decide.



Didn't we have this argument already in another thread? I don't know which one anymore. I remember listing all the relevant players beaten by Maru and Serral over the year and I was pretty convinced that it turned out in favor of Maru - probably just due to the bigger sample size of Maru's opponents. I know - this approach was very debatable but nobody really argued against it apart from saying that this approach was debatable.

On May 02 2019 22:46 Xain0n wrote:


Judging by your own way of thinking, Maru's 3 Code S and WESG are compared to Serral's BlizzCon and GSL vs the World(not as hard as Code S), a non premier HSC and let's say at best the equivalent of three ro4 in Code S; you didn't say there is a huge difference, I would if I had to use your criteria. TL writers evidently had others parameters(not even mentioning mine that are miles away from yours).

We could go on discussing without end, I already pointed out one way to reach a common ground discussion; otherwise it's just different opinions that lead to very different conclusions.

You should look at quarterfinalists in WCS and compare them with the players who did not advance from the second groupstage in Code S; as I already said, probably 6 foreigners and 10 koreans at BlizzCon would be the best way to split them but 8-8 is not outrageous(unless a good amount of top foreigners somehow don't make it for various reasons, like it happened last year).

Serral's path to victory at BlizzCon was not easier because he had to play five matches instead of seven in Code S or because the field was weaker(not sure, actually), just look at the names and at the ratings of the player he took down; lucky runs are always possible, on the other hand.

We might have had that streak comparison argument before but I don't remember that conclusion; there is one list(again on Reddit) with the average rating of the opponents faced, nothing to comment here.

On May 02 2019 23:09 fronkschnonk wrote:

Yes, you're somewhat correctly stating what I think is to campare between Maru and Serral in 2018. Plus the length of their respective periods of dominance which I think is quite important.

For your suggested foreigner/korean split: it kind of baffles me how you keep ignoring the results of IEM Katowice which has been the most objective measurement in terms of competetive conditions in the last 3 years. Are you just saying this tournament was bad luck and all the others (Blizzcon + GSL vs The World) are similarly meaningful in terms of foreigner strength? How comes then that the picture hasn't changed over the last 3 years at IEM? Bad luck again?
In my book the split would be 3/13, 4/12 at best.
Oh - before someone misinterprets: I don't think that Blizzcon foreigner/korean split should be different. It's exciting to see foreigners trying their best when given the opportunity. It just would be cool to have something like IEM more often. Well, we probably have to throw all our money at Homestory Cup to make this happen :D

On May 02 2019 23:41 Xain0n wrote:


There is nothing more to discuss on Serral vs Maru then, you are of course entitled to your opinion but your point of view too is far and too radically different from mine for us to keep having an argument on that, it would clearly bring us nowhere.

On the foreigner/korean split: I am not ignoring Katowice, I am telling you that if Katowice could portray the exact situation of nowadays' foreigner scene, the improvements over HoTS would be very marginal; if we look at the other tournaments and achievements I mentioned, this simply cannot be the case for LoTV.
To beat top koreans in bo3 or bo5 on a somewhat regular basis you have to be good enough at playing sc2, no matter how you ended up facing them(qualifiers, WCS points or votations); Katowice's results would suggest this happens quite rarely, BlizzCon's(not only) seem to indicate the opposite.

Foreigners struggling to overcome koreans is by far the most interesting narrative in sc2; it would be amazing to have more tournaments like Katowice and I am positive foreigners would have better results.

I personally think the gap closed the most during the first year of LoTV and since then it hasn't progressed much but, at the same time, several top foreigners are now capable of going head to head with the best koreans(kind of what happened in WoL); 2018, however, was a very good year for foreigners(better than 2019) even if we exclude Serral, who is a major outlier since he is the first foreigner ever who was capable of truly dominating Sc2 scene.