History, Stats, and Random Facts
Have you ever wondered how our modern day CPL for StarCraft Remastered came to be? Are you a stats person who is interested in various statistics throughout the different seasons of CPL? Or maybe you're someone who is interested in random tidbits of information or various facts regarding CPL. If any of this sounds like you, I've got you covered! Read on below to find out more.
History+ Show Spoiler [The History of CPL] +
CPL History
Season 1
As some of you may know the first season of the modern day CPL was first started by Lmaster. However what you may not know is that this was not the first iteration of the CPL. There have been a number of other versions throughout the 20 year history of StarCraft Broodwar for what we call the Coach-Pupil League today. In fact, Lmaster had played in one of these previous versions of a Coach-Student based league. This is where he got the idea to relaunch a league like this in the first place.
The sign-ups for CPL1 took place back in November of 2016. Lmaster took all the initiative on this, and it was about the time I (from here on known as Snipe or lazersnipe) was getting back into StarCraft. My good real life friend Alex (DragOn[pain]) told me about this league where good players can coach newer players to play against each other and wanted to know if I wanted to sign-up to play in it with him being my coach. I loved the idea so we both immediately signed ourselves up requesting to be on the others team.
Two weeks after sign-ups opened Lmaster hosted a Pre-League tourney for those playing in CPL to get an idea of player skill levels and help organize players for a draft to keep teams even. The tournament spanned over the course of two months with the finals set to take place on January 17 2017.
Everyone was having a good time and looking forward to the beginning of the league. At the conclusion of the tournament however, our good friend Lmaster had started to get busy with real life commitments, real busy. Week by week went by without hearing much about what was happening with CPL, when was the draft? Was it still happening? What happened next? People started losing interest, people were dropping out, and it looked like the league wasn't going to happen after all.
Being a big supporter of the idea of the league, and not wanting to see it die, I went through all the sign-ups and tournament results and compiled a list of the players we had, organizing them into separate tiers accordingly. I brought this list to Jealous (a guy who was helping Lmaster out in terms of casting the tournament games and pitching ideas for the league) and told him about my idea to get the players drafted. Jealous supported this, and so I released this list to the Season 1 coaches and explained what we were doing. My hope here was that I would get the teams created, allowing Lmaster more time to get back and run the league before losing all interest.
The draft had been completed and the teams were formed, but it still wasn't looking great for the league. Lmaster remained busy and we had no format, no idea what we were going to do for the league. More time went by and it became apparent Lmaster wouldn't be back/able to run the league. Realizing this, (and sticking with Lmaster's plan) I set up a 2 month practice period for teams. During this time you got to meet with your team and learn/practice together before the league started. Again, I was still holding onto the hope that Lmaster would be back to run his league. He wasn't coming back to do it though, it had eventually became clear what had happened, I had inherited the league.
From that point on I, along with the help of Jealous, started planning and designing the league. We came up with the idea of doing best of 3s, first map pre-determined each week, with a loser pick format for games 2 and 3. I had no idea how the community would accept or react to this, but I wanted this league to happen. After a lot of planning, I drafted up a rule-set, created some graphics to promote the league and made the post on Team Liquid CPL SEASON 1 was back, and started April 30 2017.
From the outside looking in we had a decently run league for lower leveled players to learn the game and improve. A great premise that produced some fun games to watch, a new little community of players, new friendships and a chance to be in the spotlight. A lot of players were enjoying the league and having fun with it, but it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, at least not on the administrative end. It was a lot of work for two people, too much. Jealous did so much for the league, he created and maintained everything on the liquipedia, did at least 1 cast per week, actively reaching out for guest casters, new players to replace inactive ones, talking to coaches, creating interviews, the man was a total workhorse for the league and I couldn't have done it without him. Big shout out to Jealous for that. Both Jealous and I had some real life issues at the time and wanted to back out at some point. As Jealous once put it “We were overworked and under paid”. Being just the 2 of us, we felt more accountable to the other, and didn't want to let each other down. We stuck it out until the end, ran a successful league and even had a few events afterwards. Lmaster had come back partway through the league and started marathoning casts. With his help we managed to do what we previously thought impossible - cast every game played in CPL 1.
Overall I would say season 1 was a success. There was definitely a learning curve and a lot of stressful moments, but Jealous and I made it to the end. The Grand Finals of Season 1 took place on July 30 2017. The season was concluded and wrapped up on August 6 2017, with an All-Star Team Battle event. At the conclusion of the league some people enjoyed it so much they wanted more. “When is season 2?” “Are you guys going to do this again?” “Are there going to be more CPL events?” At the time neither Jealous or I were in any hurry to go through all that work again, especially with SCR slated to come out later that month (the entire 1st season was played on ICCup). We wanted time to see how the new “MMR ratings” would work in terms of player skill and how it would effect the community.
With season 1 completed and a post on Team Liquid by Jealous containing a lot of closing words from both of us, CPL was left in limbo.. That was until..
Season 2
Our CPL season 1 team stuck together in our own Discord group. We became pretty good friends, chatting about BW, and many other things. We all kept up with both the Korean and foreign broodwar scenes. One day we were chatting about the StarCraft community as a whole, when my fellow season 1 team mate, good friend, and now CPL Administrator PiSan mentioned he wanted to give back to the community and bring back CPL for a second season. By this point SCR had been out for awhile and we had a better understanding of different MMR ratings. When PiSan mentioned a season 2 everyone in our Discord was behind him, with fellow team members Awerti, and myself, joining in to help him for season 2 as Administrators as well.
PiSan attributed a lot of his desire to move forward with CPL and continue it for Season 2 to his Season 1 coach DragOn. His experience with DragOn kept him going throughout the first season and beyond. DragOn put in a lot of work with his students and because of this PiSan not only learned a lot from him about the game, but he also wanted to do something more for StarCraft. A second season of CPL was his way of giving back to the community.
After some discussion and planning season 2 was well on its way. PiSan created a write-up and made a post on Team Liquid for sign-ups on March 21 2018. With the release of StarCraft Remastered bringing new life into the game, we saw even more response to this than we did in season 1. While we still had a total of 5 teams in both seasons, we made a few format changes moving forward, including increasing the number of games from 5 to 7 best of 3 matches per team per week, choosing all 3 maps to be played each week, and creating 2 tiers of players.
This worked out pretty well, though we did have some imbalances in some games. We had a lot more games coming in, but a lot less stress all around as we had more help. With many more casters aside from ourselves we were able to get all the games casted, as well as creating and uploading them all to the CPL YouTube with the help of Connor5620. With PiSan creating the league, formatting, and running it, Awerti taking care of all the stats and everything Liquipedia, and myself handling weekly organization of replays and match-ups, things ran a lot smoother than season 1.
When PiSan stepped up and brought back season 2 he had more in mind than what we had already created within our community. He would be the first to tell you that our goal with CPL wasn't just to have this low level league where people who still love Broodwar can come compete and see themselves casted against other low level players in a team league format. His goal for CPL was for it to become a place where people new to StarCraft could get involved. Where someone could get a first look into the competitive scene, a place to come to learn anywhere from the basics, all the way up to improving to become one of the next great foreigners. A place for all skill levels to learn, and improve together in this great game. I was fully on board with this and continued to be as we moved through the second season.
PiSan had set season 2 to officially begin April 15 2018. Which, much like season 1 ran for a total of 10 weeks of regular season play with playoffs to follow. Season 2 was wrapped up with the Grand Finals being cast live by both PiSan and myself on July 15 2018. We may have had a few less events during the second season, but overall I would say it was a bigger success and saw more people getting involved and helping out in our community.
I know moving forward PiSan is looking to do more events, and have more emphasis on learning the game outside of just the team environments in CPL. I look forward to working with him on some of that, and I hope the community will get use out of what is planned for the future of the CPL community as a whole.
With season 2 wrapped up we look forward to the next season, and improving things even more. The hope is that season 3 will be even bigger and better than season 2, with more events, and more tools for learning the game. At the time of this writing the CPL community has grown a lot since the end of season 2 and has even more players participating in the league. I'm glad to be a part of this as StarCraft as a whole continues into the future; I hope the reader is too. As for what comes next and the history of CPL season 3, we'll just have to wait and see, as that, is still being written.
~Snipe
Stats and Facts
+ Show Spoiler [ CPL SEASON 1 ] +Facts - CPL season 1 was started by LMaster
- There was a mandatory pre-league tournament for anyone who wanted to play
- The tournament winner ( Faust ) later became a coach in the league
- The league was first announced in November of 2016. The league concluded on August 6th 2017
- The tournament finals took place in January of 2017
- League play officially started on April 30th 2017
- The league itself was ran by lazersnipe with the help of Jealous
- There were 10 weeks of regular season play, followed by 3 weeks of playoffs
- The Map Pool for the league contained 7 maps: Circuit Breakers(4), Demian1.02(3), Destination(2), Fighting Spirit(4), Jade(4), Overwatch(2), Queensbridge(2)
- All league matches were best-of-3 with the first map being chosen each week. Subsequent maps followed a loser pick format
- Each team played 5 best-of-3's each week (1 team was on a bye each week)
- All players were listed as being under the same Tier
- Playoff Matches were 5 best-of-1's
- Grand Finals was 7 best-of-1's with 2 ACE players
- All games were casted. Jealous ran a weekly cast of games, with Lmaster rejoining the league and casting the remainder of the games later
- The entirety of the season was played on ICCup
- The max rank to play in the league was high C- or low level C players.
- StarCraft Remastered came out very shortly after the conclusion of the league
- 5 teams in CPL1: Team Assimilate, Drag 'n Herb, Magical Ponies, Stardom and the Plebs, team
- All teams played each other twice
- Despite being labeled as one of the 2 lower ranked teams at the start of the season, Drag 'n Herb finished 1st in league play and was eventually crowned the league champs!
+ Show Spoiler [League Result Images] +
- Drag 'n Herb was coached by: DragOn[Pain] and Herbmon, later on joined by SeriOsity, and Beast
- They finished the league having 5 of their players ranked top 10 in the league.
+ Show Spoiler [Season 1 Top 10] +
- There was an All-Star team battle event to conclude the season, the teams captained by the leagues top 2 players evilEye and Dark.Matter
- The All-Star match consisted of 7 players playing each other in a best-of-1
- Dark.Matter and evilEye alternated picks from a list of season 1's top performers
- Team Dark consisted of: DiarrheaTerran (AbstractDaddy), f10eQQ (Armada), HaFnium, ProbuA, Qikz, Shoopdawooper, and Dark.Matter
- Team Evil consisted of: ArcTimes, DarkNetHunter, KatjaKean, lazersnipe, PiSan, Snowfruit, and evilEye
- Team Evil won 4-3
By The Numbers There were 59 players that originally signed up for the league. - 16 Protoss
- 20 Terran
- 20 Zerg
- 3 Racepickers
These numbers above are somewhat inaccurate however. The league took awhile to get started up so we lost a good number of original sign-ups and gained some others. When the draft completed there were a total of 54 players drafted onto teams. This number however is also misleading as again, due to such a long time delay many of these players dropped out or were never heard from again/didn't play any games. The final count of players that recorded AT LEAST 2 wins during the duration of the league is: 28 players. There were a total of 14 Coaches involved throughout CPL 1. However it should be noted some of these coaches joined to help out mid-season and some were considered "assistant coaches", some of whom joined future CPL seasons as players. The above graphs show the number of WINS by each race against the opposing race and the number of mirrors throughout league matches only (All-star match wasn't included). It should also be noted these stats DO NOT include matches where a random player was involved, or if any player received a walkover. Match-ups involving race-pickers were included. - A total of 179 games were played in Season 1 (league games only), not including walkovers
- 58 Series went 2-0
- 21 Series went 2-1
- There were 21 total walkovers, including 2 double walkovers
+ Show Spoiler [ CPL SEASON 2 ] +Facts - CPL season 2 was started by PiSan
- Awerti and lazersnipe joined him as Administrators
- The league was first announced on March 21st 2018
- The league officially began on April 15th 2018. The league concluded on July 15th 2018
- There were 10 weeks of regular league play followed by 3 weeks of playoffs
- The Map Pool for the league contained 6 maps: Aztec2.1(3), Circuit Breakers(4), Crossing Field(2), Fighting Spirit(4), Match Point(2), Tau Cross(3)
- All league matches were best-of-3 with all 3 maps being chosen each week.
- Each team played 7 best-of-3's each week (1 team was on a bye each week)
- There were 2 Tiers of players, A-Team and B-team
- A-team played 3 matches per week
- B-team played 4 matches per week
- Playoff Matches were 7 best-of-1's
- Grand Finals was 7 best-of-1's with 1 ACE player
- 3 A-team and 3 B-team players
- All games were casted including the league and playoff matches by various casters and uploaded to the CPL YouTube
- The Grand Finals were cast live on July 15th 2018 by Administrators PiSan and lazersnipe
- The entirety of the season was played on StarCraft Remastered
- The MMR needed to be on the A-Team was approximately 1600-1900
- The MMR needed to be on the B-Team was approximately 0-1600
- 5 teams in CPL2: Team Beast, Chobos With Attitude, No1 Care That, Scientology Vessel, Team Supply Block
- All teams played each other twice
- Chobos With Attitude won regular season play
- Their only lose was to No1 Care That
- Despite finishing 2nd place at the end of the regular season, Team Beast was eventually crowned the league champs!
+ Show Spoiler [League Result Images] +
- Team Beast was coached by Beast, and later on by DragOn when Beast had to go away for work
- Chobos With Attitude was coached by Cryoc, kogeT, and Favorit
- Team Supply Block was the only team other than Chobos With Attitude to win more games than lose though they still finished in last. This is because they were involved in and lost a lot more 2-1's than any other team.
By The Numbers There were 98 players that originally signed up for the league. - 20 Protoss
- 33 Terran
- 37 Zerg
- 8 Racepickers
These numbers are only indicative of the initial sign-ups. More players were added/dropped out of the league as the season went on. There were a total of 76 players that recorded at least 1 series played throughout the season. There were a total of 14 Coaches involved throughout CPL 2. However it should be noted some of these coaches joined to help out mid-season and some were inactive/dropped out. - A total of 292 games were played in Season 2 (league games only), not including walkovers
- 95 Series went 2-0
- 34 Series went 2-1
- There were 11 total walkovers
The above image shows the total number of games played on each map, including the win rate for each MU and number of mirrors played. Interestingly enough the map distribution was equal across all 10 weeks, but because of how the 2-1's went, Total game count for Fighting Spirit was played most, and Tau Cross the least. Using the above table we can see that: - Protoss vs Terran had an overall Winrate of 53% for Protoss
- Protoss vs Zerg had an overall Winrate of 58% for Protoss
- Terran vs Zerg had an overall Winrate of 58% for Zerg
- There were 20 Protoss vs Protoss
- There were 5 Terran vs Terran
- There were 32 Zerg vs Zerg
- A total of 14 players recorded a 0% win-rate, most of these only played one series, and no more than 3
- Only 2 of these were A-Team players, both having played 2 series each
- A total of 7 players recorded a 100% win-rate against players of their own Tier
- Only 2 of these were A-team players, both having only played 1 series each
- 3 of the remaining 5 were B-Team from Team Supply Block having played 3 series each
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