There is going to be a bit of background talk, then we shall analyse his 2017 run, theres going to be some Aligulac talk and I'll make some jokes, it'll be great.
You may remember me from such great articles as MaSa's recent tear through the scene
When you think about a foreign powerhouse, you think about Neeb. Everyone knows about Neebs great 2016 run. He had 2 top 16s, 2 top 8s, a 3rd-4th at WCS Summer, he was runner up at DH Austin and IEM Shanghai, and had a top 8 finish at BlizzCon, but when you hear about Neeb, you think about his KeSPA Cup win. He is so far the only foreigner to win a korean tournament since Grrrr… 17 years ago in BW.
All these results add up, according to esportsearnings.com, in 2016, Neeb earned $93,626.50USD across 40 different events in 2016. That is quite the sum of money. Considering that in 2015 he earned $4,960.00 across 10 events, that is an insane jump in money earned.
Q. So in 2017, how good has our Alex been?
A. Pretty damn good.
Some Source(s) + Show Spoiler +
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
WESG 2016
Note: This tournament was played in 2017... so it counts for his 2017 run.
It all starts in China, with an incredible prize pool and a massive spectacle, this tournament rivales BlizzCon in its fanfare and dollars spent (or Renminbi aka the Yuan). After the two qualifiers, Neeb qualified in 3rd place with a total map score of 21-8. Not too shabby. Then in China, he goes 8-3 in his round robin group losing only a set to iAsonu. Quite dominating, in the bracket stage he 3-2s Nerchio… then gets 0-3’d by TY. He knocks out ShoWTimE in the 3rd place series to take home $50k, not a bad consolation prize one would say.
At this point, his Aligulac rating was at a solid 2364, good enough to be 14th in the world.
Still not a KeSPA Cup run, but not a terrible one, the only two koreans there, Maru and TY where the ones to take 1st and 2nd... take that how you will.
Katowice
Despite a 9-1 run through the qualifiers to make it to Katowice, Neeb had a disappointing event. In a round-robin with aLive, Stats, TY, jjakji and Harstem, he finished last. He was only able to take win a single set over Harstem and took a game off jjakji to finish with a set score of 1-4 and going 3-9 in maps. Maybe it was the travel, or he was tired, or even he had a terrible 39°C fever (102.2°F for you other people). Regardless of the reason, it's his worst result for the year so far.
After Katowice, his rating went from 2552 (7th in the world) to 2475 (11th in the world). Not the biggest dip in rating, but a dip nonetheless. He's still the best Protoss vs. Protoss player though.
WCS Austin
It's Austin time! We're back to America now guys! We got BBQ, we got Guns, we got FREEDOM. And freedom was brought at this event. Neeb tore through the NA Qualifier, he went a total map score of 15-2, with only TRUE able to take take 2 maps off this beast of a man. In the group stage, he took out TLO twice with a score of 2-1 after falling to Kelazhur in-between both series. Up until the finals, he went 9-5 over Lambo, ShoWTimE and MajOr. In the finals, he was able to take out Nerchio 4-2 and takes the Austin crown. An American winning in America! Nothing is more patriotic than that!
At this point his Aligulac rating has jumped up to 2553 (back to 7th in world). He is still the best at PvP and the only foreigner with a better rating is ShoWTimE with 2573.
WCS Jönköping
Now at the Yonquoping NA qualifier, Neeb had the decent run of finishing in 2nd, going 14-8, losing to Scarlett twice (They tend to trade maps every now and then, I hear NoRegret steals Neebs builds and gives them to Scarlett for the memes). At the main event in Sweden, Neeb had the pleasure of knocking TLO out again (because Blizzard seeding is perfect) in two sets, going 2-0 then 2-1 with a little 1-2 loss to PtitDrogo mixed in the middle. Into the bracket stage, he went 9-2 up until the finals, going 3-0 over Kalazhur and SortOf, only losing 2 maps to MajOr again (remember? Blizzard seeding is perfect). In the finals, he met Serral whom he was able to defeat 4-3 in a close series. He was then able to hoist the trophy once again, securing a second spot to BlizzCon, in case he lost the first one while travelling.
Despite winning a second WCS event, his Aligulac rating went down. From a crisp 2553 in May, it was now 2493 in June, knocking him down to 11th. Still the best at PvP and now the best at PvZ though.
Why did his rating get worse? Poor performances online, Valencia qualifiers didn't go so well, nor did Olimoleague.
WCS Valencia
Now Valencia, despite coming out strong of Jönköping, he was unable to qualify online, getting knocked out by MaSa then by TRUE in the loser’s bracket. So he made the trip there, hes got the moneys. Well he was, but then the chinese players couldn’t get their visas in time so Neeb and Kelazhur filled the vacant Ro32 spots, lucky guys. In the bracket stage, Alex only had to beat TLO once this time, (Seeding is perfect btw) to move on, 1-2 Snute, 2-1 TLO, 2-0 SortOf. In the Ro16, he faced Probe and just for the fans, he made it a close 3-2, it had nothing to do with Probe playing wonky to mess with Neeb. Then in the Ro8, he faced MajOr, for the 3rd time, because seeding is perfect and should not be modified in any way, shape or form. Yet this time… this time, the Terran had the better of him, might have had something to do with the maps being better for Terran, but Neeb was unable to get past the the mexican Terran and fell in the Ro8.
At this point, Neebs rating is still dropping; he’s now at 2431, meaning he’s now 14th in the world, he even lost his title of best Protoss vs. Protoss player to ROOT.herO, yet he retains his best PvZ status.
GSL vs. The World
The last big tournament this year was GSL vs. The World. Having got the seed through the “World Allstars Invites”, Neeb faced off against sOs himself, the 2 time BlizzCon champion, the guy who won 3 massive tournaments in 2013, 2014 and 2015 then reallt didn't do much else aka the money man himself. Well Neeb defeated sOs, they went 3-1. Neeb is pretty good at PvP, who would’ve thought. He then faced TY, one of the horsemen, it was close, but he lost the series in a 2-3 series. That was it for his run, it was better than most other foreigners, he was the only one to defeat a Korean in the bracket stage of the tournament. Then came the teams competition. The World got REKT, foreigners went 1-7, only Kelazhur won, Neeb faced herO, the one who took his best-at-PvP Status, and it seems herO really earned it. Only one map, but it was all it took.
The tentative rating for August puts Neeb at 2496, he’s now the #12 in the world, he has claimed his best-at-PvP status back and retains his best-at-PvZ status. A little bump from from #14, Neeb seems to be back on the upswing.
Analysis
So is Neeb really dominating? Not really, he's never really been up there. According to the Aligulac rating, there have been players who are better ranked than him, ShoWTimE, Serral, MaSa even Nerchio have all ranked higher than him at some point or another. So why do we think he's so good? Well he is pretty good. He shows up at tournaments, you don't win 2 WCS events and somehow not considered good. With the way Aligulac works, online matches are weighed as heavily as offline matches and Neeb makes most of his money offline. This year, he's made $111k offline and $8k online, so he's made some bank, but he still licks keyboards for $50 so IDK.
So is he a better player than last year? Yes and no, Aligulac says he's exactly the same at 2496 for August 17 2016. Is it inspiring? Of course! Neeb has had a great time in LotV.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
So what does Neeb think about all this? How did he motivate himself to push even further and get those 2 tournament wins? Well I asked him, I'm not famous enough for MaSa to follow me on Twitter, but Neeb is just up my alley.
Q. How do you feel about your success so far this year? What would you say is the main reason?
A. "Towards the end of last year after KeSPA Cup I was really disappointed in myself since I was losing pathetically in most tournaments I played in. I hated seeing myself play as bad as I was, so that was probably my greatest source of motivation going into 2017. I'm very satisfied with my performance this year, like I've even won two tournaments so far. I feel like I'm a much better player compared to last year or any year before that."
Note: I've been joking a lot, but that's a real quote look HERE + Show Spoiler +
(I also don't know why imgur pictures don't load)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Now go follow Neeb on Twitter! He tweets a lot, like constantly
@onfireNeeb
Follow Ting as well, his team @tingFTW
Here's my twitter so the TLnet twitter can tag me if they tweet about this @PsiFrostbite