On August 12 2016 19:05 Hider wrote: While noone probably cares, Iaguz is still ranked too good. For instance I definitely consider Kelazhur a better player. Iaguz has won against nobody you would consider top 40 world in the world for a long time.
As a matter of fact, Kelazhur won against Iaguz 3-0 4 months ago and since then Ieaguz has done nothing but play against Oceanic players.
And when it comes to Pipipili, he has beat Hydra, Ryung and Gumiho within the last 2 months. Also lost to some bad players, but still probably ranked too poorly.
iaguz is ranked highly - optimistically, or too high, whatever term you want to use - because he has a history of performing in WCS. He did well in Spring, and he also made the Ro16 in 2015 (over MaSa and Has admittedly) during a time where I thought he was pretty bad. While on paper Kelazhur is above iaguz, I think iaguz has outperformed the past couple tournaments while Kelazhur had a very bad Valencia and a very bad Austin. Note that despite this, they're ranked #27 and #25; they're very, very close. I'd say they're about the same really, with iaguz being a bit more likely to perform and Kelazhur having a higher peak.
Ultimately, it's all good. If you ranked Kelazhur above iaguz, that's totally reasonable.
Also, a comment on MaNa- he beat Polt at Valencia, has gone something like 9-1 against Dayshi as of late, and didn't look too out of his league against uThermal/Nerchio. This evens out to being similar to what HeRoMaRinE did, but definitively better than Serral and anyone below him except for Has, who is just.. idk where to put him. He gets the edge over HeRoMaRinE because he has a bigger history of performing while HeRoMaRinE hasn't showed up to something in a while, if ever.
He did well in Spring, and he also made the Ro16 in 2015
Okay I would not use any data from 2015 at this point in time.
While on paper Kelazhur is above iaguz, I think iaguz has outperformed the past couple tournaments while Kelazhur had a very bad Valencia and a very bad Austin
Iaguz plays vs high master/low GM's opponent. Kelazhur plays vs good players. Obviously Kelazhur is gonna lose more.
Everytime Iaguz meets a decent/meh'ish opponent (like Scarlett) he losses consistently.
If you look at Aligulac, Kelazhur has 2K MMR vs the 1600 of Iaguz. It just doens't make sense to say "Oh Kelazhur lost a few games to these good players" while ignoring all of his much better results than Iaguz and then forgetting that Iaguz has not beat a single good player in forever.
Note that despite this, they're ranked #27 and #25; they're very, very close. I'd say they're about the same really, with iaguz being a bit more likely to perform and Kelazhur having a higher peak.
There is just no way to look at this at them being close.
6-8 months results: Clearly in favor of Kelazhur. When they played each other: Clearly in favor of Kelazhur.' Short-term form: Iaguz hasn't done anything. Kelazhur has at least beat Major and Pilipli and lost to Polt and True (not rly very surprising).
Even if we didn't look at the results, but only the quality of the opponent, wouldn't it also be reasonable to assume that someone who only competes against low GMs/high masters is gonna to improve at a slower rate than someone who competes against high GMs+ quality opponents?
The only way to defend Iaguz is by looking at irrelevant data. Like why not just got 3 years back instead? Why stop at 2015?
Like honestly I would get more respect for you if you just said "yeh admittely while looking at the data again Iaguz is probably too high". Noone expects that you can get 32 players completely correct while writing for free (I assume).
But when your trying to defend your estimations by using a tournament from 2015, it becomes absurd.
Polt at 8th with uThermal at 5th what xD. Dreamhack open or IEM (albeit recent) are rated wayyy too high compared to WCS Championships, which matter more.
On August 12 2016 20:13 Hider wrote: But when your trying to defend your estimations by using a tournament from 2015, it becomes absurd.
I personally dont agree with this, bec. Soularion did not say : "Iaguz is in form because he did a Ro16 in 2015," but he just looked at how he performs in the WCS. And that is, for me, of course a thing you have to look at, when you make a PR for a tournament. There have always been players that perform good or bad at big tournaments. Im not saying Iaguz is over Khelazur, because i dont know enough about those two players. Just wanted to say that tournaments from 2015, or even before, do count in a PR from 2016. At least for me.
ShaDoWn is easily the biggest unknown of the tournament. He doesn't have in-region (or even in-country) success, he doesn't have any LAN runs, he isn't an established part of the European scene.. but, at the same time, Strange was in the same spot and he nearly took out Polt, so it's hard to say that any of these necessarily count ShaDoWn out. He beat DmC and Dayshi to qualify, and Dayshi in particular would have ranked a few spots higher—but his failure against Elroye in Valencia makes it very hard to trust him at his first major offline event.
but he just looked at how he performs in the WCS. And that is, for me, of course a thing you have to look at, when you make a PR for a tournament. There have always been players that perform good or bad at big tournaments.
So if Fruitdealer starts playing again we should give him extra credit while playing GSL but not while playing SSl because he won GSL season 1?
100% the same logic applied and while making it more extreme, it should become apparent that its nonsense.
If you are a bad player you perform bad at tournaments. Name doens't matter.
If you were good a long time ago, chances are you performed better at that tournament than you would today. Name doens't matter.
Im not saying Iaguz is over Khelazur, because i dont know enough about those two players. Just wanted to say that tournaments from 2015, or even before, do count in a PR from 2016. At least for me.
Yep and maybe you should reconsider that approach when it comes to guessing which types of players will perform well. However, I guess you have no incentive to do that. It's not like anything bad happens to you if you used flawed reasoning in your analysis.
And that's unfortunately why bad analysis exists. People can get away with repeating the same nonsense over and over. They never reevaluate the data or dig deeper in any sort of way to improve the quality of the analysis.
Hence, this is why I always encourage people put their money where they mouth is. I can tell you that the bookmakers are not valuing performances from 2014 in their assesments, so assuming your correct, you should be able to get a nice return if you valued players on that background.
But when the money is on the line, you suddenly start to get a real incentive to figure out what the actual factors are that can be used to predict future tournament results.
/End rant.
But I don't think Soul actually believes that. I think he is just in a defense-position and immediately tries to find w/e argument he can to support the existing power rankings becuase he don't want to consider the option that he could have made a mistake. I can relate to that to some extent as I have surely done something similar in the past, but I think he takes it way tooo far here.
Nice piece of writing and a good read. Shame we can't watch the show because the people at DreamHack can't keep a stream open...... Always the same with these guys lately. I'm gonna stop watching and just catch up on the VOD's. Olympics it is....
I liked this but what exactly does this mean: "The one weakness of the WCS format is that, while it has bred talent very effectively, it doesn't let us see this talent go up against Koreans. And because of the injuries the Korean scene took, we may never know what Nerchio or ShoWTimE or Neeb could do against the very best playing at their very best, which is the greatest shame of all." You saying the korean scene is dying and that the best koreans of now will always be inferior to the best of the past? Sounds weird to me, why would Nerchio or ShoWTimE or Neeb never go against the best koreans? They definitely WILL go up against them, unless Blizzard files for bankrupcy and Blizzcon gets cancelled -_-
On August 13 2016 06:21 Shuffleblade wrote: I liked this but what exactly does this mean: "The one weakness of the WCS format is that, while it has bred talent very effectively, it doesn't let us see this talent go up against Koreans. And because of the injuries the Korean scene took, we may never know what Nerchio or ShoWTimE or Neeb could do against the very best playing at their very best, which is the greatest shame of all." You saying the korean scene is dying and that the best koreans of now will always be inferior to the best of the past? Sounds weird to me, why would Nerchio or ShoWTimE or Neeb never go against the best koreans? They definitely WILL go up against them, unless Blizzard files for bankrupcy and Blizzcon gets cancelled -_-
Even at the Global Finals there's a reasonable chance the actual best Koreans and foreigners don't meet (and some of the best Koreans probably won't even qualify) because of dumb luck
Also Blizzcon being the only chance that it maybe possibly happens is a crime.
On August 15 2016 08:51 Poopi wrote: Never bet against Polt tho, especially as the stacks go up :o
It depends. How much do you value almost losing to ShaDoWn/PtitDrogo compared to beating Neeb? Personally, I can't rank Polt beyond #4 because he always has that chance of losing to someone terrible, even though it hasn't happened yet. You could rank him #4 and be totally fine - which is something I said in the PR - I just chose not to because I thought he'd underperform; and considering how close his set was against Drogo, he kinda did.
As a HeroMarine fan i would love to know where you would rank him after his performance at WCS Montreal? You wrote you expected more from him in the past and he kinda underperformed, but since he is out of school and training again i believe he should be nearly on par with showtime and other top foreighners. Sure 1 tournament isnt enough and his wins werent too dominant but he took a game from TRUE and had other close games with him (if he would have defendet that bane drops might even have won more games). Personally i would put him around rank 8 atm. With potential to go on to top 3 soon.
On August 15 2016 08:51 Poopi wrote: Never bet against Polt tho, especially as the stacks go up :o
It depends. How much do you value almost losing to ShaDoWn/PtitDrogo compared to beating Neeb? Personally, I can't rank Polt beyond #4 because he always has that chance of losing to someone terrible, even though it hasn't happened yet. You could rank him #4 and be totally fine - which is something I said in the PR - I just chose not to because I thought he'd underperform; and considering how close his set was against Drogo, he kinda did.
Thing is your high ranked players disappointed even more so it confirms that you are not really coherent in your PR. I think almost losing to Drogo who was finally on point in his PvT is better than uThermal who actually lost to Neeb, Nerchio also underperformed... Everyone has the chance of losing to someone "terrible". I'll read the whole thing and not only the top 8 tho, PR are amazing and this is great work.
Heromarine definitely moved up in the power ranking through this tourney, however I cannot judge his actual skill based off one tournament run. Sure, he did beat Showtime in a really close comeback set, and a REALLY close series vs MarineLord, (his series vs. Major was really quite solid though), but how long will that last given he has stated multiple times in the past that "progaming isn't a #1 priority". Maybe that has changed, hoping a new interview can pop up in the future with a more recent motivational track (looking at you Solarion), considering he's out of high school. It is unlikely that he will attend WCS Mexico seeing that qualifiers will be brutal, but that is speculation.
Nevertheless I am super happy about his performance in Montreal, I've been a fan of his stream for a long time (best early-morning Terran stream for me when he does stream), and he has a super good mindset about the game. Really hoping he can show good games going forward, as this is definitely a peak in his career thus far.
On August 16 2016 01:00 vult wrote: Heromarine definitely moved up in the power ranking through this tourney, however I cannot judge his actual skill based off one tournament run. Sure, he did beat Showtime in a really close comeback set, and a REALLY close series vs MarineLord, (his series vs. Major was really quite solid though), but how long will that last given he has stated multiple times in the past that "progaming isn't a #1 priority". Maybe that has changed, hoping a new interview can pop up in the future with a more recent motivational track (looking at you Solarion), considering he's out of high school. It is unlikely that he will attend WCS Mexico seeing that qualifiers will be brutal, but that is speculation.
Nevertheless I am super happy about his performance in Montreal, I've been a fan of his stream for a long time (best early-morning Terran stream for me when he does stream), and he has a super good mindset about the game. Really hoping he can show good games going forward, as this is definitely a peak in his career thus far.
HeroMarine has finished his school (old #1 priority) and is now fulltime at least till the end of the year.
My guess is: If there is a WCS 2017 where decent foreigners can earn good amount of money, he will give it another year, else he moves to something else and gaming is again not #1.
Quite funny how much they talked about this power rank on stage and at the desk.