Are All Championship Runs Created Equal?

Published on by Topher Doll

Serral has just accomplished the impossible by winning the WCS Championship at Blizzcon. In doing so he torched through the best Korea could throw at him. From Zest and sOs in the groups stages to the Zerg masters Dark and Rogue with the most consistent player of Legacy of the Void, the man with more Premier finals appearances than any other player, the Shield of Auir who took the god Serral to seven games at GSL vs the World, Stats. But even Stats fell to him, marking the greatest upset in Starcraft history. But looking at the names he beat, this was no weak run where he got lucky on one matchup or facing bracket luck. No, this was truly a great run, regardless of who won it. Had Stats, Dark or Maru made this run it would still be incredible.





This run got me thinking, are all tournament runs created equal? The answer is clearly "no" because sometimes a player faces weaker competition or fewer opponents. But I wanted to examine this, what are some of the greater runs in recent memory? What was a weak one? I wanted to delve this but knew it would be hard to do without some measurement because otherwise subjectiveness slips in.





The Methodology





While not perfect I felt the need to use Aligulac ratings. I understand there are odd rankings at times and I also understand that there are weaknesses in that it weights offline and online events the same but on the whole, the big picture, it is a fairly effective measure of who is the better player by order of magnitute. So once I figured this would be the best option going forward the easiest option would be to just take an average of the opponents the champion beat along his way. This was just a pure way to measure the quality of opponent they faced. I then also felt that it might be interesting to see a cumulative accomplishment of a tournament run so I took the sum of the Aligulac scores of all of their opponents. This measure doesn't necessarily reward playing the highest quality opponents but it does reward players who had a long run to win their championship. So a tournament like WESG or the IEM World Championship may see the winner play weaker competion but they have to play far more series than say the champion of GSL vs the World. These two metrics provide very different, but important measures of the quality of a tournament run and obviously the greatest tournament runs are both long and full of high quality opponents.





Lastly I wanted to include two counting metrics, the number of opponents faced who had over 2,500 (a top foreigner or very good Korean) and the number of opponents over 2,250 score (mid tier Koreans and good foreigners). For example the WCS champion in 2018 (so basically Serral) had an average opponent Aligulac score of 2,310 while the average GSL champion (Maru) had an opponent Aligulac score of 2,512. This also doesn't measure how well the player performed in that tournament run, they could have not dropped a single game or it could have been match point the whole way.





I have been using Aligulac for a number of years now and while they are incredibly helpful the numbers also suffer from inflation. That is to say it is hard to compare the Aligulac score of a WCS run in 2013 to 2018, the numbers have grown too much. I am still working on a way to create a floating average so we can compare across eras right now I am going to limit this study to just 2017 and 2018. It wouldn't be fair to say TaeJa's 2014 Shenzhen run where he beat Solar, Jaedong, Zest, Life and MMA being considered weaker than any WCS event this year. Even going back two years to ByuN and Dark dominating Korea in 2016 looks weak compared to the modern Aligulac score.





Having said that I may look at the strongest tournament run in two year groups so I may do an article looking at the toughest tournament runs for 2015 and 2016.





The Data





First let us look at the 10 weakest Premier championship runs since the start of 2017 by measure of average Aligulac score:





Event Year Players Winner Avg Aligulac of Opponents Combined Aligulac Over 2250 % of Opponents Over 2500 % of Opponents WESG 2017 24 TY 2002 16019 3 37.5% 0 0% WCS Valencia 2017 32 Elazer 2117 12700 3 50% 0 0% WCS Austin 2018 32 Serral 2129 12774 1 16.7% 0 0% WCS Montreal 2017 32 Neeb 2165 12988 3 50% 0 0% WCS Jonkoping 2017 32 Neeb 2182 13093 1 16.7% 1 16.7% WCS Austin 2017 32 Neeb 2223 13336 2 33.3% 2 33.3% IEM XI Championship 2017 24 TY 2278 20500 7 77.8% 0 0% WCS Valencia 2018 32 Serral 2263 13701 4 66.7% 1 16.7% WCS Leipzig 2018 32 Serral 2293 13759 4 66.7% 1 16.7% HSC XVI 2017 32 Zest 2299 18388 5 62.5% 2 25%





Should be no surprise that 7 of the 10 events are WCS events while two others were global events that locked in players from different regions and lastly HomeStory Cup, while awesome, rarely has only top players. Maybe the most interesting thing is while TY's 2017 year was incredible for being one of the highest earning years in Starcraft history but he did it through two relatively weak tournaments.





If we examine the weakest tournaments by combined opponent Aligulac strength we get a quite a different picture with a few notable changes:





Event Year Players Winner Avg Aligulac of Opponents Combined Aligulac Over 2250 % of Opponents Over 2500 % of Opponents GSL vs the World

2017

16

INnoVation

2417

9666

3

75%

2

50%

GSL Super #1

2017

16

herO

2469

9874

4

100%

2

50%

GSL Super #2

2018

16

Classic

2471

9883

3

75%

2

50%

GSL Super #2

2017

16

Rogue

2527

10108

4

100%

3

75%

GSL vs the World

2018

16

Serral

2563

10251

3

75%

3

75%

GSL Super #1

2018

16

Stats

2682

10729

4

100%

4

100%

IEM XII Pyeong

2018

16

Scarlett

2417

12085

3

60%

2

40%

IEM XII Shanghai

2017

16

Rogue

2464

12318

4

80%

4

80%

WCS Valencia

2017

32

Elazer

2117

12700

3

50%

0

0%

WCS Austin

2018

32

Serral

2129

12774

1

16.7%

0

0%







What we see here is the result of facing far fewer opponents. In a 16 person tournament a player can face between 4 and 6 opponents (depending on if it has a group stage or not) while in a 32, or larger, tournament you face a minimum of 5, but often 7 or more, series. The GSL Super and vs the World tournaments are pure bracket stages so the winners of those events, while facing incredibly high opponent quality, had fewer series which lead to less accumulated opponent strength which measures potential for upset.





I think it is time we move onto the strongest tournament runs though, starting with measuring by average opponent strength:





Event Year Players Winner Avg Aligulac of Opponents Combined Aligulac Over 2250 % of Opponents Over 2500 % of Opponents WCS Global Finals

2018

16

Serral

2684

13422

5

100%

5

100%

GSL Super #1

2018

16

Stats

2682

10729

4

100%

4

100%

IEM XII Championship

2018

24

Rogue

2620

20957

8

100%

6

75%

GSL Season 1

2018

32

Maru

2597

15583

6

100%

5

83.3%

GSL Season 2

2018

32

Maru

2589

12944

4

80%

4

80%

GSL vs the World

2018

16

Serral

2563

10251

3

75%

3

75%

WCS Global Finals

2017

16

Rogue

2561

12806

5

100%

3

60%

GSL Season 3

2018

32

Maru

2531

17717

6

85.7%

5

71.4%

GSL Super #2

2017

16

Rogue

2527

10108

4

100%

3

75%

GSL Super #2

2018

16

Classic

2471

9883

3

75%

2

50%







The surprising thing, to some, is to see Serral's WCS Finals run at the top but it makes sense. On his way to his ultimate achievement he also got some bracket luck, meaning he got the harder bracket, in that he faced no foreigners. This helped because it kept his average high because he faced off against the best Protoss in the world in Stats, the two best Korean Zergs in Dark and Rogue and two weird Protoss in Zest and sOs in the group stage. Had Serral faced a foreigner in the group stage it would have lowered his average. Stats' GSL Super Tournament in 2018 run was crazy as well where he beat Dark, herO, Rogue and ByuN. Overall this category of ranking favors Korean tournaments because they have higher Aligulac players in general competing but Serral's two wins are worth noting. Maru does stand atop with four runs in the top 10. Rogue has three while Serral has two.





Event Year Players Winner Avg Aligulac of Opponents Combined Aligulac Over 2250 % of Opponents Over 2500 % of Opponents WESG

2018

32

Maru

2416

21747

7

77.8%

2

22.2%

IEM XII Champ

2018

24

Rogue

2620

20957

8

100%

6

75%

IEM XI Champ

2017

24

TY

2278

20500

7

77.8%

0

0%

HSC XVI

2017

32

Zest

2299

18388

5

62.5%

2

25%

GSL Season 3

2018

32

Maru

2531

17717

6

85.7%

5

71.4%

GSL Season 2

2017

32

GuMiho

2439

17074

6

85.7%

4

57.1%

GSL Season 1

2017

32

Stats

2411

16879

5

71.4%

3

42.9%

GSL Season 3

2017

32

INnoVation

2405

16837

6

85.7%

3

42.9%

WESG

2017

24

TY

2002

16019

3

37.5%

0

0%

GSL Season 1

2018

32

Maru

2597

15583

6

100%

5

83.3%







Here we can see how a tournament filled with great players and also has more than 16 players can pay off. While the WESG may seem like a weak #1 but in that run Maru beat Dark, Serral (peak Serral no less), Reynor, Scarlett, Nerchio, ShoWTimE, Elazer, Semper and TIME. While that is a lot of foreigners that is pretty much a who's who of foreigners with only Semper and TIME being considered truly weak competition for Maru. So he basically beat the best Korean Zerg, the best foreigner and pretty much the rest of the top 5 foreigners. Combine this solid quality of opponents with the fact he had to play nine, NINE, series to win puts this is a great run.





Obviously neither ranking system is perfect but a few tournament runs rank well in both. Rogue's IEM Championship run ranks 3rd in average opponent strength and 2nd in accumulated opponent strength. Maru's 2018 GSL Season 3 run ranks 8th in average opponent strength and 5th in accumulated opponent strength. If we create an average rank between the two main metrics and percentage of opponents with 2,250 and 2,500 Aligulac we get this chart.





Event

Year

Winner

Average Rank

IEM XII Championship

2018

Rogue

4.00

WCS Global Finals

2018

Serral

5.13

GSL Season 1

2018

Maru

5.25

GSL Season 3

2018

Maru

7.75

GSL Super #1

2018

Stats

7.88

GSL Season 2

2017

GuMiho

9.75

GSL Season 2

2018

Maru

9.75

WCS Global Finals

2017

Rogue

10.00

GSL Super #2

2017

Rogue

11.50

IEM XII Shanghai

2017

Rogue

12.50







While I understand this doesn't factor in matchup strengh, players who might be entering a tournament hot or other subjective points that greatly impact each and every Starcraft tournament I do think these two ranking methods combine to capture which tournaments were a bit easier for the winner and which may have been a mountain to climb.





So what are your thoughts, do you prefer average opponent strength or prefer to see how many points they left in their wake on the way to the top? Do you think a combined version is the best way to go or that both are a waste of time? Let me know!







