K-poptosis Interview

Let's start with the easy (or the hard) one: who is K-poptosis?

K-poptosis: I'm the guy responsible for all of the statistics popups seen at such tournaments as The International, Alienware Cup, and the Dota 2 Super League. I'm 22, a recent graduate of the University of Alabama, and I write for Team Liquid!

What did you do before getting involved with Dota 2, and what keeps you occupied outside the internet?

K-poptosis: Well during high school I was a pretty big fan of traditional sports. I captained for my Baseball and American Football teams, and followed the professional versions of those sports pretty heavily. My love for stats originated from my love of Baseball, which really is a nerd's game with so many numbers and metrics it'll make your head spin. I graduated from College with a Biology degree and am considering going to Graduate school in a healthcare field. However, that's on the back-burner now as I work and do eSports things!



In my free time I really enjoy spending time with my marvelous girlfriend, reading, drinking and homebrewing craft beer, and playing board games with friends.

What was your reaction at the instant you realized you were invited to The International 2013?

K-poptosis: It didn't really sink in at first, I was just off a 12 hour night shift at my job, and was sitting on about 3 hours of sleep when IceFrog sent me the contact request. I was really excited but too tired to really express it. I also couldn't really believe it, as I had only been doing the stats stuff for about 2 months prior. Everything was just happening so fast it was hard to process how awesome it was. Thankfully a lot of community members and friends got super excited for me, so that felt really amazing.

What's your favorite piece of statistics regarding Dota 2?

K-poptosis: My favorite genre of stats has to be ability data. Being able to see how many heroes a player hits with Reverse Polarity per cast and how much damage a player's average Mana Void deals is really cool.



Currently, my favorite personal stat is that Meepo now has the 2nd highest win rate in competitive Dota 2, behind only Io. Unfortunately the sample size of Meepo games is too small for that to be significant, but a man can dream.

What's the next big thing you'd like to see in terms of statistics? For example, Skadi will make heatmaps a reality.

K-poptosis: Heatmaps are amazing, I've already talked with the guys about the possibility of doing ward heatmaps, because I think that looking at where players like Akke and Puppey ward vs other players would be ridiculously insightful.



Beyond that, as we get more samples and it becomes much more realistic to do Sabermetric-style analysis for Dota, where we take into account as many variables as possible to get a more "fair" number for some stats. In Baseball, pitchers used to be judged simply just by how many runs they gave up, which was unfair to a lot of pitchers. Now, sabermetric stats take into account the pitcher's defense, the size of the stadium, as well as other factors to get a more accurate quantitative analysis of the pitcher's ability. In Dota we can take a statistic like GPM, and control for things like the Hero, (Alchs are going to farm more than than Lifestealers) the time, the laning composition, etc, until we can get a more fair number. I’ve done this a bit on streams by standardizing for the hero and time point, but we can go a lot deeper.

What would you like to see added to the broadcaster tools?

K-poptosis: I have a laundry list I'm compiling to send off to the guy who codes the tools, who is a great guy. Some high points:



* Interactive polls in Dota TV



* Notifications for what spell Rubick steals (his idea, not mine)



* A template for have multiple columns so comparison stats are much easier.



* Stock Player pictures

What's the most important thing a Statsman needs to know in order to be a good Statsman?

K-poptosis: That the most important thing isn't even the finding of the stats, sure I’m proud of some of the anecdotes I dig up, but presentation is a big deal. It's important to work with your casters and deliver the information in a timely and relevant manner. You don't want to be coming out of left field with your stats, you want to emphasize and give evidence for what your caster is already talking about. A caster saying "Wow, this carry's farm is really good" is one thing, but being able to say this carry's farm is X better than the Average hero at this point in time *proves* what the caster is saying and further emphasizes the point to the audience. Humor’s also nice, but you really need to be careful with your balance as it can be easy to come across as unprofessional.

Tell us about your experiences in Seattle. What was the craziest thing you saw there?





The craziest thing I saw was how Gabe Newell arrived at the Player's Dinner. All of the teams were segregated off on their own tables in this pretty swanky steakhouse about a block away from Valve HQ. I was in Seattle early enough to attend and was sitting with the Liquid guys. About an hour in, Gabe just lumbers into the place, wearing that same Black Ralph Lauren polo he always wears and leading a huge dog with him right past the dressed up waiters and bartenders. He walked to the end of the room to a sofa that ran the length of the wall, and just plopped down, staring out at everyone, elbows on his legs. Never before have I seen a man that looked like he owned the place as much as Gaben did then. K-poptosis: It was a lot of fun. I was put up in a ridiculously nice hotel room by myself, nearly every meal was provided for and I got to interact quite a bit with personalities and players. I got pretty well acquainted with the Team Liquid guys who were ridiculously nice, bonded with Pyrion Flax over baseball, and inadvertently started a kill-steal war between XBOCT and Dendi over Fantasy Points , had my first VIP experience at the after party, and lost a dance off to SyndereN.The craziest thing I saw was how Gabe Newell arrived at the Player's Dinner. All of the teams were segregated off on their own tables in this pretty swanky steakhouse about a block away from Valve HQ. I was in Seattle early enough to attend and was sitting with the Liquid guys. About an hour in, Gabe just lumbers into the place, wearing that same Black Ralph Lauren polo he always wears and leading a huge dog with him right past the dressed up waiters and bartenders. He walked to the end of the room to a sofa that ran the length of the wall, and just plopped down, staring out at everyone, elbows on his legs. Never before have I seen a man that looked like he owned the place as much as Gaben did then.

Any shoutouts?