SC2 Pro Tournament Discussion

Koz wrote:
mooosicle wrote:

Incredibly late, but I just watched the dreamhack finals with MaNa (P) vs Naama (T)

That protoss play was beautiful. Game 4 was especially great, with both colossi and HTs

That series was indeed awesome, and it's kind of sad knowing the GSL finals won't be anywhere near that entertaining. Honestly the last 3 or 4 rounds of the GSL this season have all been pretty frickin' boring. Impressive play certainly, but nothing like Dreamhack finals or Clide v. Leenock from round 2.

I'd argue that MC playing as well as he did against Jinro would have destroyed both of the players from the Dreamhack finals just as handily as he did Jinro. His builds, his timing, it's all pretty much perfect.

Clide vs Leenock was definitely both players at the top of their game though.

Man, that was really sad to watch. MC's builds and timing were impeccable against everything Jinro was trying to do. I don't even understand how MC had so much more stuff in game 2, including expensive void rays.

On the bright side, I think we're going to have a Protoss winner for GSL season 3.

MC vs. Nestea or FruitDealer would have been great final.

Koz wrote:

Well that was disappointing. Four rushes, four beatdowns.

Would you really call those all rushes though? I guess I just tend to think of rushes as all-in attacks. If this fails, I lose. MC just had amazing timing attacks.

Game 1, all of that initial pressure came from a single chrono-boosted gateway. Game 2, he expanded and added additional gateways behind his first push that destroyed Jinro's expansion. Game 3 looked pretty all-in to me, with 3 gates and a stargate on a single base. Game 4, the DT build was set up to enable a long-term game plan with pressure into expanding, assuming Jinro played a more standard game.

I guess I'm just comparing to the more extreme examples like BitbyBitPrime and TSLRain against Nestea. Those ones piss me off.

I didn't see what MC was doing as rushing either. He was definitely applying early pressure (which is incredibly standard at this point...) but always with a mind to going farther into the game. If any of those attacks had failed and he'd been forced to turn back, he wasn't dead. He was fine, and ready to move on to the mid-game. A rush usually involves a sacrifice of some kind. MC made no sacrifices. His builds were, as far as I can tell, completely perfect for countering the things Jinro was trying to do.

Jinro just lost to early pressure in every game.

It's just a semantics thing. I don't consider a rush to necessarily be an all-in. I call a rush any kind of early attack with serious force. And no, I don't care if that's not technically correct.

Thin_J wrote:
Koz wrote:
mooosicle wrote:

Incredibly late, but I just watched the dreamhack finals with MaNa (P) vs Naama (T)

That protoss play was beautiful. Game 4 was especially great, with both colossi and HTs

That series was indeed awesome, and it's kind of sad knowing the GSL finals won't be anywhere near that entertaining. Honestly the last 3 or 4 rounds of the GSL this season have all been pretty frickin' boring. Impressive play certainly, but nothing like Dreamhack finals or Clide v. Leenock from round 2.

I'd argue that MC playing as well as he did against Jinro would have destroyed both of the players from the Dreamhack finals just as handily as he did Jinro. His builds, his timing, it's all pretty much perfect.

Sorry, bad sentence structure. I'm saying the North American/European games tend to be more entertaining, even if the skill is not as high. MC destroying Jinro was impressive in its skill and execution but I didn't find it particularly entertaining (and not just because I was rooting for Jinro).

Koz wrote:

Sorry, bad sentence structure. I'm saying the North American/European games tend to be more entertaining, even if the skill is not as high. MC destroying Jinro was impressive in its skill and execution but I didn't find it particularly entertaining (and not just because I was rooting for Jinro).

I wouldn't disagree with that. A game being entertaining always has more to do with both players being very evenly matched than it does any particular skill level.

A game can be impressive and entertaining at once, but I think more often you see games that are one or the other.

Thin_J wrote:

I didn't see what MC was doing as rushing either. He was definitely applying early pressure (which is incredibly standard at this point...) but always with a mind to going farther into the game. If any of those attacks had failed and he'd been forced to turn back, he wasn't dead. He was fine, and ready to move on to the mid-game. A rush usually involves a sacrifice of some kind. MC made no sacrifices. His builds were, as far as I can tell, completely perfect for countering the things Jinro was trying to do.

Jinro just lost to early pressure in every game.

I can't get too worked up about what MC did. He told Jinro after the match that Jinro is "early game chobo, late game gosu," so MC knew he had to prevent Jinro from getting to gosu. And he did.

The railing against rushes makes it sound like a bad player is beating a better player with a cheap tactic. In MC's case, he had awesome builds to exploit what he saw as Jinro's weakness, and based on the results, MC made damn good choices. I don't think that's cheap at all; it's tactically sound, and so precisely pinpointing a weak spot in your opponent's play is the mark of a smart player. Jinro knows what he has to work on.

Edit: Should have linked to Jinro's interview where he mentions the "early game chobo, late game gosu" comment.

No one was railing on MC's rushes. I was just commenting how disappointing the whole series was because MC did the same thing four times in a row and Jinro couldn't respond to any of them correctly.

Sorry Koz, I wasn't pointing fingers at anyone here, I was dragging in opinions from the TL forums more than directly replying to stuff here. There's been more thoughtful explanations of the difference between all-in rushes and early game pressure here than other forums. I get the disappointment, even if it's a smart strategy for MC to pursue.

The thing is that MC is a great player in general - it's one thing to see your opponent's weakness and play according to that, it's a completely different story to cheese/all-in your way through an entire tournament and ladder. Some guys are just one trick ponies.

As for entertainment goes - I too find NA/EU games far more entertaining. I can have fun playing/watching a 4WG or marine-scv all in only so many times before I completely stop caring. When foreigners leave the GSL, I stop watching.

I do look forward to seeing more Jinro in the future. His late game gosu is pretty awesome. I'm sure he'll be working his butt off to figure out how to hold the early game better after the thorough beating MC gave him. And yeah, MC totally deserved the win--most players could not have done that, even knowing that Jinro is weaker in the early game. Jinro's not exactly a slouch at scouting, either.

I finally saw the Jinro semi-finals.

Ogsmc makes me wish I had 20 ghosts on standby

mooosicle wrote:

I finally saw the Jinro semi-finals.

Ogsmc makes me wish I had 20 ghosts on standby

oGsMC makes me wish I knew how to play protoss.

Just a friendly reminder that the final starts in a bit over 6 hours from now (the pre-game show anyway)

The EG Masters Cup is also this weekend, after the GSL finals: http://www.djwheat.tv/live.php

I seem to remember the the Season 2 finals starting relatively on time. Is that not that case this time, or is it just my live-stream that is showing a group of Korean teenagers trying to cook?

Edit: Ok - we seem to be into a proper intro/pre-game show thing now.

If I read what came up correctly, it looks like Idra and Jinro are in the same division for the Code S tournament next year (it appears to work like the soccer world cup, with divisions of four playing round robins). That's a little unfortunate.

Edit: Tannhauser'd...

Perfect response in the first game from MC.

Oh what the hell. They threw Jinro and Idra into the same group for the Code S tournament. LAME.

4dSwissCheese wrote:

That's a little unfortunate.

I don't think unfortunate is quite the right word, since there's no seeding. It's just some people at Gom putting people into the groups they want them to be in.

*Game 2 is pretty epic so far.

Streamfail - cutting off every 2-3 seconds for about 2-3 seconds. Still no servers in EU...

Wow. That game two was amazing.

Thin_J wrote:

I don't think unfortunate is quite the right word, since there's no seeding. It's just some people at Gom putting people into the groups they want them to be in.

Really? I thought I saw a video before the games started today of players drawing letters out of a basket that I figured was them drawing for their divisions. I could have been mistaken, though.

Edit: And it's over. Congratulations to MC for showing how to win, despite losing every single probe.

MC totally outclassed Rain as expected, but I did like that Game 3 where Rain completely tricked MC (and MC still almost held it off).

4dSwissCheese wrote:

Really? I thought I saw a video before the games started today of players drawing letters out of a basket that I figured was them drawing for their divisions. I could have been mistaken, though.

Ah, I started watching just maybe one minute before the first game got going. If they did do a true random drawing that would be, as far as I know, a first.

Sidenote: EG Master's cup is getting started, but the audio is so incredibly out of sync I'm not sure this is going to be watchable.

*They're restarting the stream and attempting to fix the audio sync. Assuming they get it taken care of, it's looking like it should be just as much fun a watch as the last EG tournament. Some good matchups in there.

Thin_J wrote:
4dSwissCheese wrote:

That's a little unfortunate.

I don't think unfortunate is quite the right word, since there's no seeding. It's just some people at Gom putting people into the groups they want them to be in.

*Game 2 is pretty epic so far.

That's not at all how it works. Each group of 4 has one player from rank 1-8, one player from rank 9-16 and two players from rank 17-32, all randomly drawn.

nossid wrote:

That's not at all how it works. Each group of 4 has one player from rank 1-8, one player from rank 9-16 and two players from rank 17-32, all randomly drawn.

Way to ignore the follow up post

*Aaaah, they apparently only have two or three commercials again, so we get to watch them all repeated over and over

Did they announce when the next GSL(s) are starting? Are they going to broadcast the S and the A (and then that Up and Down tourney)?

Incontrol about to play

slush v. PainUser

Game 1 was a 30 minute slugfest and then Game 2 was... a 12 drone rush. And PainUser had no clue WTF to do. Probably hasn't seen one of those in a long time.

Oh boy, those finales were pretty sweet (for OGSMC). Even in the game he lost, he held off surprisingly well. Game two, when he had a whole line of bunkers and tanks outside his base and broke out, wow, that was sick.

And that finger shake "no way" at the end of round 1, that was absolutely hilarious.

None of the usual suspects making it to the end of the EG Master's Cup.

Finals are between stalife (who?) and qxc.

Slush took third in an... "interesting" series against Blur (again with the... who?)