Group of Death

Next week will have the most anticipated group of Starcraft players battle it out in the GSL (now WCS Korea). The format of the GSL starts with 8 groups of 4, with top 2 advancing to the next round, which is another 4 groups of 4, before reaching a straight knockout stage.

The group plays out as a mini tournament, where the 2 pairs play each other then the winner plays each other, and then the losers of the first games play each other to fight for their right to play the final match vs the loser of the winner match. Hope that makes sense... sounds really complicated =D

So pretty much the best 4 players in Korea (and the world) picked each other and now we see the craziest group of death in Starcraft history (however long that is).

To put this in non Starcraft perspective, lets say that in some weird situation the [Football] World Cup decided that the top teams would pick their opponents in the group. Whoever gets selected can pick the next team. Imagine the team ending up like this; (yes i know they're not no.1-4th in Fifa World Rankings...)

- Spain

- Brazil

- Germany

- Italy

I cant wait to watch this group! And I'm sure that many others cant wait too...

But what I'm really interested in is how doing this as a strategy works in the long run?

In choosing their opponents, Parting actually started out by wanting to play vs Life, so it was more of an ego driving / rivalry thing. Then Life chose Innovation... which was also kinda the same thing. Then Innovation chose Flash... coz why the hell not! At this point it was pretty clear that non of the remaining players wanted to be chosen for this group, so why not just go full out? Misery loves company, right?

Strategically it can seem like a pretty good idea. Its almost certain that the winner of the whole tournament is probably going to come out of this group. So why not make a group of death, where you can eliminate 2 of your biggest rivals? In fact you can eliminate one and have them eliminate each other!

It kinda has the attitude of doing something hard now, so that the journey to the end can be easier. Another point to make is that from a psychological standpoint, if you completely destroy this group, you have the confidence to win the whole thing and other players might be scared of you.

I doubt that during the picks these players were thinking this strategically, but it certainly brings up some interesting game theory style strategies into not going for the "norm" of choosing easier opponents. Or you could just win vs everyone and you don't have to think about any of this at all LOL. But i like it...

Bring it on!!

Just SooImba

Sup y'all hope everyone is enjoying the beginnings of what is to be great summer! Well, here in UK we've just had our wettest April and its not gonna stop apparently... so not sure when officially summer is actually coming, but hey... that's UK for ya!

I'm happy to announce that I am making some progress in the Silver League at Starcraft 2! 4th in Silver, pretty happy with that, and quite confident with my build now.

As you can see, I'm "sooimba" but I also notice the 6th place guy "TerranImba" which I thought was kinda funny... coincidence? Totally.

I basically watched a series with this guy;




...and it helped me a lot.

Basically he advocates the "Special Tactic" of.... wait for it....

...Getting more stuff then the other guy!

Wow, such amazing strategy! Nearly as good as such favourites "Score more goals then the other team" or "Score more points in the basket then your opponents". Duuuh

But basically it does show how having literally no real strategy but building a lot of stuff can get you really far. Ever since I've adopted this build I've managed to win a lot more, and learn to adjust to a lot of things. Having specific builds vs certain race match ups is good, but isn't really as relevant until you get to the higher levels.

I'm interested to see how far I can get with just doing this. I am pretty good at doing multi-pronged attacks, as well as multi drops and just being all over the place, which is the kinda style that I wanna use.

I'll be streaming regularly so if your around come by and say hi at twitch.tv/puyanwei


The Imbalanced Argument


So in this game there's a lot of talk about balance. Balance basically is about making the game as fair as possible, by making each race (terran, protoss, and zerg) as evenly matched as possible. But the continuous arguments for/against certain aspects of the game are so overly complained about, it made me use the name "sooimba".

In my opinion the game is as balanced as it can be. There can and will be tweaks here and there, but I honestly think that the general backbone of the game is flexible enough for players to be able to solve certain problems in creative and intuitive ways. After all, don't we play games for the challenge?

Without this balance, the game would never have been as popular as it is today. What's more, the fact that the 3 races are being chosen quite evenly shows that there is no clear better race to use. Even at the highest level when watching the pro's play, we see a pretty good distribution between them. There are advantages and disadvantages to using each race.

I do complain a lot about balance but in actuality I'm only really kidding around lol. I really do <3 this game and will keep playing for a long time I think. There is something really interesting about how there are so many different strategys as well as the fact that they always keep evolving over time, meaning that your not always doing the same thing over and over again.


I guess the fact that I'm just a high silver I don't have the perspective of a high level master league player... but I guess this would be fun to look back on when/if I get there!

Back to the Future

Marty!! Its time... to go back to the future!! 

Well actually... more like back to the past! I've been playing the $15 STTs (Single Table Tournaments) again thanks to my VPP collection scheme, and I have to say I'm not doing badly at all for once wow. Small sample atm of course, but not bad considering I'm not table selecting and 20 tabling a mix of $7s and $15s.

One thing that is interesting is how my game is so much better then before. I understand a ton of new concepts and lines to take, and my heads up play has improved considerably, of which it shows since it's got the highest distribution. 

Another thing is that with this "new" found knowledge... the games are kinda like, new games to me! Its interesting going back to this old game that I used to play a ton with this new mindset, and see things in different ways. I can really see the mistakes that I used to do, and understand why I had the breakeven stretch that I did. Anyways, hopefully it will continue, and with it comes my confidence and hopefully more money!

Hooooold!

Barcelonaaaaaaaa

I have been neglecting my travelling this year, and I feel bad for it. So when the opportunity came to go to Barcelona for a breakdance jam, I pounced on it. December last year I went to Rome, so it seemed like a good time to go to sunny Spain!

However, it didn't turn out that way. We brought the British rain with us, and it was cold as shit =(

Still, I had a good time, tried some Spanish Paella, and checked out the Gaudi Church which was one of the most interesting buildings architectually, I've ever seen! 

Gaudi's most famous building "Sagrada Familia"

View from Outdoor Restaurant. Mmmm Paella!! 

I really do miss travelling, but I think that my days of doing the long ass month stays are over. Maybe 1 or 2 weeks max now. I guess I *could* bring my laptop to play poker, but it would be without all the poker software and stuff... which to be honest I wouldn't mind too much. Its just the fact that I'd like to have my away time from the online felt.. and I'd probably miss my Starcraft too much lolz.