Tester vs Foreigners, MSL/OSL Finals (Spoilers!)

Posted by Lipton on May 29th, 2010 filed in StarCraft News

Tester vs Foreigners

Today the Altitude Teamliquid Invitational was played, featuring Tester, former Korean Broodwar progamer, and "the best" outside Asia - Idra, White-ra, and TheLittleOne. While TLO may be a little out of the place, it's undeniable that Idra is currently the best non-Korean Zerg and White-ra is currently the best non-Korean Protoss.

For a bit of a background on Tester, he's a former progamer for team eSTRO, having played games as early as january this year in proleague. He's beaten extremely strong Korean BW players like Flash, Fantasy, Midas and Ruby in televised games within the last 2 years, and isn't like alot of the other former BW pros coming to SC2 - he is a player relevant the SC scene currently, rather than relevant to it 6 or 7 years ago. He was a very strong Protoss you could send out against any Terran on the planet with the knowledge he'd have a real chance of winning.

Before the tournament I personally doubted heavily that a former Korean progamer could dominate SC2 games as emphatically as they usually did against foreigners in SC1, but Tester proved me wrong. Both White-ra and Idra, first and second place in the HDH invitational recently, which while not greatly prestigious still included most of the top foreigners in the SC2 scene both were taken down with ease by Tester.

Idra is also a former SC1 progamer, though not anywhere near as successful or memorable as Tester. He's a strong player usually able to hold his own against just about anyone, but he was completely and utterly destroyed by Tester 3-0 with the same build every game, 2gate no core. Tester would gain a commanding advantage in the early game through his zealot harrassment to make sure Idra couldn't get the units he needs to deal with a mass of colossus out in time, and Idra had absolutely no response, even dying purely to the Zealot pressure in game 2. In game 3, Tester utilized an extremely crafty way to defend his expansion on Scrap Station from roach aggression, parking 2 stalkers behind a gateway wall where they outranged the roaches, forgoing the need to build any cannons to defend. In all 3 games, though, he pretty much had the game won in the opening 5-10 minutes - something common in games of Korean pros vs Foreigners in SC1 - Domination. The only time he looked even remotely in danger was game 3, but his defense with his 2 stalkers easily turned the game around.

White-Ra is an extremely popular former BW player. His biggest accomplishment is no doubt beating Boxer in a televised match. This accomplishment even got him fame in Korea; in a replay of a casual game between White-ra and Best, Protoss player of SK Telecom T1, Best acknowledges who White-Ra is by asking "Are you the real White-ra?" and saying "Wow, I love you" when White-ra says he is. The most striking fact about White-ra is probably that he's approaching his 30s, and despite this he's been a top SC/SC2 player for so long. Perhaps this goes to show how weak the foreign SC1 scene is, that such an old guy can be such a strong player. Regardless, he got dominated in PvP mirrors 2-0. I don't expect as much from White-Ra as Idra, seeing as Idra is the progamer and White-Ra is just a guy who plays SC2 on the side and happens to be good at it, but they both lost badly in similar fashion.

Now, why Koreans had such an advantage against foreigners in SC1 was basically a gigantic mechanical advantage. They were simply far, far faster and more efficient and thus foreigners could not keep up, usually leading to them embarrassingly losing in the early-mid game. After all, they practice 10+ hours a day with no other obligations. This definitely doesn't apply to Tester. While he still practices, he's 25 years old and well past his prime, and hasn't played SC1 regulary for his team since 2008. SC2 is also far far easier than Broodwar mechanics wise thanks to the amazing UI improvements, which allows top foreigners to be on an even level mechanically right from the start. Why is he so good? How can he **** down the throat of our best players so hard? Who knows, i'm at a loss as well. Hopefully some of the top foreign players start playing on the Asian server come the next beta phase to try and catch back up.

OSL/MSL Finals Thoughts

With both finals done, I figured i'd include something about them. Flash lost the OSL to Effort 2-3 after a dramatic comeback from 2 games down by Effort, and dominated Jaedong in the MSL 3-0.

Despite Flashes loss to Effort, he's still easily the best player to ever play SC:BW. I don't wish to make excuses, but you can tell with the tactics Effort used that he was playing as someone desperately trying to scrounge wins from a better player, not someone getting into macro games with standard builds against someone they consider equal. His mass speedling allin in game 5 just illustrates this. On a good day, Flash would've easily taken one of these 3 games and easily defended the game5 allin, but on this day Flash for some reason decided to opt for 14CC without a wall on Matchpoint. He was obviously mentally shaken. Still, congratulatons to Effort for being one of the few to understand that if you fight him at his own game, you'll lose.

The MSL final was far different, with Flash coming away much stronger mentally from his MSL loss and completely dominating Jaedong, who also seemed to be playing not to his full strength much like Flash in the OSL, especially in game 1, trying some weird crazy zerg build where he made no units for 20 minutes until he got mass ultras out (yeah.. not very good). After that he didn't play like himself and basically got destroyed by 14cc every game. In game 3 especially he tried a hydra bust allin but Flashes bunker held and then siege mode was done, gg. Playing at his usual strong mental state Jaedong would easily be a match for Flash, but this year it just wasn't to be.

Overall a very dissapointing set of finals this season, the only interesting part of which being the underdog managing to score a win for once in the OSL.

I'll post another blog in 4 months.