Life - Mvp

LIFE TO WIN @2.1

Starcraft 2 game. Finals of GSL Code S. Best of 7.
Life as zerg from team StarTale.
Mvp as terran from team LG-IM.

Table of contents:
-General considerations.
-Players and their historical performance.
-Map pool.
-Teams and their historical performance.
-Conclusion.


Life is clearly the underdog, in people's eyes. He does not have a fan base yet, and just because of that his odds are way higher than they should. As a reference, we will take the odds by Pinnacle at openning time (ML/AH/AH):
Life: 1.699/AH+1.5 1.391/AH-1.5 2.290
Mvp: 2.220/AH-1.5 3.13/AH+1.5 1.662
I've been monitoring the odds, waiting for a good time to place my bet on Life. Odds might even increase before kickoff, but I'm happy with what we have. Right now, the handicap on Life -1.5 is not available, and odds are:
Life: 2.1/AH+1.5 1.546
Mvp: 1.775/AH-1.5 2.550
I will agree with you if you tell me this means nothing, but I thought it was worth mentioning.




Players:
Mvp, as I said, is the fan favourite. Any poll you check on any fan site will put Mvp as a favourite, but that's not useful at all for betting.
He has gained his fans during his large SC2 career, he has won GSL Code S 3 times and came second once, he is the second SC2 player in total career tournament earnings with over $313590 (according to sc2earnings.com) and with his multiple wins in international tournaments, he is regarded as the overall best player ever of Starcraft 2.
There is a common rule of thumb on Starcraft 2 betting, "when on GSL, don't bet against Mvp" but that is not always true. What this implies is that you must always expect Mvp to do good, even if he is no longer the player he was earlier on his career and even if there are better players right now.
Mvp has medical problems, and he doesn't train that much, but he still plays at top level, usually exploiting the weaknesses of his opponents which he found during extensive analysis of them. At this level it becomes obvious that every player does that, but it just doesn't work the same way for everyone.
He has also been throwing in more and more cheese as he became less confident with his macro style, but there are some maps that we can count him as big favourite, but this will come later.


Life is way less known. He has just exploded as a player since team ZeNEX merged with StarTale, becoming a lot better than he was before. Since then, he managed to get second place at TSL4 and he is now at the GSL Code S finals, on his first GSL Code S appearance, something very unusual. On his way, he has beaten 3 of Mvp's teammates: NesTea, Happy and Seed and korean fans are already calling him "The LG-IM killer".
He is very confident on his skills, some could call him overconfident, but I believe that is just an image he wants to show to the cameras because when he plays one can tell he has practiced a lot and he never underrates his opponents (unless he plays non-koreans, but that's not the case).
He is not a full time player, because being just 16 he must attend school, but his teachers are very understanding with his professional gaming career and he gets enough time to practice for his games.


The maps:
Best of 7:
Game 1: Cloud Kingdom.
Game 2: Entombed Valley.
Game 3: Antiga Shipyard.
Game 4: Whirlwind.
Game 5: Abyssal City.
Game 6: Ohana.
Game 7: Daybreak.

Out of this maps, Antiga Shipyard is the one that favours terrans the most in this encounter while Entombed Valley is good for terran cheese plays (bunker rushing mainly).
I would say Whirlwind is zerg favoured, as Abyssal City, while Cloud Kingdom, Ohana and Daybreak are very balanced.


The teams:
There is no particular confrontation between this two teams, and they have always been friendly. There are other things to consider though.
During the Brood War times, korean fans coined what they call the "Kong Line" (Kong means bean). A Kong is a player who usually takes second places and fails short (short as a bean) to finish first, and while Life has only been second once (not yet a Kong), StarTale have a very long tradition as "Kongs".
Nothing can ilustrate it beter than this picture that I saw some days ago around the internet:
http://i.imgur.com/VH0em.jpg
ST_Squirtle is the most clear case, but StarTale have lost 3 GSL finals and 3 GSTL finals (team league), + 1 other team league finals, KSL.

After all, this means nothing and is just used as pre-match hype. As I said, Life is confident on himself and I don't see how this can affect him at all.

LG-IM are the team with most GSL titles under their belt, with NesTea, Seed and Mvp. They are a great team with very good training schedules, but Mvp is out of all that and he trains on his own.


Conclusion:
It seems easy to call this very tight series, and the handicap on Life's side (+1.5) might be a great bet, but I preffer to go with ML bet here.
We already saw what he is capable of doing when he won 3-0 against Taeja at semifinals, leaving no chances to the TeamLiquid terran player. Yes, Mvp could read his opponent off those games, but Life has been innovating and bringing in new strategies in almost every game he has played.

On Mvp's side, I'm sure he will try to cheese at least a pair of times and we can't count all of those working, because Life, even if he likes to be very aggressive, has shown how good he is at defending though.

Placing this bet, I'm only scared of Mvp's Ghost control and his ability to snipe Infestors from the zerg armies, but zergs have been very dominant in almost every tournament recently and the balance is clearly on their side.

As I said at the start of this long writing, I believe Life should be the favourite here and if he isn't it is because of the fan factor and because of Mvp's name, holding many to bet against him. If any, this is the time to do so, as Life has played perfectly during this whole GSL season.

2

Supporters

1. Crator
2. sikkenoget

Posted on: 17.10.2012, 19.06 CET (Viewed: 612 times)
Match starts on: October 20, 2012

9/10 on Life at 2.10 with Pinnacle (Fixed Odds)

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2.10