Last playday of TSL Ladder Stage began with a bang, in fact 6 of them. But we'll look into abuser's list later on, the time has come for a final review:
We start with IdrA. He's been the king of the ladder for almost every single day with the exception of 1-2, he was the first to hit A and A+. Overall he clearly is one of the safest bets to advance very far or even win the thing.
If you check IdrA's match list you will find that he has beating quite a few strong TSL players, among them: recent 3-0 over his WCG Nemesis Kolll, 3-0 over Squall, older victories against OctZerg and a 5-0 with White-Ra.
Next comes our dear friend MorroW, sadly, now without the 18px capital bold letters. He's been holding second for awhile now, his record includes wins against iNcontroL, Gosudark, White-Ra, Predator and many others. We genuinely expect MorroW to advance far into the tournament, hoping for good games.
Strelok has been in top 5 for a very long time, didn't play much. White-Ra was literally bouncing all the way through ladder. At one point he was #1, then dropped back in mid 20s, for a day or so he even lost his A- status. Eventually he remembered that he in fact is probably the best foreign StarCraft Protoss and quickly climbed back into top 5. Much like Ret, IdrA and a few other players Ra was playing a whole lot of games versus Koreans, about 50% win ratio for the Ukrainian master.
Ret is 6th, another awesome bet for a win. He's been playing Koreans like crazy, preparing for next Courage. He actually beat IdrA in an epic match. Regular watchers of Ret's stream had the opportunity to observe that game live. He also player a nice 9-game series with Sen, lost 6 of them. All in all his win ratio against A-ranked Koreans is as impressive as it gets, really.
MaNa and Terran steadily stayed on their leading positions all the way through ladder. MaNa did drop back a bit, but quickly recovered back on 5th.
Positions of Sziky and Fenix are also no surprise to anyone. Fenix had a bit of a bounce, but he is pretty much where he should be. There is nothing too exciting in their match lists, so we'll walk by quickly.
I would look at kogeT's match list if iCCup site wasn't a lagging piece of you know what, but, since it is, all i can do is state that he is 141h, joined by his teammate Casper at 14th.
The rest of top 30 there's no much to say about. iNcontroL has been hanging around late 20s for a week or so, Castro was a regular in top 10, settled on 28th with quite a bunch of games played. KenZy, Fluffy and Fraer are no strangers to top 30 either, a few hit'n'miss games between the three, but steady positioning as it is.
Kr by the looks of his game count was working his ass off to get into top 30, a solid effort indeed. Infernal butter-sliced their way into A's with impressive records.
Killer is one player we haven't been paying much attention lately. By popular request via comments and forum we shall do so now. He's been around mid 20s for a week or so. He did play a lot of Koreans, but his winning ratio is quite frankly abysmal, certainly not comparable to the one of top players, which is probably why he was never there.
Kolll settled on 29th. He did play a lot of Koreans, also played a number of games versus top TSL participants, nothing too impressive, just a good solid bet on advancing far into the tournament.
The familiar American pack featuring Kawaii and Nyoken is still there, 36th-37th, no news here. Their fellow countryman G5, once a top 10-er, is on 49th, tough break, but if anybody from the current top 48 gets booked for hacking he will be in.
Cloud, the WCG finalist from Italy is stationed on 34th place. Speaking about WCG finalists, Yayba and Paranoid are nowhere, Sen got his act together and went back up to 10th, we expect a lot of great games from Sen.
Bulgarian Technics, once the holder of a very impressive record couldn't keep it up, 45th trailing Ghosta. Squall, Praetor and Kwark, all of them at one point had more or less comfortable places in top 48, - all dropped out.
OctZerg found some sort of skill/luck mojo and managed on the very last day to get back on 26th place, just hours ago he was 52nd.
Sweden isn't really performing as well as expected, only got 3 players inside top 48 with Naugrim, Enivid, Daze, Shauni and others out indefinitely.
As you can see 11 players have been caught abusing the ladder and have been disqualified, here are the morons: A2, Pomi, F91, Yosh, Scan, Ribobo, Mercury, Dimaga, Vasilisk, Sarens, Reason. All of them for taking wins off spoof accounts and/or playing other TSL participants with spoof accounts. Teamliquid are still checking the ladder for more possible abuse, there's no doubt there will be more.
I would like to raise a question, are they actually that dumb? Getting a few wins if you are a borderline B+/A- player to give yourself a small edge can be understood, if not condoned. Giving yourself several free wins if you've been in top 15 for days i can't get my head around.
One thing for sure, IdrA will be playing a bo5 versus Nony, other 47 will take a chances at the first round of playoffs.
That concludes our TSL ladder reports. We'll do an update whenever match-ups are released or if any more abusers get caught.
Links
iCCup TSL - Rankings
