SSCAIT round robin is over
The SSCAIT 2018 round robin is complete. The last few games were not interesting and were before dawn in my time zone, but I woke up and watched them anyway. Congratulations to the final 16, it was no easy road, and I now intend for Steamhammer to crawl its way to the top over your corpses. And congratulations to everybody else for the effort, even though others crawled upward over your corpses.
Now we can try to forecast the round of 16, which seems to be playing right now though the games are not being streamed. #1 SAIDA, #2 Locutus, #3 Iron, #4 PurpleWave, and #5 BananaBrain are all big favorites to win. Maybe somebody can work through future pairings in detail and try to tell whether SAIDA can be eliminated by facing both of the 2 opponents that scored 2-0 against it. At first glance it seems possible.
#6 Krasi0P is paired against #11 Steamhammer (I landed just below the middle of my predicted range #7-#13, which were tightly spaced after #7). In the round robin, Steamhammer won the first game, and I expected a win in the second game too, but it didn’t happen. I thought the plan recognizer would understand the cannon rush and react properly. The second game shows that it did not recognize the plan correctly, but it should at least have understood the plan in the second game. The plan recognizer is tested to work in this situation, so I’m still expecting a win in this match. But I was wrong once; maybe there’s a bug I haven’t found. There is a tipping point: If the plan recognizer is wrong often enough, it will make Steamhammer’s play systematically worse, and it will take more than 5 games of match play to overcome that.
#7 Killerbot by Marian Devecka lost to #10 Tscmoo protoss in the round robin, and may keep losing. I think #8 Bereaver, not updated, should be at a disadvantage to #9 Microwave. This pairing system benefits the top scorers, but also grants a relative edge to bots finishing just below the middle, who are paired against comparatively easy opponents.
Beyond the round of 16, I don’t want to forecast. Knockout tournaments by design are sensitive to every result, so mistakes compound quickly. I think you need a full Monte Carlo analysis to estimate probabilities.
I predicted that Steamhammer would score 4-3 in its last 7 games. Its actual score was 5-2. I made my prediction by individually estimating the probability of winning each game, and simply adding up the probabilities. Steamhammer was slightly lucky to win against Iron, which I gave a probability of 0.4 based on test games.
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MarcoDBAA on :
My predictions for the first round:
SAIDA - Ximp:
Clean 3:0 for SAIDA
Bereaver - Microwave:
Only watched the first game, where Bereaver dismantled Microwave with his shuttle reaver drops. But Microwave won the second game, and Bereaver has some problems with zergling soft rushes (like 9 pool). 3:1 for Microwave.
Puplewave - Proxy:
Well, Purplewave might not be extremely happy about this matchup. Still a 3:2 (or rather 3:1 than a loss) for PW.
Bananabrain - Hao Pan:
Upset time? I can believe that the Iron derived micro with more learning than in normal Iron could prove too much for BB. BB doesn´t protect his workers well vs the vultures. 3:2 for Hao Pan. Not sure about it however. I admit in often underestimating BB. Might be the closest series.
Locutus - Arrakhammer:
3:0 for Locutus, no problems.
Killerbot - tscmoop:
This might be the wrong protoss (besides krasi0P) for Killerbot to meet. Killerbot is playing a macro game, and this is what tscmoop does very well himself. 3:1 for tscmoop
Iron Bot - Skynet:
3:0 for Iron Bot. Nothing new here.
krasi0P - Steamhammer:
Well, you should win, 3:1 for Steamhammer.
MarcoDBAA on :
Microwave did have more problems than I thought and might have lost the last game, if both bots had started at different positions.
Purplewave either found a good strategy vs Proxy, or it was prelearned (or because of code improvements), and the match wasn´t as close, as I remember it from before the tournament.
Everything else more or less happened as expected.
Dan on :
Going 3-0 vs. Proxy with the 4-Gate is fortunate -- Proxy generally goes 50/50 against that or better. Failing to land on FFE or Gateway FE builds (which are objectively better builds, and better vs. Proxy) was a danger that I was lucky to escape.
MarcoDBAA on :
krasi0 on :
I agree with MarcoDBAA's prediction of 1:3 in SH's favor
Barcode on :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuVbraUB9fU