Battle.net World Championship finals in numbers

Over this past weekend, the world watched the thrilling culmination of a years worth of Battle.net World Championship Series qualifiers, nationals, and continental finals. Stories like the return of IdrA and the Plott brothers casting the Durán brothers coupled with top notch play kept fans glued to their streams.

The tournament’s grand final saw Lee-Sak ‘PartinG’ Won claim victory over Hyun-Woo ‘Creator’ Jang in a 4-2 series, earning himself the $100,000 first place prize. Rain finished in third place after defeating Sen in the consolation final.

Increasing diversity?

A massive prize pool of $250,000 was fought for by 32 players from 18 different countries. While there were a significant number of players not from South Korea, the South Korean representation did take home three of the top four spots and almost 70% of the prize money. For many of the participants, the WCS global final was simultaneously their largest payday, and their brightest exposure. Players like PartinG, Creator, Insur, Suppy, State, Illusion, and BabyKnight all earned their biggest check ever from the event. 

A look at the Battle.net WCS and TLPD ELO

While the debate continues about whether ELO is a good way to rank players, the BWC demonstrated that it can work. For example, the average Team Liquid Player Database (TLPD) ELO for the entire tournament was approximately 2200, but the average ELO for Terran players was a good deal lower, at around 2150. While half of the Terran contingent made it out of the group stage, none of them won any matches in the playoffs, and they won only about 4% of the total prize money available.

Furthermore, when you look at the TLPD ELO distribution of how people placed, a nice pattern develops where a few top players have significantly higher ELOs than the others.

One final note about  ELO was that Rain and Sen had easier schedules than PartinG or Creator, with opponents rated on average 2084 and 2096 against their race instead of 2146 and 2140.