Masters Tour Vegas and Seoul Statistics

I have compiled some statistics from Masters Tour Vegas and Seoul, mostly for my own enjoyment. There is still a lot of interesting stuff here so I'll share some of the data and observations, even though the sample sizes are quite small so no solid conclusions can be reached.

Most interesting to me was that for the first time this year we can compare the win rates of Grandmasters to the rest of the field. High win rates could mean that the format is very skill testing or that Grandmasters are way better than qualified players, and low win rates could mean that the format is not skill testing enough or that there is no meaningful difference in skill level between a player that can spike a qualifier and a player that has been hand picked by Blizzard as one of the best in the game's history.

For the record, I do feel that some Grandmasters are way better than the average player in these events, even if I would not rate all of them highly. I also feel that any Best of 3 format is not going to give a significant enough edge to better players and no matter if Conquest, Last Hero Standing, Specialist or another format is chosen, the most important thing to make Hearthstone feel meaningful and worth practicing again is a return to Best of 5 (or even Best of 7).

Here are the win rates for GMs overall and separated by region for both events:

         Vegas  Seoul

Total  55%    52%

NA     52%    52% 

EU     60%    55%

Asia   51%    49%

I think Hearthstone would be healthy if the best players could achieve around 60% win rate against top competition. Sadly, the data reflects that there is not really much difference between GMs and other players for NA and Asia, and that the EU Grandmasters are doing quite a bit better. It will be interesting to revisit after Bucharest, especially if the format changes so we can evaluate the impact of different formats on the best players' win rates. Also interesting to note that win rates got worse between Vegas and Seoul. Is the new metagame less skill testing or are non-GM players just closing the gap as the year goes on? There are not a lot of meaningful ways for GMs to compete since they aren't allowed to play qualifiers so the less disciplined of them could be getting rusty without a lot of convenient ways to practice.

Other interesting tidbits:

• 39/48 Grandmasters were in Las Vegas and 40/48 in Seoul.
• European GMs are the most dedicated when it comes to showing up even though the EU event has not taken place yet. 13 GMs from Europe went to every event, compared to 10 for NA (11 if you count Gallon) and 11 for Asia
• The bar for qualifying to extra events is placed very high at 9 wins. There were only 7 9+ win performances from GMs in both events, 2 of them coming from Bunnyhoppor.
• Most wins, adding both events: Bunnyhoppor, Gallon and Kalàxz (18), Narina and Caimiao (17), 9 players tied at 16.
• Most wins for GMs: Bunnyhoppor and Gallon (18), BoarControl, Hunterace and Seiko (16).
• Most wins for NA GMs: Eddie (14)
• Most wins for Asia GMs: Alutemu (15)

NA and Asia GMs have very disappointing results overall but it also seems more difficult than it has ever been to string 8 and 9 win performances, since almost no one is doing it. Variance seems very high and it is funnily enough always possible to talk about consistency when handpicking certain players. It is noticeable that some players have consistent results (though a normal result of chance), and it can be speculated that some players give more consistent efforts than others, but I really hope that the narrative built around so-called consistency dies down.

Most consistent players:

Bunnyhoppor: 9 wins twice

BoarControl, Hunterace, Seiko: 8 wins twice

Eddie: 7 wins twice

Kolento and Orange: 3 wins twice

Least consistent players:

Feno: 9 and 0 wins

Muzzy: 9 and 1 wins

Justsaiyan: 8 and 0 wins

Surrender: 8 and 0 wins

I always go back to the same suggestions, but I think that these events need more rounds and / or more games per round to help flatten variance a bit. I also wish that the bar to requalify for events would be lower than 9 wins (75%) win rate. Only 21 players got 9 wins in Vegas and 23 in Seoul, which is less than 10% of the field. In contrast, professional Magic events have 16 rounds and require 11-5 (68% winrate) to requalify, which seems more reasonable.

That's all I got for now! I'm sure there will be comparisons to be made when more changes are done so I'll be sure to revisit this subject later.