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Winter Major in review

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The prediction article written prior to the major is available here.

The Winter Major is over and it's been a tournament of few upsets. G1 thought that was boring, so they made sure to upset and get upset. That made the predictions look really smart at first, then really dumb. But at least, I think, everyone has seen their potential on day one, and I have now seen why they don't live up to that potential. The AI predicted 77% of the matches correctly and we placed top 4% on pickstop.gg, keeping up the 100% gold rate for international LANs.

The positive surprise this LAN was KRÜ while GenG and Oxygen underperformed. For Oxygen, this is starting to become a pattern in playoffs that even LAN boi rise couldn't stop. If you check the general team rankings, you may wonder why there is so little movement for most teams, but it pretty much comes down to the fact that every positive result for those teams had a negative counterpart. G1 > FaZe > KRÜ > G1; and Falcons > Vitality > Oxygen > Gen.G > Falcons.

Region performance was definitely in favor of EU at this tournament, although there are some caveats. Dignitas was expected to lose in their group and thus, their result is not that surprising; however, G1 were expected to lose and made an upset happen. That favors EU. Group C and D went exactly as expected region wise.
SAM performed pretty close to the predictions at the major. While the win over G1 is individually considered an upset, they had 5 total matches vs. EU/NA. Winning 1/5 is a 20% win rate, and therefore, an expected rate of upsets. OCE and APAC underperformed as expected. That's kind of an oxymoron, but I'm just saying that their upsets are so rare that occasional 0 win LANs are expected. However, at least OCE has been winning 12% of series vs. EU/NA since LANs have come back, and thus getting 0% is still an underperformance. Falcons did as expected by the model.

The regional adjustments in the last 2 weeks (including data from the Corelli Cup) were: EU +8, NA -12, SAM +28, MENA +5, OCE -18, APAC -17. Minor regions can move around faster because there is less certainty about their current rating.

The general rankings are obviously updated already, but I wanted to know how the AI rated each player specifically at the major. For that purpose, I set all players rating to the same starting rating before the major and let the model work it out from there. The starting rating was the average of the attending teams (2285). Check it out below:

Player Rankings at the Winter Major

2500 2500 1 Uncertainty: 91 Rating: 2565 2565 Karmine CorpVatiraFR Flag 2 Uncertainty: 99 Rating: 2469 2469 FaZe ClanFirstkillerUS Flag 3 Uncertainty: 103 Rating: 2466 2466 Karmine CorpExoTiiKFR Flag 4 Uncertainty: 99 Rating: 2457 2457 Complexity GamingcrrES Flag 5 Uncertainty: 111 Rating: 2414 2414 Karmine CorpitachiMA Flag 6 Uncertainty: 105 Rating: 2397 2397 G2 EsportsAtomicUS Flag 7 Uncertainty: 99 Rating: 2390 2390 FaZe ClanmistUS Flag 8 Uncertainty: 107 Rating: 2370 2370 Team LiquidOskiPL Flag 9 Uncertainty: 106 Rating: 2364 2364 Team LiquidAtow.BE Flag 10 Uncertainty: 119 Rating: 2348 2348 G1AtomiKES Flag 11 Uncertainty: 112 Rating: 2334 2334 Complexity GamingReysbullCL Flag 12 Uncertainty: 101 Rating: 2332 2332 Gen.G EsportsApparentlyJackEN Flag 13 Uncertainty: 113 Rating: 2325 2325 Team Falconstrk511SA Flag 14 Uncertainty: 101 Rating: 2325 2325 Team VitalityRadosinFR Flag 15 Uncertainty: 103 Rating: 2321 2321 FaZe ClanSypicalUS Flag 16 Uncertainty: 111 Rating: 2316 2316 Team LiquidAcroniK.PT Flag 17 Uncertainty: 112 Rating: 2311 2311 Team VitalityAlpha54FR Flag 18 Uncertainty: 113 Rating: 2311 2311 Oxygen Esportsrise.EN Flag 19 Uncertainty: 107 Rating: 2308 2308 KRÜ EsportsdrufinhoBR Flag 20 Uncertainty: 111 Rating: 2305 2305 G1DoritoES Flag 21 Uncertainty: 107 Rating: 2305 2305 G2 EsportsChicagoUS Flag 22 Uncertainty: 109 Rating: 2302 2302 Complexity Gamingajg.AR Flag 23 Uncertainty: 119 Rating: 2297 2297 Oxygen EsportsArchieEN Flag 24 Uncertainty: 102 Rating: 2290 2290 KRÜ EsportsdroppzBR Flag 25 Uncertainty: 118 Rating: 2284 2284 Team FalconsAhmadSA Flag

Do you agree with these ratings? Do you think anyone important is missing? I'm guessing that specifically G1 will be regarded as placed too high. Keep in mind that tournament placement doesn't influence the ranking. They beat a really good team in FaZe, then lost to KRÜ. You also don't lose points in Rocket League specifically for throwing, which is one of the biggest weaknesses of using stats.

I hope this example of a tournament specific ranking also illustrates how recent player performance influences the general rankings. The regular player rankings just do the same process over and over again without resetting between each tournament. If you want to learn more about how the player rating works, I've got a full article on the topic.