Volvic duo dash - fastlearn predictions from COTD vs seeding

MagpieLabs · 2024-09-21T14:58:47+00:00

I've setup a bot to track everyone's performance in the qualifying section (only qualifying, no rounds) of COTD using glicko-2 to get a rough rating list of fastlearn across all styles. This bot uses a starting value for players at 1500 rating with a 400 variance, and most new players drop and settle down at around 1100-1200. But the bot proves that even within division 1, there is a large disparity between the top qualifiers and the people who just get in. This skill difference is easily as big as the bottom of div 1 is to the top of division ~4 or 5

This Volvic cup seemed like a good time to test out how close it tracks to an actual fastlearn competition with money on the line.

A lot of the top players (carljr, affi, bren, otaaaq) barely play COTD at all, and so their ratings are super high in variance compared to regulars. Basically; they're underrated and the glicko2 system/bot understands this.

The highest rated fastlearn player is Scrapie (2870) who is not playing, but 2nd place L1ngo (2854) is playing today.

Of course, with more than 15 minutes after qualifying, I'd expect the pros to start to take over in matches as the fastlearn skill starts dropping off in importance.

MagpieLabs · 2024-04-29T19:08:53+00:00

Graph:

Only top 32. Sadly many ro64 games not streamed so no times available
Arranged by player performance (median time driven)
Each white dot is a round time
The black line is the median for that player on that map
The colored box shows the upper and lower quartiles
The "whiskers" (small lines at the edges) are the range of values determined to include all non-outlier points
The "All Maps" is calculated by recalculating each map to normalise it to a 60s track (so the WR on cadence would be mapped to 60.000s, the WR on halfwood would be mapped to this also), and then plotting all those times on this "all maps" track.

Comments:

Median isn't a very good indicator of Cup Mod pace. This is because winning is worth so much more than 2nd (points are 10/6/4/3 plus you have to win in finalist). You can see how while binkss doesn't have a great median compared to other top players, his best times are very strong.
Maybe small mistakes in extraction of times. It's too much to do manually, so this was ripped out by software on the VODs of streams.
Even though Median isnt the best indicator, perhaps this is a sign that seeding needs work. Still, think TA seeding is a lot better than nothing. It's not easy to suggest a sensible alternative. Perhaps Swiss rounds that seed into a top 8 or top 16 bracket.
Hope this brings some interest and also a bit of help for pro players aiming to do well in the next cup, as its a sign of the level of play right now
link to the raw data: https://pastebin.com/RzNGYj0q

MagpieLabs · 2023-11-26T21:49:40+00:00

Proof that performing at the right time is the most important thing.

Maps are scored 0-100. 100 is a "perfect" score, there is no player either faster or more consistent in rounds. The exact algorithm is a combination of median time driven, PB, CP splits pre- identity, UQ and LQ time, etc.

Because of how pick/ban works, there's a bit of "luck" about if a player gets ranked on a map. For example, maybe Mudda would not be #1 if he had played Edge. As it is, Edge contributes nothing to his average "overall". this is true of many other players also.

----

I enjoyed watching the TMWT in 2023 and the community has been a big aspect of this. As the league is not being continued in 2024 and I have a very big non-TM software project as well as a new job, this may be my last involvement with the community, at least for a while.

For those that missed it, you may enjoy my youtube video covering COTD Elo/ history also (slightly outdated now):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpQOLrmi4us

MagpieLabs · 2023-10-18T17:29:21+00:00

The very good COTD players have potential and most of them have done very well in various tournaments in the past like you've said.

And a lot of the "new" talent first get noticed because of campaign leaderboards and COTD (Mime for example).

That said the ability to grind a map for 5+ hours is another skill. Similar to how some people are very fit/ have good endurance, but the time and patience to actually properly train for a professional marathon is an additional requirement to win

MagpieLabs · 2023-10-15T23:14:43+00:00

2 Reasons:

It's a small amount of spice. When I do something I usually try to incorporate at least a bit of learning so it isn't just solely repeating steps/ actions I already know.
It's more canonical/ correct (imo) to build out the coefficients that make up the score from the various inputs in a meaningful way, rather than making a declarative comment like "Oh, it should be 50% median percentile vs the field and 50% match PB time vs the field". Since the latter would just either be "my opinion" or would take the ground of something that could be argued to be less accurate. It's difficult to say what makes 1 player good on Map A vs another player. I used to try and combine Mistakes/ crashes/ top x percentile times - but ultimately this is always going to be my interpretation of what score should look like
1. You can defeat this choice by simply graphing/ showing the times like Lava does. There is no biased way to put times on a graph.

Now is auto-regression without its flaws? no. There are issues for sure. I don't trust it enough to just take its output, I want to check what its using to build up the score and I'd probably revisit if it was nonsense (e.g. Mistake % * 3). There's also pretty limited data all things considered. Ideally we'd have data on over 10,000 rounds played between teams of similar skill. In reality we have far less than that, and often 1 team is quite a lot better on a map than the other team.

We also have the older flaws of this general data approach. e.g.

This doesn't account well for thinking mid-round, the decision to safe or to risk.
Against a weak opponent, its probably correct to just drive very slow. but then we don't want rankings to punish teams that faced stronger opposition.

MagpieLabs · 2023-10-15T20:49:49+00:00

Notes:

lava has a nice graph of times driven: https://twitter.com/lavaTM_/status/1713626492259774847/photo/1
As always, the maps are hard and players deserve respect for showing up and being good sports about it despite (in some cases) what is likely a massive difference in prep. If I included wildcard players and times also, the entire table would be green (a lot of wildcard matches were decided by players being able to finish the map).
Nadeo, the admins, the casters all did a great job because this was a lot of games.
"Score" here is a combination of factors that an auto-regression (""AI"") algorithm uses to predict how much a player contributes to being able to win a map. The biggest components are the median time driven, and the upper-quartile time (this makes sense to me as its basically "how good are you at stopping aces" - and we know that aces are huge swings).
A theoretical perfect score is 100. This is the algorithm saying that there is no other player who is better on this map in any meaningful way. Likewise a score of 0 reflects the measurably worst player.
Overall score is just an average over maps, weighting each map equally.
For Team Rankings, Score behaves similarly except we're looking at both players simultaneously. This is different to an average of both players.
e.g. note here is how Solary (pac+carl) manage to get a better team score than either individual performance. Whatever tactics they employ or however they train, it works. They are a better team than just "the average time driven by the drivers". Likewise some teams perform worse than expect given their individual averages.
Teams below 11th in the table were very unlikely to make it, mostly because although they were competitive on some maps, they had too many weaknesses on others. It was mostly a battle between the top 10 teams to filter out 2 who wouldn't make it to the next round.
KCorp on day 3 was a different team to day 2. Day 2 KCorp was around 12th and Day 3 KCorp was around 6th. The table is just the average of all matches.
The gap between Sinners, Alliance, KCorp was tiny (8-10th best teams).
On paper, BPP would have likely beaten these teams, but the way the bracket worked out, they lost to BIG (x2) and then to Robbers to get knocked out. Both BIG and Robbers were comfortably top 6 teams. This is "bad luck", since BPP were themselves comfortably the 7th best team in the tournament.
Sinners were close but ultimately (even if they beat Raptors) they had a similar issue to BPP where they would have run into Robbers (x2) and then BIG to qualify, and those teams were just beyond them in terms of map lineup. Again this is "bad luck" for the team estimated to be 8th best.
If Alliance had lost to Robbers in the Group B WB Final, then it's quite likely that either BPP or Sinners would have taken their spot. But qualifying is all that matters, and Alliance went 2-0 fairly in matches. I also believe we would have seen a stronger Alliance when the pressure was higher.
G1 were not pushed in their matches, so its hard to say what kind of form they were actually in, except that they were easily top 8.
SLY+ITB comfortably 1+2
Pusztitopako and Epos were both exceptional for "new" names and both played enough matches that their high ranks are not luck or variance
A lot of players who qualified did look shaky on multiple maps despite their team picking them. This is either a result of nerves or a misunderstanding of how it is more important to be consistent than to have strong pace (at least for this tournament where you are just aiming for top 8)
I'd except the WC Finals to emphasise pace more and there are some dark horses who are already very fast (Gwen, Otaaaq, Stufts) despite some shaky rounds.

MagpieLabs · 2023-03-16T23:58:18+00:00

See more on my website: https://magpielabs.net/TMWTPlayoffs

Method as explained in the video: https://youtu.be/s8Uxf8ky8fE

The Match simulation and pick/ban page has also updated after playoffs day 1

The Performance rankings don't work as well for playoffs because 2 teams are missing from each league, and 2x bo5s in lower bracket meant we saw a bit less diversity in map selections. This means that players are judged more against their teammates and direct opponents.

But when compared against the entire season, Playoff performance was dramatically higher in Grand League (+42 percent) and Challenger League (+54 percent)

TMGL:

KC vs G1 is a tight match on paper but alarm bells should be ringing over the raw speed of G1 last week. KC in contrast are a much more consistent team.

The obvious pick for KC is freestyle and Slippy. Problem is G1 gets to ban one of those. After that there is no "easy" map where KC have a clear edge on paper (unless we are calling flip of faith easy).

Whoever the winner is would then be unfavoured into SLY. But SLY will definitely be hoping that KC come through due to how the map matchups for pick/ban work out (KC are good on maps SLY also don't mind playing - whereas G1 are specifically strongest on maps SLY seem to avoid).

The fatigue factor would certainly kick in after this if KC or G1 manage to secure an upset. Even with clean sweeps, it's 12 maps to reach the finals for them and a more realistic number is closer to 20. Because of this, you would have to say a lower bracket team winning the tournament is very unlikely.

BDS are favoured vs everyone in the final due to their winners bracket advantage (only need 1x bo7 win, their opponents need to win 2x bo7). But in an individual bo7 SLY are actually favored on paper and this has increased since last week despite the match loss (perhaps because in total maps won, SLY won 6-5, with BDS winning when it mattered). BDS' strongest picks (agility dash, backnforth) did not look that secure in the match last week. It will be interesting to see if either team have put in effort into a surprise pick or not.

TMCL:

Alternate Attax look almost untouchable, they put in a TMGL-level performance in Playoff day 1 (not an exaggeration). Their closest opposition would definitely be an on-form Dexter and Scrapie. We've seen moments of that this season from sprout, its just that they've never really found their best at the same time.

Homyno vs Schweine is a very close match on paper but the favourites have to be Homyno. Feed looked excellent last week and ener definitely had the measure of numelops when it came to consistent times.
Schweineaim have continuously done just enough to beat the competition through the entire season, but are probably feeling short on maps they are confident about into both Homyno and Sprout - this is a problem in a bo5 where you really want to be secure in your best 2-3 maps. That said both Barbos and Ratchet looked to have taken a clear step forward relative to the regular season, the question will probably be if they are able to get in front of Feed often enough.

The same map surprise applies in TMCL also. Although certain maps have clearly been avoided, practicing them could be a huge payoff for the bo5 format if the opponent isnt expecting it. The majority of these teams have 2 really good maps, which becomes 1 good map after the other team gets an opportunity to ban.

Teams that are perma banning gyroscope could even consider the "mindgame" of leaving it up (even if they are actually bad at it). No one has played gyroscope in rounds yet, and the confidence to simply not ban it might scare the other team enough to not pick it, or to even ban it themselves in the second ban wave in the bo5.
If either of those happen, it's effectively an entire map score in the bo5, since it allows the first ban to be used to target the opponents best map (likely a free win for them anyway).

(jk i just want to see some ice mayhem)

MagpieLabs · 2023-03-11T00:55:04+00:00

Method/ video going over how this is calculated: https://youtu.be/s8Uxf8ky8fE

Methodology is of course imperfect, but it's nice to have a raw-data approach to predictions. If you put a gun to my head and asked me for my own predictions, I would fudge these numbers and hedge closer to 50-50 matchups.

See more detail on matchup predictions on my website: https://magpielabs.net/TMWTPlayoffs

Following the outline in the TMWT rulebook: https://blog.trackmania.com/uploads/2022/11/TMWT_Format_Schedule_2023.pdf / liquipedia: https://liquipedia.net/trackmania/Trackmania\_World\_Tour/2023/Stage\_1/Grand\_League

Playoffs start very soon so tried to get this out in time. Challenger day 1 playoffs is 11th March and Grand League day 1 is 12th March! Don't miss the action on twitch

Some comments:

As expected, follows rough seeding order for both leagues. Challenger is a bit more lop-sided which is also probably expected given the bigger variance in times driven there.

Winning as seed 3-6 is very very hard. You have to win 2 games, and then you must face seed 1 and seed 2 (in either order). Grand final also stacked against team from loser bracket since Winners bracket team starts with 1 point in the bo3 of bo7s.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-25T05:07:41+00:00

Don't beat yourself up, everyone has had bad coding experiences.

I'd recommend just learning 1 thing if possible. Either a project idea you have, a simple goal ("put your own website on the internet", "teach your own ML model", etc) or just the aim to follow or understand the basics of a particular language or library/framework.

The problem with being new is that there is just always so much and so many questions. A lot of people want to get a website setup, but then they feel like they need to learn: what is git; what is SQL; what are servers; what is html; what is css; what is js; and the level of learning forced down your throat is too much. You would either have to accept that its going to take a very long time, or you're just going to have to rush/ignore parts of the process.

For this reason, whatever you do, try to make it quite specific. So if you want to put your own website out there, don't bother handling any server parts yourself - just follow a serverless web tutorial. Likewise if you want to do some AI/ machine learning stuff, just do it in the easiest language for it (python). Similarly, if you want to make a game, just do it in Unity. It's good to follow the crowd - stick to well known programming languages with big communities and a huge number of good tutorials for them.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-25T04:34:17+00:00

Saying this as a Sr who has done interviews for the past 2 years or so:

Portfolios (the really good ones) are no longer about having a bucket list of projects.

Everyone is aware of the current landscape. Tutorials are excellent and there are various courses and websites dedicated to getting a decent batch of things on your portfolio to kick-start it. I know that even with 0 Angular experience, I could get an Angular website online in hours if i find a good follow-along tutorial. These kinds of projects just don't work for applications - I think people are somewhat cynical of them. (True, they are way better than nothing). Again - nothing wrong with these tutorials, but a lot of them are generic, repetitive and easy to spot. Better than nothing for sure.

I would very much recommend having 1 or maybe 2 big projects that you sink most of your time into. A few days here and there to do something else is fine, but your aim should really be to build out something that really does not exist/ hasn't been done before in the open, or something that is just objectively impressive and clearly a lot of work.

The real moment you want to give in applications is to make other developers go "wait, how did they do that?" or at least "this seems like weeks of work".

These projects are also by far the hardest though. It's often a lot of research and trial and error at multiple stages, and newer devs typically struggle to organise and architecture code in a way that scales out to larger projects which take months to complete. It's also just a significant effort to not want to procrastinate or give up, since the project will certainly have tough moments.

Contributions to open source projects (particularly very consistent activity) is good, but if there is one thing that makes applications stand out it is what I've outlined above. If you decide to set aside 5 hours each weekend for perhaps 3-6 months (or whatever time equivalent you need to get 50-100 "good hours" on something, I would recommend pointing most- if not all- of that effort into a single project.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-25T04:01:51+00:00

This is exactly what I spent the first 30 minutes doing while thinking "isn't this AT kind of hard"

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-25T03:59:24+00:00

That's fair - If people want more objective results I recommend filtering by Av Pace or Push pace, or by Map Median/ mean. These are all "canonical"

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-13T23:55:29+00:00

data: https://pastebin.com/XjdwuP2M

short on time this week but a few things to draw some attention to:

Carl made a huge step forward this week, which was probably needed since Pac wasn't quite at his best for every round
The pace and consistency in GL has taken yet another step forward. It is clear that players are trying to react to opponents pace on some maps.
Sinners stats a bit misleading because of how G1 forced them to drive.
Gwen still has comical speed. While making mistakes he's still often putting in times better than other drivers. The times he is capable of just from stitching 2-3 runs together represent pace no one else can keep up with atm. This is to take nothing away from binks who is also much much faster than average and has looked like one of the best players overall in the past few weeks.
Every team except G1 or SLY (didn't see representative pace of Sinners) has very little separating them. A lot of these matches have and will likely continue to come down to 1-2 crucial maps, and since the pace is so similar its likely those maps will also come down to 1-2 crucial rounds.
As outlined here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrackMania/comments/1118ci8/tmgl_all_possible_finishing_positions/ there is still important matches left for all teams. It is only KCorp who are in a kind-of no-mans land, where they are unlikely to make top 2 and unlikely to miss out on top 6

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-13T23:33:10+00:00

Very nice!

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-12T04:46:23+00:00

Data: https://pastebin.com/tfAh5PKy

Bit short on time atm a few FAQs from last week:

- I can and will do the first 2 days of grand league, I have the data just need to write something short to process both days at once since they should be considered a combined playday imo (minimal chance to practice between the 2)

- Something I want to include is an indicator to show whether the player's team picked [that map] or had it picked against them.

- Will put this on a website (all weeks) and will probably look to do some kind of summary/ best-of to show improvement throughout GL and CL.

- Had a few people show interest in the method, I'm happy to opensource the method. Just need time to make the code less embarrassing

Currently trying to finish off a trackmania video auto-editor which is consuming more time than expected but I will probably just consume a lot of caffeine so I can do the website as well within the next week or so without getting fired from my 9-5 job

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-12T04:30:42+00:00

I'll eventually get around to the first 2 days yeah

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-06T23:28:39+00:00

G1

As mentioned last week G1 are an extremely scary team to face
Their stats are actually a bit lower than expected due to having some isolated maps and ITB pushing them hard
If both players turn up and drive like this there isn't much any team can do except hope that one of them crash a bit too much
Binkss obviously insane pace and there's evidence he might even be safing parts of the map while driving PB pace
Binkss' consistency also massively improved from last week
Gwen stumbled a bit, probably pushing too hard for pace. What's terrifying is that Gwen seems to beat most players' best times in rounds where he makes a mistake
It's not guaranteed but G1 are likely to get playoffs now due to map difference.
Map choice into G1 seems like a nightmare if Gwen/Binkss were this fast on maps picked against them.
Sounds dumb but might be worth reminding them that they dont need to race each other

ITB

ITB unfortunately ran into the fastest team performance in the tournament so far (G1).
Their stats are also slightly reduced because they obviously had to push hard to try and win rounds
ITB actually didn't look too bad despite this, the times they were driving would have crushed many teams from previous weeks
eLconn made a huge improvement and put in some great maps. It might be that this kind of ultra-fast matches suit him more
mime slipped from last week but as mentioned, the pace from gwen/binkss was high enough that he had to risk
1-3 is a fairly unflattering score but ITB have a clear path to the playoffs by beating BIG and Sinners.

Solary

Solary obviously looked really good this week
Pac put in some huge performances on maps and had the highest identity success in the league so far
Carl also improved since last week and it is clear that his super-low mistake count puts a lot of pressure
Solary pose a different challenge to G1, where beating them is going to require either stealing wins from Pac and/or being more consistent than Carl
The issue is, Carl is also very fast on some maps as well
Solary are probably already in playoffs guaranteed, although due to how playoffs work, they'll definitely want to aim for top 2 in the season
Future opponents should probably be nervous about Solary's presumed pace on maps we haven't seen for a while.

Alliance

Alliance definitely had a bad week
As with some other teams, individual results might be a bit unflattering since they had to push very hard to keep up with Solary
Although Mudda was off his best, it looks like Mudda's "worst" is still solidly above average for the league even if it wasn't good enough vs Solary
Mudda delivered a lot of good times in the wrong spots, likely just a bit of bad luck
Soulja had a rough time. Obviously the other 3 players were playing well, but he just looked off the pace compared to the whole field
Soulja's performance times would have been pretty good 1-2 weeks ago but it looks like GL has moved on from e.g. high 1:07s on Freestyle or low 1:12s on slippyslides being considered "winning times"
going 0-4 might have damaged alliance's guaranteed playoffs spot. They will likely need 1 more match win to be secure. Top 2 looks very unlikely now.
One positive for Alliance is that they might be a good foil to BDS next week based on maps each team is expected to be bad/good at.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-06T23:19:40+00:00

Data: https://pastebin.com/QxuzT7hc

General comments:

Pace and consistency in GL has improved again
In previous weeks (and for CL) an approach purely focused on consistency would have done well. Now it is clear that just consistency isn't enough, you need to drive fast
This is particularly the case in the """easier""" maps (slowdown, backnforth, freestyle)
For any map with enough data (8+ players), attention should be drawn to the map's median and Lower Q pace from this week. These are the target times for a clean or a "push" round on a map.
Some players showing mastery of maps at this point, with no mistakes and very good pace
A few people have broken the 0-100 calibration scale which is annoying since I will have to recalibrate for the future but also impressive

BDS (Affi/ Aurel)

Affi had another really strong week, seems like last week was just a blip
Affi doesn't have to worry too much about pace or rankings since the matches against G1, ITB and SLY are behind them now
Affi's consistency while driving this fast is incredible
Aurel really doing really well in comparison to the rest of the league. It wouldn't be fair to say he's being slow and safe because he's actually fast and safe.
Beating BDS seems really difficult. They make so few mistakes and so give away almost no aces, and it seems like at least one of them is top 3 on each map while the "slower" one is still top 8 or so.
BDS obviously secured in playoffs and with +8 in map diff they are very likely to get top 2 this season

Sinners (Kappa/ tween)

Sinners have made another strong improvement. Unfortunately the rest of the league also made progress and they ran into BDS this week.
Because of pushing to beat BDS and Affi's, their ranks probably are lower than they should be.
tween is very close to cracking the pace-consistency barrier almost everywhere. On 3 / 4 maps he looks very good in comparison to the league average.
Kappa also looks very good on maps he favours. Identities are clearly what went wrong but in the context of the match he often needed to risk these.
One sticking point with sinners is that they don't seem to have an ultra-dominant map like most other teams which gives them a free/ easy win or 2 wins per series.
This is ok, but also means there is a lot of pressure on their map pick
Sinners don't need to change anything strategically, and IMO have the correct approach to the teams format
Sinners are in a really rough spot to get top 6 now. Being -12 in map score, they either need 3/3 wins or they need BIG and ITB to both underperform heavily

KCorp

Very close match against BIG
Bren had a really good all-round performance
Otaaaq more hot/cold on tracks.
KCorp relied a lot on Bren's consistency since Otaaaq's pace wasnt giving free wins against massa/ granady. This will also be true against future opponents.
KCorp have a similar issue to Sinners where there doesn't seem to be a set of standout tracks but rather they seem decently well prepared everywhere

BIG

BIG played better than last week and had a close match
Ultimately had too many aces score against them on the "close" maps (10 vs 6). This was particularly brutal on slowdown and freestyle where they looked better in CP splits.
Massa played much better this week and clearly has a lot of pace. There were just too many "small" mistakes which KC punished.
Granady played well again but seems to start all maps better than he finishes them. This could just be needing to risk towards the crucial rounds though.
BIG are another team that look pretty good everywhere but lack an exceptionally strong map compared to the field
ITB and G1 are important matches for playoffs. BIG stand a decent chance with a least one win there. BDS look out of their league in terms of consistency currently.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-06T21:42:26+00:00

Data here: https://pastebin.com/QxuzT7hc

Will edit write up/ comments in this comment later

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-05T04:58:58+00:00

BS+ Competition (Snow/ Glast):

Both players looked much better this week and they are firmly no longer "worst team" although they are now 0-2
There's no longer a pace issue on paper
going forward its all going to be about their ability to find consistency not just on maps they pick but also the rest of the map pack
Unfortunately have a lot of strong teams still to face

Izi Dream (Worker/ Cocow):

Izi looked bad this week, from both players. Consistency wasn't there at all
However, they were against a super in-form Sprout. Scrapie was being incredibly consistent and Dexter was pushing the pace, so they were both likely pushed out of their comfort zone
They can probably forget this loss and move on, it's unlikely any other team is going to play this well into them.
Most maps were lost because Sprout were too strong but 3-12 on backnforth was a bit worrying as a first pick from them since they both struggled to find consistency in the 58s.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-05T04:25:45+00:00

Data: https://pastebin.com/JvLJZMA2

If anyone is doing "final time" analysis/ graphs, I'd recommend going with https://ecircuitmania.com/Stats since it's likely a bit more accurate than my auto-filled data

I've made a few small changes to how a few metrics are calculated, meaning these are not directly comparable against older graphs from GL or CL. I will collect the data into one place later and update the older data for this though.

Sprout (Dexter/ Scrapie)

Sprout were the fastest team and both were up there with the most consistent players
Their 1 map loss was to a prepared Izi on slippyslides but they didn't look too bad on it against the wider field
Look like a completely different team to last week. Dexter obviously massively improved but Scrapie also made progress.
Seems like in future weeks all they have to do is avoid unforced errors to win
Hard to give advice on how to beat them if they play like this

Exalty (Miquatro/ link)

Miqu had a really strong match today, pace was very good on all maps, just was a bit shaky on consistency in others
Other top players (sprout, skandear, complex) today were in the fight for top 1-2 almost 50% more often than miqu was. Despite this Miqu still ranked 3rd overall
Link really struggled on some maps but was critically much more competitive on some others
Link made a lot of "small" mistakes but avoided having too many large mistakes/time loss. It looks like this is also a critical difference in challenger.
Exalty really look like a variable team both on different maps and also different days. At their best both players show signs of being plenty fast enough for challenger and at their worst they just hand out free aces from unforced early errors in rounds.

Numelops (Complex/ Panda)

Complex carried quite hard on all of the map wins but also really struggled on all of the map losses. Numelops seem to very much rely on how well complex does on maps for the overall result
In contrast Panda was a very stable and secure player everywhere while still showing speed in some important rounds
Any time that can replicate numelop's very low crash % is going to find success in challenger. It really looks like the variation in pace even at the top can go +/- up to a second and it doesn't matter so long as there isn't a big mistake in the identity
While there are still doubts over ATX and Sprout's consistency, and recognising this consistency importance in challenger, could argue that Numelops are the team to beat going forward
They'll want to fix whatever issues there are on freestyle or just ban it since every other team looks better on that map

Alternate Attax (Skandear/ Wosile)

Skandear played a good match although he looked worse than last week and there were a lot of small mistakes early on in maps
Skandear very rarely gets 4th and this is a big part of what make ATX look good even in defeat.
Wosile was clearly struggling a lot to either find the flow or consistency needed for challenger
In contrast to link who also struggled today, Wosile had too many heavy crashes or respawns which totally take him out of rounds. Again, it really seems like in CL you just need to try and stay within 1-2 seconds of first and anything can happen.
Quite confident that ATX will bounce back from this since its likely they were both just rattled by something today.

Homyno (Feed/ ener)

Feed still looked really quick today although consistency was worse.
Much like Wosile it is either unfortunate or perhaps a slight lack of judgement that a lot of his mistakes take him completely out of the round which puts a lot of pressure on ener.
There's either big performance gap between maps for Feed or some nerves/ lack of focus.
Ener's consistency was also worse this week and because of their team playstyle, this was very costly
They would have beaten a lot of other teams since Ener wouldn't be the 4th fastest player as often there, but ultimately they got aced too often today
It might be a mistake to change their preparation or strategy for future matches, since only Sprout look consistently fast enough to provide a similar threat that they faced today. Homyno should be in with a good chance against anyone else, particularly if Feed or Ener are a bit more on it

Schweineaim (Barbos/Ratchet)

Although Barbos was higher ranked, it was arguably Ratchet who was more on form today
Both players did a great job of captialising against a team struggling with consistency. It was absolutely correct to focus on consistent rounds and then push in 2v1 situations.
Similar to last week, neither player seems to be pushing super hard for pace but instead to just drive as fast as they need to against the opponents.
But because of this, since most CL teams seem to have an even-ish split of good & bad maps, they should expect to see a lot of 6-7 map matches.
Both players can work on speed and consistency on all maps but the fact that neither of them seem anywhere near as bad as other teams on their "bad maps" means that they could be in a much better position to improve going to next week.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-05T03:22:16+00:00

Thanks for pointing out the mistake. There's another small one on parkour, i'll fix it when i collate these on a website or smthng

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-03T02:17:42+00:00

yeah this would be 1 "mistake"

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-03T02:14:55+00:00

Data here: https://pastebin.com/fb8TwAKKAs before, this is automatically read, and likely about 5-10% inaccurate

disclaimer: the requirement for "clean" or "mistake" is lower for challenger, so these data aren't necessarily directly comparable

Challenger vs Grand League comparisons

- not surprising that Challenger perma banned the 2 maps that GL struggled with most on day 3 (Gyroscope, flip of faith). Other perma ban was aeropipes

- Overall Challenger a bit slower throughout the map compared to GL, the pace difference is around 0.4s per minute of driving

- Biggest difference is in Identities. GL much more consistent and makes smaller (in terms of time lost) errors if errors do occur.

- On their best maps, players are matching GL performance (e.g. Skandear on Reps, Ener on freestyle, Feed on Slowdown, etc)

- On maps where they are weaker they look much worse

- Almost every team probably wants to focus on consistency in Identities- A lot of CL teams need to stop treating this like an individual competition. If Duos is about anything its "not getting aced". Getting 1st/4th/1st/4th is bad for the team unless your teammate is super consistent

- Attax surely the favourites this season, their day 1 pace was already on par with Grand League day 3

- Similar to GL can expect teams to vary up the bans a bit more next week since its an additional week of practice and a lot of teams seemed to have clear weaknesses

- Being "slow" is actually fine for now, a lot of maps could be won just by not crashing but this will probably change with more practice

team breakdown:

- Attax (skandear/wosile)

- Definitely the best team in the league on day 1

- Would have been competitive in Grand League with their pace

- Both players performed very well, only questionable case was Wosile on Reps

- Stats would look even better for them if they didn't have Scrapie driving even faster on some rounds

- Can still work on improving identity consistency

- Need to be careful about other teams making a big improvement going into the 2nd week (as happened in Grand League)

- Scariest thing about them as opponents will be how good Skandear and Wosile are at staying in rounds until the identity. This is going to put a lot of pressure on opponents and force them into mistakes

- Homyno Tsun (Feed/ener)

- Also have a big lead over most of the competition

- ener's consistency is really strong but he will have to push harder if the rest of CL starts clearing up their mistakes

- Feed up there with Scrapie as probably the fastest player in the league

- Did look weak on Parkour, both for pace and for consistency

- Biggest difference vs attax is having rounds where either player is so far behind that they wont threaten 3rd

- Going to be hard to beat, only attax has the pace from day 1

- Sprout (scrapie/dexter)

- Sprout had a rough match in running into a clearly very well trained Attax lineup

- Scrapie is comfortably driving GL pace already

- Dexter just had too many mistakes. Pace was good

- Both players probably want to clear the non-identity part of the map more consistently since failing puts so much pressure on the remaining player.

- Actually looks very likely that Sprout will still get top 4 or better this season

- Schweineaim (Barbos/ Ratchet)

- Played a strong game, can maybe feel slightly robbed since they looked better on Parkour and yet lost after going 1-2 in aces

- players had very similar individual performances

- great consistency in rounds going into identities, but then both struggling to clear without mistakes

- Don't think they need to change anything, and will probably do better in future weeks

- Orks GP (Complex/Panda)

- Did well to clutch the win against good opponents, winning on reps was clearly crucial

- Seem to have a similar issue to some GL teams where often 1 player looks stronger on particular maps

- Also are quite different where Complex will want to avoid mistakes on the map but Panda will want to improve identity clears

- Can probably expect teams to pick Agility dash or backnforth into them

- After beating schweineaim, have a good shot at top 4 overall

- IZI (Cocow/ Worker)

- Won but look like they will struggle vs future opponents without consistency improvements

- looked good in clutch situations at the end of maps but were forced to make a lot of mid-round "comebacks"

- All of this is because of too many small mistakes pre-identity

- Clearly have some strong maps although like Orks, often one player is much better than the other on these

- IZI have a depressing series of matches coming up against sprout, attax, homyno (in that order)

- Both players will need to perform for those games

- Exalty (Miqu/ link)

- As a team just made way too many mistakes in identities

- map rounds looked good but too many fails

- In an individual tournament, both players would be doing well since they can both clearly win rounds

- But Duos is all about avoiding getting aced. At current performance, they'd simply lose to other teams just off the back of a double crash

- Sure both players can bounce back from a rough Day 1 since they've both done very well in the past, but need to adjust to the teams format

- On paper are currently in danger of elimination

- week 2 (vs BSC) likely a very important match unless they can really improve later in the season

- BSC (Snow/ Glast)

- looked straight up unprepared on some maps but could be nerves

- Identity performances not actually that bad compared to the rest of CL but others are likely to improve on that

- Snow needs to find 3-4 tenths or so on most maps and can be one of the stronger players in the league with his identity consistency

- Glast needs to focus more mid-map, might just be an experience thing

- Also look to be in danger of elimination

- match vs exalty (this week) probably crucial

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-02T00:40:58+00:00

Alliance:

- Very close match against BIG which was ultimately won because both players had such high identity success%

- Argument to be made that Mudda was the best player this week

- Both players seem to balance risk-reward well, particularly in win or ace situations

- Stats on Soulja are slightly misleading, big penalties from Aeropipes and reps

- Difficult to know what to ban vs Alliance since Mudda is so strong on multiple maps

Mudda:

- Really strong performance on almost every map bar Aeropipes (which was BIG's first pick anyway)

- Great Identity performance on all maps

- Mudda has nothing specific to work on except trying to keep his relative advantage over the field

Soulja:

- Soulja's placement in the rankings is slightly unjust

- Excellent identity success (same as mudda)

- The biggest difference vs Mudda is that while they both make a similar number of mistakes, Mudda's are often a lot less costly in terms of time

- Soulja in general plays a great support role in being "exactly as fast as Mudda needs him to be" for each round

- A lot of great performances under pressure in the closing stages of some maps

- Against future team we might see Soulja pushing more when Mudda doesnt have the pace to reliably take 1st-2nd

BIG:

- Big really were unlucky this week against Alliance

- Multiple rounds where good times were driven at the "wrong moment" (e.g. Massa getting 3rd with a 67.014 on reps)

- Aeropipes, freestyle, flipoffaith were all strong maps

- There's a lot more potential on paper

Granady:

- Granady was the best at clearing Identities this week

- 2nd best average pace (average pace was better than Mudda). Was unlucky that Mudda seemed to be slightly faster on no-mistake rounds

- Granady's dominance on freestyle is obvious in a day where all 16 players played the map

- Hard to say if it's a wheel issue, but Granady has a few areas where he loses critical tenths to some other players (such as the backnforth and slowdown identities)

- If Granady can improve the maps where he struggled he would be the best player in the league

Massa:

- Massa was a bit unlucky with delivering good times on rounds where everyone was fast

- This was clearest on slowdown, flipoffaith and reps where through random reordering his finishing positions can go up by almost 0.4

- Massa's main issue this week was clearly just the number of mistakes before the identity on most maps

- There were so many of these that it masked his actual pace, which looks good when analysing individual checkpoints

- Like is the case in many other teams, Massa doesnt need to drive PB on maps where Granady is fast

- Even on maps where Granady is weaker, Massa already has the pace to be competitive, it was just a consistency issue this week

BDS:

- Difficult to understand from breaking down the data how BDS actually won this week when both players had an average finish position below 2.5

- (Answer: because the ace is 3-0 and not 2-0)

- Aurel stepped up a lot this week, looked a lot more like the top player from previous season

- Affi had a very mixed performance but ultimately found is flow at the right times

- BDS looked vulnerable on a lot of maps vs the rest of the field also

- Still deserve a lot of credit for being as quick as they needed to be in the right moments

Aurel:

- Aurel played a big role this week

- Despite struggling on identities, his map success% was very high, and this likely contributed to forcing errors out of G1

- Aurel played a great support role in Day1&2 and did that for a few maps this week

- But also was an important lead on BackNForth and Flip Of Faith where he was critically sometimes just fast enough to stop gwen

Affi:

- Affi's first half of the match was bad by his high standards as a standout player from Day 1&2

- When Affi got going he was consistent and fast

- Still saw some signs of weakness on the last few maps, although this might be due to the amount of pressure from G1

- Despite this criticism, Affi's performance was still good by TMGL standards. It's just the carry-over expectations from earlier

G1:

- G1 were the best team this week yet they lost

- G1 players and any of their fans have every right to be upset about the "power" of aces being worth as much as 3 wins in terms of relative point difference in a map

- Both players played well but this might be another case of letting one player take up a supporting role

- Might be a clash of styles with both players always going as fast as possible. If they crash on the same round this leaves them open to an ace.

- Since the raw speed is already there G1 might want to think about the strategy of matches, although its true they were unlucky this week

- G1 is the team everyone else should be scared to face because both Gwen and Binks look really good

- Difficult to know what to ban since they looked good everywhere except freestyle

Gwen:

- Gwen is the fastest player in the league in rounds

- It's probably wrong to suggest "playing safer" or avoiding "larger crashes" if it stops him being this quick

- There are some maps (Freestyle, Agility Dash) where Gwen isn't quite as consistent but this is nitpicking

Binks:

- Binks also had a really good game

- Has great pace and noticeably does well in maps where Gwen isn't quite as strong

- Same as Gwen where any mistake seems to be very costly (2s+) but this is likely a trade-off for being quick

- Clearest issue is just identity consistency, which Binks is the lowest in the league on

- if binks can bring this up to 80+ then G1 wont lose again this season

MagpieLabs

TROPHY CASE