Ranking the Teams

The SC2 scene is still just getting started, but a surprising number of GSL participants are on teams. This raises the question: which team is doing the best? Well, TSL's Fruit Dealer won the first tournament, so that's a good start. But that only takes you so far. GSL 2 is going to be won by either a Prime player (Foxer) or an IM player (NesTea), and in any case there's more to consider than just the overall victor.

I've taken the points system I used to see who was on the bubble for S Class (you can see the details here but basically it amounts to a point for qualifying for the GSL and a point for each match won) and added up the totals for each team. Now, a caveat. My information about who is on what team isn't perfect. I knew about a third of the players either from memory or from their ID and filled in the rest using Team Liquid's player database, so it's about as close as we can get in the English speaking world. But teams aren't static. I'm pretty sure Happiness left TSL by the time he played in GSL 2, for example. Then there's the fact NEX and Zenith were separate teams for GSL 1 and joined for GSL 2. Worst of all, WeRRa has disintigrated due to a horrifying scandal and its players are scattering.

All that said, ranking the teams is fun, so I'm doing it anyway. Here's what I've got:

Team	GSL 1 Players	GSL 2 Players	GSL 1 Points	GSL 2 Points	PPP GSL1	PPP GSL 2	Total PPP	Total Points
Prime	16	8	32	17	2	2.13	2.04	49
oGs	9	8	22	22	2.44	2.75	2.59	44
ZeNex	10	10	19	18	1.9	1.8	1.85	37
No Team	8	12	11	21	1.38	1.75	1.6	32
WeRRa	11	8	14	10	1.27	1.25	1.26	24
TSL	3	4	14	7	4.67	1.75	3	21
StarTale	1	2	6	7	6	3.5	4.33	13
IM	2	4	2	11	1	2.75	2.17	13
fOu	0	5	0	8	-	1.6	1.6	8
EG	1	1	2	3	2	3	2.5	5
TeamLiquid	1	1	2	1	2	1	1.5	3
FnaticMSI	1	0	1	0	1	-	1	1
mYm	1	0	1	0	1	-	1	1
vT	1	0	1	0	1	-	1	1
WeMade FOX	0	1	0	1	-	1	1	1

"PPP" stands for Points Per Player. "Total PPP" is total points divided by total players, not a sum of the tournament scores. I sorted by Total Points since I think this represents the overall strength of the team best, however.

Quick thoughts:

• Although Prime scrapes by oGs on total points, the margin comes from their players who qualified for GSL 1 and didn't win. oGs had a better average in both tournaments.
• You'd expect the number of players without teams to be declining, but in fact it went up in GSL 2. Perhaps this is because newer players are still getting picked up...I don't think that LegalMind was on Prime until he started doing well in GSL 1, for example, but he's Prime for both tournaments in these numbers.
• Prime and oGs both improved their average points between GSL 1 and GSL 2, but ZeNex surprisingly dropped slightly despite both the merger combining the practices and not having their best player lose to DAVIT.
• Although it did have one other player (Ace) in GSL 2, StarTale basically wins the battle of the one man teams on the strength of the individual points leader, HopeTorture. With the exception of vT and mYm, I think all of these teams will have more players for GSL 3, at least for qualifying.